On Crete as on the mainland, the Communist goal was to control all strands of the resistance and thus position themselves to dominate the post-war settlement. Yet EAM (the National Liberation Front: a coalition of different left-wing organizations, now controlled by the Communists) failed to make as much headway on Crete as it had on the mainland, and the non-Communist Cretan Resistance (EOK: the National Organization of Crete) viewed EAM with deep suspicion. The Communists still managed to spread a good deal of anti-British propaganda, claiming that the British had no interest in liberating the Cretans from the German yoke and kept a presence on the island only to ensure that Crete became a post-war base for their imperialist activities.
The Communist figurehead on Crete was General Mandakas of the Greek army, but EAM were also very keen to recruit kapetan Manoli Bandouvas. As a patriotic peasant with a large following among the people, his support would be a public relations coup, while Bandouvas himself was sympathetic to their cause, particularly when he saw how it rattled the British. It was to try and keep him out of Communist hands that SOE gave Bandouvas the splendid title of Chief of the Francs-Tireurs.
Paddy wandered around Heraklion after sundown. He saw how every road leading down to the sea ended in a wall eight or ten feet high, guarded by machine guns, ‘and between them and the sea lies a jungle of wire into which land-mines are sown’. When the time came to leave, ‘I borrowed a raincoat and a wonderful velvet trilby and bicycled out of town … I looked the image of a spy – just like the ones in the Careless Talk poster, I thought … My bike had a little tin swastika on the front.’26
Over those eight days in Heraklion, Paddy said he had never worked so hard in his life. But over those past months, during the long days of enforced idleness in caves and sheepfolds, one might wonder what he had been writing or drawing for his own amusement. Paddy gives some idea when he had to report the loss of his briefcase, in the scramble to hide from a German raiding party on his mountain headquarters in April. The briefcase contained nothing incriminating, he reassured Cairo. However, he was sad to lose ‘some comic drawings of British military life’, and ‘an exercise book containing verses (my own in English) and others in French, Greek and Rumanian from memory’.27 There was also a wish-list, seven pages long, of all the guns, weapons and ammunition he felt were needed in Crete. If it made the Germans think that such a splendid armoury was on its way, so much the better.
At the time of the raid Paddy had been on his way to Mylapotamos on the north coast, to coordinate the arrival of Ralph Stockbridge of ISLD. Stockbridge, who had been the first covert wireless operator on Crete, was now returning with the rank of Captain. Although SOE and ISLD were deadly rivals in the internecine struggles of GHQ Cairo, Paddy and Ralph got on extremely well. To avoid duplication of effort, they decided that Stockbridge would take charge of all intelligence work in central and eastern Crete: a task made easier by the efficient information service in Heraklion, run by young men barely out of their teens. When their leader’s cover was blown he was replaced by a young lawyer called Micky Akoumianakis.
Stockbridge and his operator, John Stanley, landed on 12 May from the Greek submarine Papanikolis. It was not the smoothest arrival but, met by Paddy, they were taken to a sheepfold belonging to the Dramoundanis family above Anoyeia. This village, perched like a ship on a great spur of rock, was serving as a muster station for many andartes and intelligence agents for whom life had become too dangerous.
At dusk on 25 May, about ten people – including Paddy, Stockbridge, Stanley and Yanni Tsangarakis – were sitting around the sheepfold when there came a warning. Three hundred Germans, coming from Anoyeia, were heading towards them. This happened so often it aroused no particular alarm; but Paddy told everyone to get packed up and reached for his rifle. It had been cleaned and oiled that morning, and he thought it was empty. He was unaware that some of the company ‘had been amusing themselves by doing Greek and British arms drill with my rifle, and practising loading and unloading’.
I drew the bolt backwards and forwards, easing the springs to see if it was working smoothly after being oiled (without realizing it, I had put a round in the breech). I pressed the trigger and the round hit Yanni, who was sitting by the fire a little distance away doing up his sariki, through the left hip … [the round] had passed twice through his leg before entering the body. There were six wounds in all. We bound them up, but it was no use, and he died about an hour later, shedding very little blood. He did not seem to suffer a great deal, and said some very kind words to me before he died that I shall never forget.
They buried him at dawn under two ilex trees, about a quarter of a mile from the camp. Yanni had been one of Paddy’s closest Cretan friends, and ‘the best and hardest worker we have ever had here’.
