Kidnap in Crete Read online

  24 Returning Heroes

  ‘The weary Cretans’: Paterakis, CEMA.

  ‘Around mid-morning a klaxon’: NLS/PLF/13338/1.

  ‘The reception party watched’: Moss, Moonlight, p. 182.

  ‘They found the Cretans’: author interview with Paul Ciclitira.

  ‘The Cretans were moved’: Harokopos, p. 226.

  ‘On 19 May a signal’: NA/HS5/418.

  ‘The general’s debriefing provides’: NA/WO208/4208.

  ‘A long time after’: Sweet-Escott, Baker Street Irregular, p. 198.

  ‘“Oh we’ve got boxes”’: Smith-Hughes letter to Leigh Fermor, NLS/PLF/13338/19.

  25 Moss and the Battle of Damastas Bridge

  ‘A modern doctor’: I am grateful to Dr Richard Staughton MA, MB, BChir., FRCP, Emeritus Consultant Dermatologist, for this diagnosis.

  ‘He received the medal’: author interview with Prof. N. M. J. Woodhouse, MSc PhD.

  ‘From the start Ilias’: Athanassakis/Mamalakis, CEMA.

  ‘In the end Moss received’: ibid.

  ‘The reality was that the letter’: George Tyrakis/Mamalakis, CEMA.

  ‘He returned to his’: Moss, A War of Shadows, p. 20.

  ‘On 7 August’: Harokopos, p. 242.

  ‘At the same time’: Mamalakis.

  ‘The group carried Hawkins’: ibid.

  ‘He carried a camera’: ibid.

  ‘The armoured car rumbled’: ibid.

  ‘The battle of Damastas Bridge’: the remains of some of the men who died in the battle have recently been discovered in the area. One of them is thought to be the Russian Vanya – Mamalakis.

  ‘When Moss got to Cairo’: Moss, Shadows, p. 65.

  26 Aftermath

  ‘A captured German agent’: Beevor, Crete: The Battle and the Resistance.

  ‘General Benthack . . . contacted’: ibid.

  ‘When Ciclitira offered’: author interview with Paul Ciclitira.

  ‘In a surreal moment’: ibid.

  ‘In his final report’: Lt. Col. T. J. Dunbabin, Final Report on SOE Missions in Crete, NA/HS5/724.

  ‘Leigh Fermor and Ralph Stockbridge’: Stockbridge interview with Mamalakis. There was an interesting incident when Mr Mamalakis was driving Stockbridge round Crete and told him that he had some SOE weapons in the boot of his car. Stockbridge’s response was disapproving, he said: ‘That was what Paddy and the SOE liked, not us in the ISLD.’

  ‘His friend Xan Fielding wrote’: Fielding, Hide and Seek, Kindle edition.

  ‘a German intelligence officer’: quoted in Harokopos, The Abduction, pp. 217–18.

  A Note on the Author

  Rick Stroud is the author of The Phantom Army of Alamein: The Men Who Hoodwinked Rommel and The Book of the Moon. He is also the author, with Victor Gregg, of Rifleman: A Front Line Life from Alamein and Dresden to the Fall of the Berlin Wall and King’s Cross Kid: A London Childhood Between the Wars. He lives in Chelsea, London.

  @Rick_Stroud

  By the Same Author

  The Book of the Moon

  Rifleman (with Victor Gregg)

  The Phantom Army of Alamein

  King’s Cross Kid (with Victor Gregg)

  First published in Great Britain 2014

  This electronic edition published in 2014 by Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

  Copyright © 2014 by Rick Stroud

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