Kidnap in Crete Read online

  For six weeks Moss kicked his heels in Cairo, visiting Leigh Fermor in hospital, smoking with him, drinking champagne and trying to come up with a new adventure. Leigh Fermor’s limbs grew thin while his joints became more swollen and red. Moss met comrades who had been badly wounded and heard the sad news of dead friends. He swapped his peasant costume for evening clothes, drinking and flirting with Sophie. In the end even the delights of the undergraduate hooliganism at Tara began to pall.

  Moss put an idea to Brigadier Barker-Benfield: he wanted to return to Crete to organise the band of escaped Russian POWs into a guerrilla force. The fact that Moss spoke perfect Russian made the plan plausible. What Moss really wanted to do was either repeat the kidnap operation and abduct Kreipe’s newly installed successor, General Helmut Friebe, or lead a raid on the German headquarters at Archanes and kill as many officers and men as he could. Moss shared these thoughts only with Leigh Fermor.

  Moss set off for Crete on 6 July in a motor launch, accompanied by Giorgios Tyrakis. On the island several members of the old team agreed to join him, including Antonis Zoidakis and Ilias Athanassakis. Ilias agreed to recce the Ano Archanes German military headquarters, and draw a map showing where the soldiers worked, ate and slept. Moss heard from Micky Akoumianakis, the head of intelligence in Heraklion, that he did not want to be part of another kidnap operation.

  From the start Ilias Athanassakis thought that the new kidnap plan was ‘utter madness’, but kept his thoughts to himself. Instead, he went about his task slowly, telling Moss that, for security reasons, the Germans were changing the structure of their headquarters. In this way he hoped that the plans would be dropped. In the end Moss received a letter purporting to be from the communists threatening to betray him if he went ahead with the kidnapping. The reality was that the letter came from local nationalists and was written by Ilias himself, who feared he might be held personally responsible for the reprisals and deaths that the plan would cause.

  Undaunted, Moss dropped the idea and left the Anogia area and moved his headquarters to Embriski to the east of Crete, where he planned to muster his band of former Russian POWs. There a message arrived from Sandy Rendel telling him that the escaped prisoners had all been evacuated on the orders of GHQ Cairo. Rather than cut his losses and ask to be sent back to Cairo, this high-spirited, twenty-three-year-old Coldstream Guards officer and freelance adventurer set off on another escapade. He returned to his ‘mountain lair’ on Mount Ida above Anogia, the headquarters of the white-haired Kapitan Mihali Xylouris, where he was joined by six freshly escaped Russian POWs. They were all young men and claimed the Germans had told them that whatever happened, no Russian would leave the island alive.

  On 7 August 1944, a German NCO, Feldwebel Josef Olenhauer, entered the village of Anogia with an eight-man patrol. Olenhauer was a strange man who could be at once very strict and very lenient. He was not unpopular everywhere, and yet the inhabitants of some villages found him tyrannical and overbearing, an impression heightened by the fact that he was often accompanied by his Alsatian dog and carried a whip. Olenhauer had links with German counter-intelligence; other people thought that he also had links with SOE. A boy who regularly took food and supplies to Ralph Stockbridge thought that Olenhauer knew what Stockbridge was up to and turned a blind eye to his activities.

  On that hot August morning, Olenhauer and his men were in Anogia looking for Cretans to press into forced labour. He stood in the village square waving a whip, his dog straining at its leash, Olenhauer demanding that volunteers step forward. There were none. The soldiers began to round up any men, women and children they could find. On the outskirts some of the villagers slipped into the safety of the fields. Others hid in the darkness of their houses, hoping to escape. Olenhauer marched fifty hostages off on the long road leading to Rethymnon. On the way they were ambushed by local armed men who fired their weapons in the air, warning the hostages to lie on the ground; then they opened fire on the soldiers, many of whom fell dead on to the ground. Olenhauer and the remainder of his patron were captured and, after a brief trial, shot, as was the dog.

  When news of the executions reached the headquarters of Festung Kreta in Chania, reprisals were inevitable. The remaining inhabitants of Anogia fled into the safety of the mountains, carrying what possessions they could on their backs, or piled onto mules and driving their sheep and goats ahead of them. The first refugees to reach the safety of Mihali Xylouris’s headquarters told the kapitan what had happened.

