Posted on 10/27/2021 8:07:41 AM PDT by re_tail20
American media doesn’t care much about Oct. 28 and Oxi Day, literally “The Day of the No.”
But I care about it, because a man I loved was there.
Oxi Day, (pronounced O-hee), is the day that Greece said “No” to the Axis powers and changed the course of World War II at terrible cost. On Oxi Day, I think of that man.
My father.
He wasn’t political. Politicians were talkers and he was not much of a talker. He was a boy in the Greek Army then, from the village of Rizes on Oct. 28, 1940, when Mussolini, backed by Hitler, flexed his muscles to reach across Europe.
My father had dreams. He dreamed of coming to America, of becoming an American citizen and raise his children here. He’d heard the stories about the wondrous freedom of America from my grandparents, who’d lived in Chicago for a time. It was all he cared about.
Years later, he’d tell us he wanted to become an American so that we, his sons, could be Americans, “and no one could ever put their boots on your necks and your bellies.”
The sentence does sound odd, as he translated his thoughts from Greek to English, with those boots on those necks and bellies.
Odd, yes, until you realize he’d seen it.
He’d seen enough fascist boots on necks and bellies, including his own, and then came the Communist boots. I suppose he understood freedom a bit more clearly than those of us who talk and write about it in abstract terms.
But then there was no way for him to become American. And there was no time abstractions, or speeches or dreaming that immigrant dream of America, America. The world was at war. It was a time for killing and trying to...
(Excerpt) Read more at johnkassnews.com ...
I was feeling a little down this morning, and needed something to lift me up, and this did the trick.
I clicked the link and read the article. It gave me chills.
That is a great story and I learned many things I never knew about Greece. Thanks for posting it.
Kass’ father said he emigrated to America “So no other country can come here and put their boots on your necks.” That is especially poignant these days as our own “elected leaders” are eagerly putting mashing their commie boots onto our necks.
The song begins "At dawn envoy arrives, morning of October 28th/no-day proven by deed. Descendants of Sparta, Athens, and Crete"
Chorus: "Call to arms, banners fly in the wind/For the glory of Hellas/Coat of arms reading 'Freedom or death'/Blood of King Leonidas"
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