BALKAN THEATRE: Murk

Rain and terrain are wonderful allies. Bad weather and forests helped Finland. Good weather and open country betrayed Poland, the Lowlands, France. Through such mountains and such torrents as northwestern Greece possessed, last week there could be no such thing as Blitzkrieg.

High winds blew sleet and straight-driving rains over the whole war area. These stopped machinery but not mules and men. The rains of Greece make even peaceful travel slow. When he went through Epirus in 1809, Byron wrote his mother: "Our journey was much prolonged by the torrents that had...

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