(The village of Zacholorou seen from the path to Mega Spilieo)

Late in November, the Germans began their reprisals. They bombed villages from the air, terrorizing the civilian population. A German Division commander, General von Leswier was in command of the 68th Army Corps in the absence of the corps commander. Von Leswier gave the orders to launch a more thoroughgoing reprisal.

Approaching the village of Vysokiots, soldiers rounded up all the men, some 350 of them and put them in a group, their backs to a wall, facing machine guns. The men sat there for hours, "That whole time we felt as if we were in another world," Kostas Apostolopoulos, a survivor, recalls. Finding out that Kostas spoke English, the Germans started haranguing him, "Why are you treating us [Germans] so badly? Why are you killing our liaison people? You're causing problems for our army and forcing us to kill whomever we meet."

After burning some houses, they let everyone go. For a time, the reprisals were stayed. Less fortunate was the village of Rogoi, burned on December 8th. There, the men were also gathered in a group, but, despite the appeals to human feeling by the local priest, some 50 to 60 men were murdered. The Germans did the same thing at the village of Zachloros. Here the Germans threw the bodies into the river.

"The Vouraikos River refused to be a party to such a crime. It took the bloody bodies into its watery embrace, washed their wounds, lamented them with its song, and deposited them upon a peaceful bank near the village."