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GARGALIANI (Small town) MESSINIA
In the more recent history of Gargaliani and of the whole nation,
the young second lieutenant and Macedonian warrior-leader Captain Telos Agras
(Sarantis Agapinos) stuck out. He was born in 1880 in Nafplio
where his father, Andreas was working as a judge of a court of the first instance,
who immediately registered his son in the municipal rolls of the Platamodas municipality
with registration number 103/ 1880 as a citizen of his birth town and his ancestors.
His mother was the sister of the general Ioannis Papatsonis. He was
a second infantry lieutenant having studied at Army cadet. His patriotic soul
could not stand the national decline, which followed after the loss in 1897 and
he decided to take part in the Macedonian War enthusiastically as a chieftain
of Vermio, with the
nick name Captain Agras, where he tried with all his strength for the opposition
to the Vulgarisation of the Greek citizens in Macedonia, something which the Bulgarian
committee was doing systematically using all kinds of terrorism. In the end he
died fighting for this important and sacred cause. He suffered hard for two years
from privations, deprivation, dangers and malaria in the thick and untrodden reed
thickets of the lake of Giannitsa,
an endless disease-breeding swamp living in wet reed huts from where he was forced
to leave for a while in order to recover. He became the fear of the Bulgarian
guerrillas of the Lake and the protector of the Greek villages, a legend in the
whole of Macedonia for his heroic achievements. Unfortunately, he attempted a
friendly negotiation with the Bulgarian leaders Kasapsef and Slatan, to whom he
showed trust and went unarmed, accompanied with just one companion, to a pre-arranged
meeting to Vladovo. He got arrested cowardly my their men following their orders
and was held up to public ridicule for a week in the Bulgarian villages of Edessa
and Karatzova and he was finally hanged with his companion on a walnut tree on
the road between Techovo and Vladovo. His grave is in the graveyard of Vladovo
and a cenotaph on Egnatia Road in the entrance of Vladovo. He was sacrificed on
the 3rd of June 1907 at the very young age of 27. Penelope Delta talks about his
activities in detail in her wonderful book "The secrets of the Marsh". His such
unmanly and brutal murder strengthened the anti-Bulgarian Macedonian War and caused
unquenchable hatred against the Bulgarians to the whole Greek nation and he also
made his name Captain Agras known throughout Greece. This national hero has been
extolled with poems by the famous poet Zacharias Papantoniou and Marika Pipiza
from Constantinople
(Trifillian Diary 1908, pg 111).
The village Techovo had its name changed to Karidia in memory to him
and Vladovo, where he was buried is now called Agras.
This text is cited Oct 2003 from the Municipality of Gargaliani URL below
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