Oxi Day passed without much notice in America, again.

That's always bothered me, because the fate of the world turned that day, 70 years ago on Thursday, when Greece, trembling with fear and pride, said, "No."

That's what Oxi, pronounced O-hee, means. It is the Greek word for "No." It was uttered at about 3 a.m. on Oct. 28, 1940.

And because of it, Adolf Hitler was months late getting to the Russian front. He'd planned to begin Operation Barbarossa in the spring of '41. But because of Oxi Day, he was delayed, and that delay allowed the snow and cold to swallow his armies. The rest, as they say, is history.

My father was born in the village of Rizes, and he was in the Greek army then, as his country was caught in war and later in the methodical, Nazi-enforced famine, with hundreds dropping dead on the streets of Athens each day.

So I can't help thinking about Oxi Day. And so do most people with a drop of Greek blood in them.

Shortly before Oct. 28, 1940, Benito Mussolini had massed his Italian war machine on the Greek border with Albania. He had the heavy armor, the fighter planes and hundreds of thousands of well-equipped troops.

The Greeks were outnumbered about 10 to 1. They had no air force to speak of, no war machine. The dictator's ultimatum to Greek Prime Minister Ionannis Metaxas was simple:

Allow Mussolini's troops to come in and occupy Greece, and there would be no slaughter. Oppose Mussolini and he would destroy the country. Metaxas' reply?

"Oxi," he said. "No, never."

Two hours later, Mussolini attacked. There were only 2,000 Greek soldiers covering a front of 37 kilometers. But in those mountains, in the days to come, the vastly outnumbered Greek army streamed into Albania, drove Mussolini's forces off the snowy mountains and crushed them.

The Greek army starved in those mountains, yes, but they killed in those mountains too.

So Hitler was forced to save Mussolini. It took months for the Germans to occupy Greece, which lost 10 percent of its population during the war.

But many of those lives bought time, and on the Eastern Front, the Russian winter was coming.

During the occupation, my father helped hide downed British airmen. One day on the road outside Rizes, he ran into a young blond fellow hiding in some trees. The young man spoke perfect Greek and claimed to be a British pilot.

Yet my father felt something was wrong. He pretended not to understand the British pilot and ran off.

The next night he saw the young British pilot again, but this time the young man was in the uniform of a captain in command of Carabinieri. The young man — Italian, not British — ordered his men to break my grandfather's door and drag my dad out into the street by the hair.

He was kept in a cellar for three days. He never told us quite what they did to him, but we knew it was torture. He played dumb and finally, the blond officer seemed to take pity after all that he'd done. He released my father.

A week went by, then two, and the blond officer knocked at my grandfather's coffeehouse. He was angry again, with that hard smile. My father and his best friend, Nicholas — they called him Colia for short — were in the kitchen.

"I hear you're a hunter," the captain said to my father. "I need a man who knows hunting in the mountains. Let's go."

Colia stood up and walked with them.

"Colia, go away," my father whispered. "They're going to kill me. Get out before they kill you too."

"No," said Colia. "I'm going."

They guided the blond officer and the officer's three men up into the mountain for the day. But they found no game. That's when my father figured the blond officer would kill him.

"What a beautiful gun," Colia told the captain.

"Would you like to examine it?" asked the captain, handing over the finely engraved rifle.

As Colia held it, he caught my father's eye. My father knew Colia was going to shoot the captain. He told me once that all he could do was scream inside his head, 'No, Colia! No! No!" He wanted to tell his friend that it was a setup. Colia understood somehow, and casually handed the gun back to the captain.

"Thank you, captain, you have a beautiful gun," Colia said. The captain smiled.

They walked back down the mountain alive, two friends who survived horrible battles in the mountains of Albania, only to escape murder in their own mountain back home.

That evening, my grandmother fed them bean soup, and they said it was the tastiest meal of their lives. A few days later, the blond captain with the blue eyes left the district.

When my father left Greece for America in 1951, he promised Colia that he'd return in two years and bring a fine gun, even better than the captain's. But it took my dad about 30 years to return to the village. He brought the finest Browning shotgun I've ever seen.

I saw him hand that Browning to Colia. They were standing in the village square, in front of the church of St. Nicholas, and their younger cousins gathered around them, pressing against them.

By then, my father and Colia were old men. But their tears were quite young.

They remembered Oxi Day.

And so do some of us, still.

jskass@tribune.com