  At the same time, under the cover of darkness, Billy Moss led a party of fifteen men, a mixture of Cretan andartes and Russians, down the mountain, through the deserted village of Anogia, heading for the Heraklion–Rethymnon road to set an ambush.

  At three in the morning they reached Damastas, marked by a bridge at a bend on the main road. The group carried Hawkins anti-tank grenades, small square objects which held a pound of TNT and a chemical igniter. When a vehicle passed over the mine, the box containing the igniter cracked and acid poured onto the explosives, detonating it. Moss planned to mine the bridge with the grenades, which could be easily hidden in the worn, split, tarmac. By five in the morning everything was in place, with the guerrillas crouching in the ditches that lined the road.

  Moss could not resist indulging his passion for photography. He carried a camera which he thought could be set to take pictures automatically. He balanced it on a rock, assuming it would snap away on its own. It did not survive.

  A whistle warned Moss’s gang of approaching vehicles; the men shouldered their weapons, waiting for the fight. Round the bend came not lorries full of men but two boys and a flock of sheep, enough weight to detonate the mines. The guerrillas rushed forward and hustled the lads into a small valley a few hundred yards away. The boys were on their way to a market, others were following them and for the next two hours, unwary market-goers, plus their sheep, goats, and mules carrying produce, were waylaid and taken away to the safety of the same valley.

  Silence descended, and the ambushers waited for another whistle. It came just after seven in the morning. The ambush party heard the low rumble of a vehicle. Into view came a three-ton truck: two Germans sat in the front, and a mixed group of Cretan and Italian labourers in the back. Moss’s group opened fire, and the truck blew apart on the hidden mines. Bits of twisted metal rained down, clanging against the road and rocks. The truck was reduced to a buckled, smoking wreck, trapping the bodies of the dead labourers. The driver lay crumpled and dead behind the wheel; his companion lay in the road, his skull smashed. The surviving labourers were taken prisoner. Another truck appeared and was destroyed, then a Jeep-like Kübelwagen drove into the trap, where it too was turned into scrap, and its occupants killed. The wreckage blocked the road, the Kübelwagen burning in a position where it could be seen by oncoming vehicles. The ambushers moved on to a fresh, less well-protected section of the road.

  It was now 8.30 a.m. The morning was still and clear, the noise of cicadas mingled with the tinkle of the goat bells. Another whistle pierced the air, followed by the noise of a troop carrier, its thirty-five occupants sitting stiff and upright in the back; sunlight glinting from their helmets. Fifteen guerrilla Sten and Marlin guns opened up: within seconds, 400 rounds of 9mm ammunition had lashed the bodies of the soldiers in the vehicles. Most of them died where they sat, a few managed to jump on to the road or scrabble for the cover of a low stone wall.

  Silence returned, punctuated by the hiss of steam escaping from the broken radiator. Blood seeped through the floorboards of the vehicle, mingling with the black oil that leaked from the ruined engine. The smell of petrol and burned rubber drifted through the air. Suddenly a shell landed in the middle of the guerrillas, exploding with colossal force; shockwaves blasting across the scrub. An armoured car appeared, weighing nearly four tons and carrying a 20-millimetre cannon firing high explosive shells. In the turret stood the commander, muttering directions to the driver, ignoring the rounds ricocheting off his vehicle. Grenades
exploded against the armour plating, showering rock and hot metal, throwing up clouds of dust which hid the vehicle. The armoured car rumbled on. One guerrilla, Manolis Spithoukis, who stood directly in its path, firing from an ancient, single-shot rifle, was hit in the chest and severely wounded. The Germans behind the wall opened up and some of the guerrillas began to withdraw.

  The armoured car was nearly on top of them. Moss tried to get behind it, rushing across ten yards of open ground then flinging himself behind the safety of some rocks; with him was Vanya, one of the Russians. Unflustered, the vehicle commander drew his pistol and fired aimed shots, hitting Vanya in the head and sending him sprawling dead to the ground. The guerrillas tried to give covering fire but were running out of ammunition.