Those who had witnessed the scene knew it had been an accident. They tried to ease Paddy’s shock and distress by reminding him that similar things happened all too frequently among the Cretans, whose approach to gun safety was casual to say the least. ‘Everyone was extremely decent to me about this horrible accident,’ he wrote, although his own remorse was not so easily assuaged. ‘No amount of writing about it will bring Yanni back to life, nor excuse my not examining the magazine before closing the bolt, and I am not going to attempt it.’28
His first instinct was to go straight to Photineou, Yanni’s village, to tell the family and beg their forgiveness, but the Cretans, who included one of Yanni’s cousins, dismissed the idea at once. It would cause untold trouble in the present climate, and enemies of the Tsangarakis clan might whisper that Paddy had shot him ‘for treachery’. Until the moment was right to reveal the truth they insisted that Paddy tell a different story, which they all swore to uphold. Their party had run into a German ambush, and Yanni had been shot while trying to make a break for it. ‘I want to say that I did not agree to this hateful fiction out of a wish to shirk my responsibilities, but for the sake of Yanni and his family, and our work on Crete … If pensions are granted to the families of people who die in our work in Crete, please lay this on for Yanni.’ Paddy also asked that £100 of his own back pay should go to Yanni’s nephew, whom Yanni was planning to support while he underwent training in Egypt.29
The annual SBS sabotage raid began on 4 July, and to coincide with the attack on the airfield Paddy made another attempt to sabotage shipping in Heraklion harbour. He and Manoli Paterakis smuggled the limpets into the city by donkey, strapped them on, and managed to get into the harbour, but it was too well guarded for them to be able to proceed further. The SBS raid attacked two airfields and blew up a large fuel base; but on returning to the boats they ran into a German patrol, lost two men and took two German prisoners. ‘Fifty hostages were executed in reprisal,’ wrote Tom Dunbabin, and most of these ‘had no standing or connection with our work; they included most of the small Jewish community of Heraklion.’30
The SBS raid had also been designed to foster the impression that an Allied landing on Crete or Greece might be imminent. This possibility was never far from Cretan minds, but after the invasion of Sicily in mid-July 1943, followed by the fall of Mussolini’s Fascist regime, many felt the day to be drawing closer. The Germans were appalled at the speed with which the situation in Italy had changed, and on Crete their relationship with their co-occupiers had become very uneasy.
The Germans ruled the central and western areas of Crete while the eastern parts of the island, Lasithi and Siteia, were under Italian control. The Cretans viewed the Italians with great hostility at first, remembering the unprovoked Italian invasion of Greece in 1940. Yet as time wore on, they proved more humane as occupiers than the Germans – perhaps in part because of the peaceful nature of the eastern Cretans, who were not such inveterate troublemakers as their compatriots in the mountains. But Lieutenant Franco Tavana, head of Italian Security, was proud of the fact that he had not been responsible for a single Cretan death.
When news of the fall of Mussolini reached Crete in late July, it was greeted
with relief and rejoicing: ‘the Italians had ripped off their black shirts – or had them ripped off – tore down every photograph of the Duce and declared their hatred of the Germans and the war.’31 At the same time General Angelo Carta, head of the Siena Division and the 32,000-strong garrison of Lasithi, was in a very difficult position. The Germans suspected that the new Italian government of Marshal Badoglio would soon approach the Allies to negotiate an armistice, which would throw the occupation of Crete into turmoil. Carta feared that at any moment the Germans might move in, disarming and interning every Italian on the island. Carta was, in Paddy’s words, ‘a comfortable, plump, monocled and rather worldly figure’,32 yet he was also anxious and indecisive. He depended on the advice of Lieutenant Tavana, who had been a customs official before the war and now served in the Alpini Corps. Tavana’s views were clear: he loathed the Germans, and believed that the sooner Italy joined the Allies the better.
