A general surgeon from Thessaloniki ran 517 kilometres in fifteen days through the mountains of northern Greece, stoppin...

A general surgeon from Thessaloniki ran 517 kilometres in fifteen days through the mountains of northern Greece, stopping at each abandoned fort along the way to read aloud the names of soldiers killed or missing in April 1941. Stergios Arapoglou, who has worked at Hippokratio Hospital for 25 years, started on 3 October at the Nymfaia fort in Rodopi and finished on 18 October at Machine-Gun Post 9 above Ano Poroia in Serres. The route crossed 21 forts and machine-gun posts of the Metaxas Line, along peaks and ridgelines in Rodopi, Xanthi, Drama and Serres. Before he set off, Arapoglou went through the archives of the Army History Directorate, pulled the names of the dead and missing, and sorted them by fort. At each stop he recorded a short video covering the history of the site and its garrison, then read the names out loud. The videos were published almost in real time. The German assault on the Metaxas Line began on 6 April 1941. Many of the missing were at forward outposts when the attack came. As Arapoglou told AΠΕ-ΜΠΕ, 85 years later, no one can say where they are. He ran alone. A friend followed by car on roads and waited at the bottom when the route climbed into the mountains. He covered all costs himself, with no sponsors. When asked about the run, Arapoglou was clear about who the story belongs to. He said he is not the protagonist, that the protagonists are the missing, the killed and their families. The idea came to him in 2022 at the Roupel fort, in a conversation with Lieutenant Colonel Nikolaos Gkirmpatsis about documenting the line's forts and posts. This was not his first long run for the dead. In 2023 he covered 3,064 km from Evros to Crete, passing 65 holocaust memorials along the way. #MetaxasLine #Greece #OxiDay