  Moss remained behind the rocks, waiting for the vehicle to draw level with him. When the commander bobbed down to reload his Luger, Moss threw a grenade into the turret. The armoured car blew apart. The agonised screams of the men inside died down, the blast turned the vehicle into a blazing mess. The surviving Germans fled under the cover of the thick black smoke drifting everywhere, leaving behind equipment and ammunition which was quickly scavenged by the guerrillas before they made their way back to the hideout. The battle of Damastas Bridge was over.

  That night Moss and Tyrakis discussed the casualties. They reckoned that one of the Russians, Vanya, had been killed. The Germans had lost forty or fifty men killed and a few taken prisoner; several labourers had also been killed. When Moss asked Tyrakis what had happened to the prisoners he replied that they had already been taken care of, making a slash with his hand across his throat.

  It was well known throughout Crete, and in all the Nazi-occupied territories of the Mediterranean, that the Germans demanded the lives of ten civilians for every one of their soldiers killed in ‘unlawful combat’. The guerrillas faced the possibility of around 500 Cretan deaths. Clutching at straws, Moss reasoned that as the dead Russian was wearing British clothing and carrying no identity tags, the Germans might think that the raid had been carried out by a British commando party.

  Nothing daunted Moss, who was still keen for action and began to embellish his plans to work with the Russian prisoners of war, more of whom were arriving at the hideout. He sent a wireless signal to Barker-Benfield at GHQ Cairo, outlining his scheme to use the Russian POWs. The plan was approved, but he was ordered to first return to Cairo, on a boat which was scheduled to arrive in three days’ time.

  In Anogia, once called ‘Camelot’ by the SOE, a proclamation went up. It was signed by Heinrich Müller, who had been sent back to the island after Kreipe’s abduction:

  Order of the German Commander of the Garrison of Crete

  Since the town of Anogia is a centre of the English espionage in Crete, since the Anogians carried out the murder of the sergeant of the Yeni-Gavé garrison and the garrison itself, since the Anogians carried out the sabotage at Damastas, since the andartes of various resistance bands find asylum and protection in Anogia, and since the abductors of General Kreipe passed through Anogia, using Anogia as a stopping place when transporting him, we order its RAZING to the ground and the execution of every male Anogian who is found within the village and within an area of one kilometre round it.

  Chania 13-8-44

  The Commander of the Garrison of Crete

  H. Müller

  On 12 August word reached the village that lorries carrying hundreds of soldiers were leaving Heraklion, heading west. The men of the village fled, heading for the mountains. At dawn on the 13th, the lorries arrived; troops leapt out and quickly surrounded the village. Machine guns were set up in the main street and the soldiers rounded up the remaining inhabitants, about 1,500 people, mainly women and children. They were to leave the village within the hour. The people did as they were told, trooping past soldiers who were already looting their houses, plundering personal belongings, food and livestock.

  Sweating soldiers unloaded hundreds of cans of petrol, which they carried through the village streets, kicking down doors and emptying them into the houses. Then they threw in stick grenades turning Anogia into a blazing inferno. Not all the buildings were empty. In one were two cousins who could not walk; in another a man who was too mentally ill to understand what was going on; and in another, widowed sisters who refused to leave each other or their home. An old man was dragged out of hiding and shot, the soldiers left two dead piglets in his arms as a joke. When the fires died down, dynamite was set in the ruins and detonated.

  It took from 13 August until 5 September to destroy the entire village. The work was hard and slow; each evening the exhausted soldiers withdrew to the village of Sisarha to recuperate. In twenty-four days, Müller’s forces killed 117 people, destroyed 940 houses, and burnt many small vineyards, cheese mills, wine presses and olive groves. Not a house was left standing; any livestock that could not be taken away in trucks lay dead in the ruins.

  Finally the lorries bounced down the hill, heading back to the garrison at Heraklion, leaving desolation where once 4,000 people had lived and thrived. The troops covered their faces to protect them from the stench of rotting carcasses and the grime blowing across the rubble. The fires burned for days, sending black smoke towering into the sky, a warning to Cretans for miles around. Anogia was not the only village to be pulverised. Damastas, where Moss had ambushed the armoured car, received the same treatment. Dense smoke coiled over the remains of nine villages in the Amari valley, including Yerakari, where 164 more Cretans were killed. Some villages were destroyed on a whim: others emerged unscathed: Asi Gonia, said to be protected by Saint Giorgios, miraculously avoided the kerosene and dynamite.