Paddy was in the Amari valley when he received a message from Micky Akoumianakis of the Heraklion intelligence network. Lieutenant Tavana wanted a meeting, for his superior was not willing to allow the Germans to disarm or intern him. Paddy was picked up in a taxi (the first car he had been in for over a year), and driven to Knossos. The next day, Paddy and Micky bicycled into Heraklion to meet Tavana in the flat of a dentist, Dr Stavrianides. The dentist immediately ordered Paddy to strip and take a bath, while his clothes – stiff with weeks of accumulated dirt and lice – were whisked away to be washed. They were still being laundered when Lieutenant Tavana appeared early for the meeting, so Paddy had to greet him in his host’s dressing-gown and a pair of scarlet pyjamas. Tavana and Paddy got on well, but since setting up the meeting Carta had changed his mind; General Bräuer had done much to soothe his fears, and he was now reassured that he was in no immediate danger of a German takeover. Paddy urged Tavana to arrange a talk between him and Carta. He wanted to convince the General that ‘some British help would be forthcoming in the event of a clash’,33 and Tavana, who believed the ‘clash’ would come sooner or later in spite of Bräuer’s soothing words, was just as keen to arrange it – but Carta still baulked.
The Cretans had observed the tension between the occupiers with considerable interest. Again and again they asked whether Paddy thought there would be an Allied landing on Crete, which would naturally be followed by a general uprising. On orders from GHQ, ‘I did what I could to discourage great expectations.’ At the same time, he could not suppress his natural optimism: ‘in spite of my growing doubts about the immediate future, I hoped and felt that sooner or later, there would be a landing (wrongly, alas!) but I said, as I had been told to do, that we would all be given the right amount of warning for all our efforts to be combined for the best.’34
On 12 August Paddy and Manoli Paterakis left Heraklion to see the andarte leader Manoli Bandouvas, for whom he had arranged an arms drop. Given the kapetan’s unpredictable nature and what was to follow, one might ask why he did so – though there were good reasons at the time. Bandouvas and Tom Dunbabin had clashed on the subject of distributing previous drops, and there was a distinct coolness between them. Yet at this critical moment, it seemed vital to Paddy that ‘everybody fighting the Germans should be friends’.35 Paddy had plans to make a series of arms drops to the other kapetans as well, but Bandouvas was the most prominent. If there were to be an Allied landing on Crete, it was important to have him well armed, on friendly terms with SOE, and not under Communist influence.
Bandouvas had installed himself in a well-appointed camp on the Viannos plateau, which included an armourer, a tailor and a cobbler. He had around a hundred and sixty followers, more were joining him every day, and he claimed he could summon another two thousand men should the need arise. The arms drop took place on 20 August and went without a hitch. Firing their guns in exaltation, Bandouvas and his men returned to their lair with the spoils. The drop had included not only guns and ammunition but British-issue soft caps, bush shirts and web belts: equipment that would enable the band, should they be called on to fight in support of the Italians, to look more like a regular unit.
The news of the long-expected Italian armistice, announced on 8 September, was celebrated with rapture by the Italian troops who thought they were about to go home. Their joy was short-lived. General Friedrich-Wilhelm Müller, the divisional commander who had a reputation for being hard and intransigent, immediately took over the Italian area. All Italian troops were given the choice of fighting under German officers, joining ‘non-combatant units’ (in other words, labour gangs), or being interned. An all-night meeting between Paddy, Tavana and General Carta achieved nothing. Cairo had not repeated their offer of a bombing raid to help the Italians, and Paddy could not promise Allied support if Carta resisted the Germans. In the circumstances, Carta was unwilling to hand over his weapons to the Cretans – though they were given some eighty rifles and a number of hand grenades.
Despite the swift German takeover of the Italian sector, many Cretans believed that the Italian armistice would inevitably be followed by Allied landings on Crete. One of those who believed this most fervently was Manoli Bandouvas, whose force had increased to some three hundred men, and whose frequent motto was ‘the struggle needs blood’.36 According to Paddy, Bandouvas had been repeatedly reminded that his orders were to hold himself in readiness to support the Italians, should that become necessary; and that whatever happened, he was not to move without orders from Cairo.
On 9 September, Paddy was in his hideout at Kastamonitza – equidistant from Heraklion and Neapolis, the regional capital of Lasithi – when he was joined by Tom Dunbabin, who had returned from Cairo with the news that there would be no Allied landing on Crete. All efforts had been diverted to the islands of the Dodecanese in an effort to keep them in Italian hands, but the attempt had failed, and the islands were now under German control.
