Kidnap in Crete Page 26
My agent Victoria Hobbs has been a model of good advice and support. My publishers, Bloomsbury, have provided their usual Rolls Royce service. I must thank the three editors who have worked on this book: Bill Swainson for his wise and scholarly advice; Anna Simpson whose clever and deft hand steered me calmly through the period from delivery to publication and finally Kate Johnson who must be the best copy editor in the history of copy editors. Thank you too to Greg Heinimann for his cover; Martin Lubikowski for turning my rough sketches into clear, exciting maps; and proof readers Steve Cox and George Derbyshire, and indexer David Atkinson, for their meticulous professionalism.
Many people have helped me write Kidnap in Crete and I apologise to anyone I have inadvertently forgotten. It goes without saying that any errors in the book are entirely my own.
Finally nearly twenty years ago luck led me to a strange gathering in Italy where I met my wife Alexandra Pringle who is not only my first reader, but my Commander-in-Chief and sine qua non.
Rick Stroud
London 2014
Select Bibliography
Becker, Cajus, The Luftwaffe War Diaries, Doubleday and Co., New York, 1969
Beevor, Anthony, Crete: The Battle and the Resistance, John Murray, London, 1991
Buckley, Christopher, Greece and Crete 1941, Efstathiadis Group, Greece, 1995
Churchill, Winston, The Grand Alliance, Rosetta Books, Kindle edition, 2010
Clark, Alan, The Fall of Crete, Anthony Blond Ltd., London, 1962
Cooper, Artemis, Patrick Leigh Fermor, An Adventure, John Murray, London, 2012
Cox, Geoffrey, A Tale of Two Battles: A Personal Memoir of Crete and the Western Desert, 1941, William Kimber, London, 1987
Cruickshank, Donald, SOE in the Far East, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1983
Davis, Wes, The Ariadne Objective: The Underground War to Rescue Crete from the Nazis, Crown, New York, 2013
Edwards, Roger, German Airborne Troops 1936 – 45, Purnell Book Services Ltd (Book Club Edition) 1974
Fairburn, W. E., Get Tough, Paladin Press, Boulder, Col., 1996 (1942)
Fergusson, Bernard, The Black Watch and the King’s Enemies, Collins, London, 1950
Fermor, Patrick Leigh, ‘Abducting a General’, unpublished MS written over forty years and existing in handwritten, typewritten and word-processed formats, some bound and others not. NLS John Murray Archive/Leigh Fermor archive 13338/31
Fielding, Xan, Hide and Seek: The Story of a Wartime Agent, Paul Dry Books, Kindle edition, 2013
Foot, M. R. D., SOE: The Special Operations Executive, 1940–1946, Pimlico, London, 1999
Frangoulitakis, Giorgios (‘Scuttlegeorge’), ‘The Eagles of Mount Ida’, unpublished MS in National Library of Scotland, John Murray Archive, Patrick Leigh Fermor
Grundon, Imogen, The Rash Adventurer: A Life of John Pendlebury, foreword by Patrick Leigh Fermor, Libri, London, 2007
Hadjipateras, Costas N., and Maria S. Falios, Crete 1941, Eyewitnessed, Efstathiadis Group, Athens, 2007
Harokopos, Giorgios, The Fortress Crete, 1941–1944, trans. Spilios Menounos, B. Giannikos & Co., Athens, 1993
—, The Abduction of General Kreipe, trans. Rosemary Tzanaki, V. Kouvidis & V. Manouras, Crete, 2003
Henssonow, Susan F., Tara, Cairo: Gezira Island, Cairo, World War 2 Special Operations Executive. Sophie Moss, Betascript Publishing, 2011
Hertz, Exploring Crete. S. Alexiou & Sons, undated
Heydte, Freiherr E. von der, Daedalus Returned, Hutchinson, London, 1958
Howarth, Patrick, Undercover, the Men and Women of the Special Operations Executive, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1980
Kalogerakis, Georgios, Yannis Dramoundannis ‘Stephanoyannis’ Chief of Anoyia Ano Milopotamo. 1941–1944, Heraklion, 2008
Kaloudis, Pantelis, Crete May 1941, The Fallschirmjägers Greatest Battle, Albion Scott Ltd, 1981
Kiriakopoulos, G. C., Ten Days to Destiny. The Battle for Crete 1941, Franklin Watts, New York, 1985
—, The Nazi Occupation of Crete, 1941–1945, Praeger Publishers, Westport, CT, 1995
Kokonas, Nikolaos, foreword by Patrick Leigh Fermor and others, The Cretan Resistance 1941–1945, Graphotechniki Kritis, Rethymnon, Crete, 1991
