The Korakou Bridge was the largest bridge in the Balkans and its ruins can be found today in the village of Piges
The historical Korakou bridge in Acheloos connected Karditsa with Arta for about five centuries. It was blown up on the night of March 28, 1949.
It was 21:15 when rebels of the Democratic Army, after crossing to Argithea, planted explosives and blew up the bridge.
The next day, Sergeant Christos Notidis, a soldier and Pigiotis Michalis Pitas died on the western pedestal of the bridge from the Arta side, below the village of Piges, which was planted with mines.
The sergeant’s family lost track of him. His wife had given birth to their second child, a boy. Some vague information reached his people from time to time, who lived in anxiety and anticipation.
“Fate had its own plans”, his 74-year-old son, Michalis, will say to APE-MPE with emotion. “My mother stayed with me for two months in her arms and my sister for two years. As he told me, when I was born, my father took ten days off from the Army. He came home. Then he left and disappeared…” he continues in a broken voice.
How was written 33 years after the disappearance of the sergeant, the tragic epilogue for his family
It was the spring of 1982, when Spyros Athanasiou from Igoumenitsa took over as a rural doctor in the mountain village of Piges in Arta. The young doctor at the time, alongside his military service, did agricultural work. The then secretary of the Community, Andreas Balas, remembers that he was always at the disposal of the doctor, due to the difficulties in the area. One day they went to the community office where somewhere in the yard a marble cross that the doctor saw was supposed to put an end to the 33-year search for the fate of sergeant Christos Notidis. “When I read the name I was shocked. It was the name of my missing relative. The family didn’t know anything about his fate since 1949. If he was alive, if he was killed, where was he buried”, dermatologist Spyros Athanasiou reports to APE-MBE. A few days later, when he returned to Igoumenitsa on leave, he told the family the tragic revelation.
The chronicle of the fatal patrol in Acheloos
Christos Kaperonis, president of the Brotherhood of Pegiots of Arta, who has recorded the testimonies of his fellow villagers, conveys the events that followed the day after the Korakou bridge was blown up.
“On March 29, units of the army and the national guard went up close to see the extent of the destruction. On the western platform of the bridge, from the side of Pigon-Arta, a group consisting of an army sergeant, with a soldier and four locals from the National Guard approached. Nikolaos Tsolakis and Georgios Velaetis, Christos Fotos and Michalis Pita. When the group arrived at the site, the veteran hero of the Albanian front and head of the local national guard barba Nikolas Tsolakis, told them to immediately check for mines before proceeding, to be careful where they were walking, since he suspected that the site was mined.
However, due to a miscommunication, not everyone received this notice. Leading the way, sergeant Notidis Christos stepped on a mine that was hidden under plane leaves, which due to the season were scattered everywhere at that point. The result was that Sergeant Notidis Christos, the soldier and our fellow villager Pietas Michalis, who were following behind him, were dismembered on the spot. Shocked, the rest gathered the dismembered limbs, loaded them on mules and buried them in the village cemetery in Ai Nikolas. For years we saw the graves, like children, and we asked with curiosity to know who they were and how it was done…”.
After many years, around 1980 the then president of the Pigon community Vassilios Kaperonis was doing work in the village cemetery and had to postpone the burial of the sergeant. As he remembers, the then secretary of the Community Andreas Balas, the president, “with his own hands took care of the exhumation and preservation of the bones of the unfortunate sergeant” and placed them together with a marble cross, in a space next to the Community office.
The bones of the unfortunate sergeant were handed over to his family in 1982. His two children along with their mother arrived in Piges. During the handing over of the army salute, he paid his respects. His son Michalis, who never met his father, always remembers the love and kindness he received on that important day of his life, from the residents of Pigi. “I want to once again thank them warmly for the honor and care they gave to my father…”.
Source: Skai
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