One cypress for each soldier, 143 in total, will be planted along the road that leads to the battlefields of legendary Fort Roupel in northern Greece. The trees will honor each of the courageous Greek soldiers who died there defending the country during the historic World War II battle.
“Each cypress will be dedicated to a dead hero of the Roupel fortress and the units surrounding the fortress, that’s why they will be planted along the road,” Giorgos Tatsios, mayor of Sintiki told the Athens News Agency/Macedonian Press Agency. “It is a practice we witnessed in Normandy, where we go each year for the last eight years on the occasion of the student competition ‘The Battle of the Forts.’ The student who wins the competition earns this trip as a prize.”
Tatsios says that the fallen heroes of the Normandy landing are honored by trees that have been planted along roads that lead to the battlefields. The road leading to the Roupel fortress will be planted in the same way. He adds that in Normandy, “on each tree base there is a sign with information on each soldier lost.”
The mayor of Sintiki explains that they know exactly how many soldiers fell in the fortresses of the area and that they have already planted 12 trees in April, honoring the fallen of the Istibei fortress, another Metaxas Line fort at Neo Petritsi.
The planting at Fort Roupel is scheduled to begin in the coming days with the help of volunteers and municipality staff. The project will be unveiled in April, during the events that commemorate the battle each year. The fallen soldiers will also be honored through signs that will be placed on each of the cypresses, mentioning who they were.
The heroic 1941 battle of Fort Roupel in Greece
In April 1941, a handful of Greek defenders forced the German army, Europe’s largest military machine, to radically change its initial plans to destroy the Fort and take over Greece.
The Greek soldiers defended what they called the “Macedonian Thermopylae” of Fort Roupel as well as the rest of the Metaxas line fortresses on the Greek-Bulgarian border. They informed the Germans that “Fortresses do not surrender; they are taken.” This was the answer given by Lieutenant Colonel Georgios Douratsos, the commander of Fort Roupel, when the enemy asked him to surrender the fort. His brave declaration was, almost literally a new “Molon Labe.” “Μολών Λαβέ” meaning “Come and take them,” was the declaration of King Leonidas at the Battle of Thermopylae in 480 BC.
It was later proved that the so-called “Battle of the Forts,” combined with the drawn-out Battle of Crete, ruined Hitler’s well-crafted plans for conquest.
Every year since 2016, the Municipality of Sintiki along with other local authorities, revives the WWII battle of Fort Roupel, with reenactments and other events that are attended by thousands of people.