Long, Gavin, Greece, Crete and Syria, vol. II of Australia in the War of 1939 to 1945, Series 1 – Army, Australian War Memorial, Canberra, 1953
Kurowski, Franz, Jump into Hell German Paratroopers in World War II, Stackpole Books, Mechanicsburg, PA, 2010
Langelaan, George, Knights of the Floating Silk, Hutchinson, London, 1959
MacDonald, Callum, The Lost Battle: Crete 1941, Macmillan, London, 1993
Macintyre, Donald, The Battle for the Mediterranean, Batsford, London, 1964
Mamalakis, Costas, From Mercury to Ariadne. Crete 1941–1945, Society of Cretan Historical Studies, Heraklion, 2010
Marks, Leo, Between Silk and Cyanide. The Story of the SOE’s Code War, HarperCollins, London, 1998
Mazower, Mark, Inside Hitler’s Greece: The Experience of Occupation 1941–44, Yale Nota Bene, Yale University Press, 2001
Mosley, Charlotte, ed., In Tearing Haste: Letters Between Deborah Devonshire and Patrick Leigh Fermor, John Murray, London, 2008
Moss, William Stanley, Ill Met By Moonlight, The Folio Society, London, 2001
—, A War of Shadows, Boardman, London, 1952
Pendlebury, J. D. S., The Archaeology of Crete: an Introduction, Methuen, London, 1965
Pöppel, Martin, trans. Dr Louise Willmot, Heaven and Hell: The War Diary of a German Paratrooper, Spellmount Publishers, Stroud, Gloucestershire, 2010
Powell, Dilys, The Villa Ariadne, Hodder & Stoughton, London, 1974
Prüller, Wilhelm, trans. H. C. Robbins Landon, Diary of a German Soldier. ed. H. C. Robbins Landon and Sebastian Leitner, preface by Correlli Barnett, Faber & Faber London, 1963
Psychoundakis, Giorgios, trans. and introduced by Patrick Leigh Fermor, The Cretan Runner: His Story of the German Occupation, Penguin Books, London, 1998
Rendel, A. M., Appointment in Crete: The Story of a British Agent, Allan Wingate, London, 1953
Spurr, Reg, To Have and to Lose, Society of Cretan Historical Studies, Heraklion, 2007
Stephanides, Theodore, Climax in Crete, Faber and Faber, 1946
Stewart, I. McD. G., The Struggle for Crete: A Story of Lost Opportunity, 20 May–1 June 1941, Oxford University Press, London, 1966
Sutherland, Jon, and Diane Canwell, Images of War. Fallschirmjager. Elite German Paratroops in World War 11, Pen and Sword, Barnsley, 2010
Sweet-Escott, Bickham, Baker Street Irregular, Methuen, London, 1965
Taxatake, Irene, with Giorgios Kalogerakis, The Legendary Capture of General Kreipe, The Prefecture of Heraklion, 2006
Tarnowski, Andrew, The Last Mazurka: A Tale of War, Passion and Loss, Aurum Press, London, 2006
Tzitzikas, Georgios Aristides, Freedom and Glory. (Memoirs 1939–1945), Society of Cretan Historical Studies, Heraklion, 2012
Villahermosa, Gilberto, Hitler’s Paratrooper. The Life and Battles of Rudolf Witzig, Frontline Books, London, 2010
Woodhouse, C. M., Something Ventured, Granada, London, 1982
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Notes
A Note on Sources
The main sources I have used in the research for this book have been the collection of Second War War history in the Historical Museum of Crete (HMC), the huge private collection of the museum’s curator, Mr C. E. Mamalakis (CEMA), and the Patrick Leigh Fermor archive in the National Library of Scotland (NLS/PLF). I was privileged to be given access to this archive before it was curated and I have used the box numbers that were in use on my visits. I have also consulted documents in the National Archive (NA) and the Imperial War Museum (IWM). The London Library was a valuable source of wartime memoirs both Cretan and British SOE. From other published material I found Anthony Beevor’s
Crete: The Battle and the Resistance, Alan Clark’s The Fall of Crete and Geoffrey Cox’s A Tale of Two Battles: A Personal Memoir of Crete and the Western Desert, 1941, very useful when writing my short account of what happened in the eleven days after the invasion. Finally, in the Leigh Fermor archive in the National Library of Scotland, there is a typewritten fragment of ‘The Eagles of Mount Ida’ written by the guerrilla fighter Giorgios Frangoulitakis, translated and annotated by Leigh Fermor.