  When Moss got to Cairo, he found that Barker-Benfield had left for the newly liberated Greece. A fortnight later the brigadier returned and told the young captain that the plans had changed: he was to forget Crete and go instead to Macedonia. Moss never returned to the island.

  See Notes to Chapter 25

  26

  Aftermath

  As the war drew to a close, North Africa and Crete became military backwaters. German forces in Europe were caught between the Red Army advances in the east and the Allied army in the west. The German high command on Crete lost confidence. On 11 October 1944, after uneasy negotiations, and with German artillery standing by to shell the city, Heraklion was liberated. Kapitan Petrakoyiorgi, codenamed ‘Selfridge’, sat on a horse watching the Germans retreat through the arch of the West Gate, under which Kreipe had also been driven on the night of his capture.

  The retreat was accompanied by triumph, tragedy and farce. Women who had collaborated were paraded and had their heads shaved; in the court of Heraklion traitors from the village of Sarcho were stabbed to death and thrown from a first-floor window. Kapitan Boutzalis shot a rival through the arm for being rude to his daughter. A captured German agent pleaded to be allowed to commit suicide. He was taken to the edge of a cliff where his arms and legs were broken with boulders, before he was allowed to crawl to the edge and fall to his death.

  For the next few months the Germans remained inside Chania, their last stronghold. Communists argued with Nationalists about who should govern the island. Civil war broke out in mainland Greece and for a while it looked as though it would spread to Crete.

  On 30 April 1945, Hitler took his own life at his Führerbunker and the following week Germany surrendered. On 8 May, VE Day, the new commander of Fortress Crete, General Benthack, who had only been in office since the previous January, contacted the British and capitulated. Major Dennis Ciclitira appeared at Benthack’s headquarters in Chania to take his surrender, but the general insisted that he be dealt with by a man of similar rank. When Ciclitira offered to radio to British HQ in Heraklion, Benthack asked him how he proposed to do so. Ciclitira replied that his secret radio set was concealed in the building next door to the German headquarters. It had been there for weeks, its radio signals hidden by the amount of radio traffic coming from headquarters. Benthack was taken to Heraklion, and
, in a cobbled-together ceremony at the Villa Ariadne, he surrendered to Major General Colin Callander, commanding officer of the British Army’s 4th Division in Greece, who had been flown in especially to take charge of the proceedings. Benthack’s men were permitted to keep their weapons until British troops arrived to guard them.

  In a surreal moment, undercover SOE agents entered Chania and invited German officers to a party in a nightclub. As a German band played jazz, the British officers revealed who they were and what they had been doing, declaring to the astonished enemy their real names and their codenames.

  On 23 May 1945, the German troops were at last disarmed and sent home, but, to the disgust of the Cretans, taking an enormous amount of booty with them: ‘They left like tourists, carrying their suitcases.’ British soldiers of the Royal Hampshire Regiment were detailed to protect the German soldiers; their regimental history notes: ‘The Cretans strongly resented the restraint of the British troops towards their hated and conquered foes.’

  Several questions dogged the legacy of the Kreipe kidnap operation after the war, the most important of which were: had it been worth it, and did it lead to any reprisals? These are themes which recur in Leigh Fermor’s post-war correspondence with Cretans, fellow SOE operatives and even a German officer who had been a member of Kreipe’s staff in Crete.

  The abduction of the Divisional Commander from virtually outside his own home stirred the hornet’s nest of German fury. Müller’s leaflet of 13 August 1944, distributed to the islanders by air, ordered the destruction of Anogia giving the reasons as: the murder of a German NCO; Moss’s ambush at Damastas Bridge; and finally the kidnapping of General Kreipe. Müller left the Cretans in no doubt that the abduction was one of the causes of the reprisal: ‘since the abductors of General Kreipe passed through Anogia, using Anogia as a stopping place when transporting him, we order its RAZING to the ground and the execution of every male who is found within the village and within an area of one kilometre around it.’