At about the same time, a runner appeared from Bandouvas with a message so badly written that it took some time to decipher the alarming words: ‘When are the English landing to help us fight the Germans?’37 The kapetan had convinced himself that liberation was at hand, and was on the point of initiating an uprising. Dunbabin went to deal with Bandouvas, while Paddy returned to his discussions with General Carta. Since it was now certain that there would be no Allied invasion of Crete and a German takeover of Italian positions looked inevitable, Carta wanted to be evacuated from the island. Paddy made the arrangements, and a motor launch was arranged to meet him and the General on the south coast at Treis Ekklisies.
On 10 September Bandouvas attacked and killed two Germans picking potatoes at Kato Symi; a third escaped to raise the alarm. This was followed up by the annihilation of the enemy garrisons of Ano Viannos and Arvi, and Bandouvas then pronounced a full-scale mobilization of the Heraklion area. This was immediately rescinded on his arrival by Dunbabin, who told Bandouvas to stop his attacks, but it was too late. Two days later a large detachment of Germans overran the area, determined to destroy the nest of andartes. Bandouvas and his men scattered into the hills, but not before killing a further twenty Germans and taking some prisoners.
The reluctance of the Italians to fight beside the Germans, the fear that they might join the Cretans and provoke an uprising, and now the attacks from Bandouvas, all persuaded General Müller that the time had come for exemplary punishment. Between 15 and 16 September, the Germans slashed through seven villages in the Viannos area. Every building was bombed, animals were driven away, fodder burnt, and over eight hundred and fifty people were taken hostage. Every house in every village was reduced to rubble, and over five hundred people were killed, including women and children.
Meanwhile the plan to evacuate General Carta and his staff was under way, though Tavana would not be of the party. He had elected to stay in Crete, to organize a fifth column among the Italians who were now fighting under German command. He destroyed every document that could possibly be of use to Müller, and put all papers that might be of use to the Allies i
nto a bulging satchel and gave it to Paddy. On no account, said Tavana, should General Carta be aware of the satchel: it should be given, in secret, to the captain of the motor launch who could pass it on to Allied HQ. To lay a false trail, Tavana took the General’s car and abandoned it near an inlet where a submarine might have surfaced.
On 16 September, General Carta and his staff were smuggled out of Neapolis. They made their way south-west to Tzermiado, where they met up with Paddy, Manoli Paterakis and Grigori Khnarakis, a long-serving member of the resistance who knew the Lasithi and Viannos regions very well. The march took three days, spurred on by swigs of Triple Sec from the General’s water bottle. As well as entertaining Paddy with anecdotes about high life in Rome and Paris, ‘he is informative and entertaining about Bräuer and Müller and German officers in general, and he gets on with all the mountain folk.’38
They were woken on the first morning of their march to the coast by a Fieseler Storch reconnaissance plane, dropping leaflets. Manoli picked one up, and handed it to the General. ‘The Italian General Carta, together with some officers of his staff, has fled to the mountains, probably with the intention of escaping the island. FOR HIS CAPTURE, DEAD OR ALIVE, IS OFFERED THE REWARD OF THIRTY MILLION DRACHMAS.’ The General waved it about with glee, exclaiming, ‘Thirty pieces of silver! It’s a contract of Judas!’39
Having successfully avoided a number of German search parties they reached the sheepfold above Tsoutsouros on 21 September, and walked down to the beach the following night. Here they found Tom Dunbabin and Manoli Bandouvas, with about forty of his men. Forced westwards by the Germans, Bandouvas was now hoping that the launch that was coming for the General would take him and his entourage off the island too.fn2
General Carta and Kapetan Bandouvas sat peacefully playing cards while waiting for the motor launch, which appeared in the early morning of 24 September. The wind had risen and there was a choppy swell on the water. A rubber dinghy was lowered to bring the new arrivals to the island: Father John Skoulas of Anoyeia, known as the Parachute Priest, and Captain Alexander (Sandy) Rendel and his wireless operator who were to set up in the Lasithi sector. The sea was so rough that Rendel’s briefcase and the recharger for the wireless set were swept overboard. Once they had landed General Carta boarded the dinghy, followed by Paddy and Manoli Paterakis. Ostensibly they wanted to see the General safely on board, but Paddy also had to deliver Lieutenant Tavana’s satchel full of documents to the skipper, Bob Young.
Patrick Leigh Fermor: An Adventure Page 19