1 An Island of Heroes
‘Cretan mountain men’: NLS/PLF, 13338/6, Black file, ‘Fred Warner and Foreign Office Docs’.
‘Blood vendettas over family honour’: Mr C. E. Mamalakis, in a letter to the author, wrote: ‘You would rather get cancer than be involved in a Cretan feud.’
‘Cretans, especially those’: ibid.
‘In Roman times’: Pendlebury, Archaeology of Crete, p. 6.
‘The mountains hide a series’: Grundon, Rash Adventurer, p. 247.
‘When will we have’: verses translated by Dr Stavrini Ionnadou, 2013.
‘Before the Second World War’: Pendlebury, p. 6.
‘“with the speed of a cheetah”’: Patrick Leigh Fermor in ‘John Pendlebury and the Battle for Crete’, Spectator, 20 October 2001.
‘Pendlebury’s home on Crete’: see Powell, The Villa Ariadne.
‘When he was not moving’: author interview with Mamalakis.
‘One, an Austrian woman’: ibid.
‘Jan Knoch was a German tourist’: ibid.
‘“I know Crete”’: Foreign Office SOE archive quoted in Grundon, p. 235.
‘His friend and fellow agent’: Grundon, Rash Adventurer, p. 291.
‘The military situation in Greece’: see Beevor, Crete: The Battle and the Resistance, Kindle edition.
‘“From the first days”’: The Dixon Papers quoted in Grundon, Rash Adventurer, p. 256.
‘“The struggle needs blood”’: Fielding, Hide and Seek, Kindle edition.
2 Defenders of Crete
‘The general’s desertion’: author interview with Mr C. E. Mamalakis.
‘But it also acted’: filmed interview Giorgios Tzitzikas, The Eleventh Day, dir. Christos Eperson, Archangel Films, 2006.
‘“ There was fear”’: Tzitzikas, The Eleventh Day.
3 Operation Merkur
‘On the same day’: see Martin Pöppel, Heaven and Hell: The War Diary of a German Paratrooper.
‘For the first’: German Airborne Troops 1936 – 45 Roger Edwards 1974. Purnell Book Services Ltd (Book Club Edition) p. 53.
‘Clumsy as it was’: author interview Warwick Woodhouse, late Lt. Col. Royal Marines.
‘Before being allowed to jump’: Kurowski, Jump into Hell, p. 18.
‘The paratroops piled their parachutes’: Mamalakis, Private Collection.
‘To stop it snagging’: Pöppel.
‘At last, each great, yellow-nose Ju 52’: Cox, A Tale of Two Battles, p. 69.
‘One by one they lifted’: Becker, The Luftwaffe War Diaries, p. 187.
‘Feldwebel Wilhelm Plieschen took’: Sutherland and Canwell, p. 61.
‘Aircraft and gliders stretched’: Gilberto Villahermosa, Hitler’s Paratrooper, p. 89.
‘In a leading glider sat’: Becker, p. 193.
‘Hundreds of canopies blossomed’: Cox, p. 72.
‘On the terrace’: Beevor.
4 The Battle of Crete
‘Blinded by the sun’: Beevor, Crete: The Battle and the Resistance.
‘Coloured clouds of parachutists’: US Army Special Report No. 5 G-2/2657-231, The Battle of Crete.
‘As far away as Paleochora’: Beevor.
‘At the northern port’: Spurr, To Have and to Lose, p. 186.
‘An agonised scream’: ibid.
‘A Greek, Captain Kalaphotakis’: Beevor.
‘Spurr shouted to a British’: Spurr, p. 200.
‘Twenty-six miles away’: Clark, The Fall of Crete, p. 81.
‘One of the villagers’: MacDonald, The Lost Battle: Crete 1941, p. 177.
‘Just over an hour’: Clark, p. 83.
‘By now the German commander’: Kiriakopoulos The Nazi Occupation of Crete, 1941–1945, p. 160.
‘“I was enormously impressed”’: Grundon, Rash Adventurer, p. 307.
‘“You will give one”’: ibid., p. 308.
‘At headquarters he found’: Tzitzikas, Freedom and Glory (Memoirs 1939–1945), p. 39.
‘Late on that first afternoon’: Pöppel, Heaven and Hell, p. 55.
‘“Today has been a hard one”’: quoted in Churchill, The Grand Alliance, p. 254.
5 The Next Nine Days
‘On the evening of 20 May’: Beevor.
‘On one wall’: Heydte, Daedalus Returned, p. 111.
‘Maleme was overlooked’: Clark, Fall of Crete, p. 102.
‘Very early in the morning’: Beevor.
‘An Allied artillery commander’: ibid.
‘they were forbidden’: ibid.
‘At Heraklion, a group’: C. E. Mamalakis interview.
‘One, Colonel Tzoulakis’: ibid.
‘Near the harbour’: ibid.
‘A fierce firefight’: ibid.
‘only his leg’: ibid.
‘A few miles south’: Mamalakis interview.
‘The battle lines in Heraklion’: ibid.
‘The sun set’: Cox, p. 88.
‘The bombers left’: ibid., p. 90.
‘“My son, we know”’: Beevor, Kindle edition.
‘The men were ordered’: Mamalakis interview.
‘“Nobody could get”’: Fergusson, The Black Watch and the King’s Enemies, p. 88.
‘There was a stench’: Gavin Long, Greece, Crete and Syria, p. 91.
‘I never expected’: NA/WO231/3.
‘Brigadier Chappel left’: NA/WO231/3.
‘The remaining troops’: Cox, p. 94.
‘Every ridge promised’: author interview with the late John Pumphrey, who fought and was captured in Crete. The interview, which was really a series of conversations, took place years before I had the idea for this book. Pumphrey was my uncle-in-law and his reminiscences have coloured my descriptions of the chaos that overtook the British Army on its retreat to the beaches on the south coast of Crete.
‘“a round fertile plain”’: Cox, p. 98.
‘John Pendlebury never’: Powell, The Villa Ariadne, p. 126. The precise details of the fate of John Pendlebury have been lost in the mists of time and the Cretan habit of mythologising events. Dilys Powell’s account is the most complete, and I have used it in conjunction with an intereview with Mr C. E. Mamalakis.
6 The Occupation Begins
‘In the meantime’: Kurowski, Jump into Hell, p. 166.
‘“Those who fought on Crete: Theodore Papkonstantinou, Die Schlacht um Griechenland, 1966, quoted in Kaloudis, Crete May 1941, p. 42.
‘“the murder of a German”’: Stewart, The Struggle for Crete, p. 316.
‘“It is certain”’: General Student, order dated 31.5.41, quoted Memorandum, Canea, 1942; quoted in Beevor, Kindle edition.
‘The victors needed’: This account is based on the online record and photographed copy of Franz Peter Weixler’s deposition to the Nuremberg Trial, Goering Case, translator Herma Plummer, Nov. 1945.
‘One lay on the ground’: Weixler photographs online and in CEMA.
‘A few days later’: Weixler, Nuremberg deposition.
7 Fortress Crete
‘The streets were cleared’: eyewitness account, CEMA.
‘Although most of the Allied troops’: Harokopos, The Fortress Crete. 1941–1944, p. 42.
‘An engineer from Rethymnon’: ibid., p. 64.
‘At 22:00 hours on 26 July’: NA/ADM236/30.
‘Thrasher departed for Alexandria’: Beevor, Kindle edition.
‘A translator, Manolis Vassilakis’: Harokopos, p. 49.
‘The men split up’: ibid., p. 52.
‘I gazed and gazed’:
Psychoundakis, The Cretan Runner, p. 59.
‘some were thrashed’: ibid., p. 55.
‘The behaviour of the villagers’: Harokopos, p. 53.
‘Escaping soldiers were led’: Kokonas, The Cretan Resistance 1941–1945, p. 35.
‘The Greeks call this period’: Mazower, Inside Hitler’s Greece, p. 89.
8 Ungentlemanly Warfare
‘Churchill wanted Greece’: British Reports on Greece, ed. Lars Baerentzen, Museum Tusculanum, Copenhagen, 1982, p. 41.
‘SOE was a shadowy affair’: the paragraphs describing the early history of the SOE are based on Foot, SOE The Special Operations Executive, 1940–1946, p. 4.
‘In the early years’: see Fielding, Hide and Seek.
‘“Nobody who did not experience it”’: Foot, p. 43.
‘“SOE personnel were always treated”’: Beevor, Kindle edition.