by Wes Davis
At a quarter to nine, Lamonby was sent down the gully with a handful of men to put a stop to the racket, which was likely to draw the attention of other German patrols in the area. He quickly brought the Cretan fighters under control and sent the men back up the gully, apparently intending to pursue the Germans on his own. This was the last anyone saw of him. When Lamonby had not returned by the time the SBS units were scheduled to move onto the beach, a patrol went out to look for him, with no success.
Just after midnight the engines of the motor launch were heard offshore. Less than an hour later the commandos were embarked. The unit’s commander asked the skipper of the motor launch to bring the vessel in close to the mouth of the gully, but still there was no sign of Lamonby, and his comrades feared the worst. “The fact that he could not make the re-embarkation beach and we could not find his body is a bad sign,” remarked the lieutenant who had led the Kastelli raid. “I think he has been wounded and taken away by the Germans for interrogation.”
Confirmation soon made its way through Leigh Fermor’s intelligence network. Writing in haste some weeks later, Leigh Fermor passed the report along to Cairo. “I’m afraid there is no doubt about Lamonby’s death,” he wrote. “The description fits him perfectly.” The episode was a reminder that covert work on Crete was more deadly than it sometimes appeared. For the families of the Cretans who were executed following the sabotage, it was an unwanted lesson. Leigh Fermor wondered if the results of the missions could possibly outweigh their civilian costs. “I hope the service of this activity to our general strategy has been high,” he wrote to headquarters, “because here it has caused much havoc to morale and caused much anti-British feeling.”
5
Spaghetti and Ravioli
IN THE WEEK following the disappointing sabotage effort in Heraklion, Leigh Fermor and Manoli made their way toward a hideout code-named Holy Friday, near Agia Paraskevi, on the far side of the Lotus Land of Amari. Here in the relative safety of the rugged southwestern coast they rejoined Harry Brooke, the wireless operator, and Tom’s aide-de-camp, Nikos Souris. Once they had settled in, Leigh Fermor busied himself making arrangements to meet the supply boat that was scheduled to arrive the night of July 11. But he was preoccupied with a problem that had surfaced back in the spring, when the leader of the local Communist militia had reported that the commander of the Italian Siena Division, which occupied the eastern end of the island, might be willing to surrender to the British.
When he first got wind of the rumor, Leigh Fermor had been unsure what to make of it. Then, around the same time, he had overheard an Italian soldier in Heraklion giving vent to a sentiment that seemed to be spreading among his countrymen stationed on Crete. “Don’t you think because we didn’t fight in Albania, that Italians can’t fight,” the young man said. “You wait and see how we fight the Germans!” When the disgruntled soldier had drunk a little more wine, he went so far as to shout, “Viva Inghilterra!”
“Italian nonsense,” Leigh Fermor had thought at the time, but he had kept his ears open in case the incident signaled a change in the weather in the Axis camp. Now it was clear that conflict between the two Axis allies was on the upswing. Just a month earlier an Italian soldier had tossed a hand grenade into a group of three Germans and killed one of them. The other two were wounded. “The German authorities complained,” Leigh Fermor recalled, and the Italian soldier had been run through a court-martial proceeding and thrown into prison. But it had all been a show for the Germans, he believed, and the man was soon released.
He knew that the growing tension in the Axis camp had ramifications in particular for the Lasithi district, where the occupying force was commanded by General Angelo Carta, the subject of the earlier rumor. The easternmost of the island’s four provinces, Lasithi was not yet a hotbed of resistance. In fact, many of the British officers in Crete were of the opinion that the Lasithiots lacked the pugnacious spirit common elsewhere on the island. Whether this might be due to their relative wealth or to the relatively milder Italian occupation was a matter of opinion.
Nonetheless, Leigh Fermor believed that the Lasithi region itself would prove important. Its southern port city of Ierápetra was situated at the point where the island narrowed to its smallest north-south dimension, and the nearby beaches on both coasts were suitable for landings. Northwest of Ierápetra lay a stretch of dry salt flats where aircraft could be landed. From Leigh Fermor’s reconnaissance it was clear that the Axis commanders in Crete believed this area to be the most vulnerable spot on the island for an Allied invasion. They had thrown their full weight into defending the area. Leigh Fermor had not heard of anti-invasion measures on a similar scale anywhere else in Crete.
For the moment, he put the question aside and hurried off to meet the boat from North Africa. A week or two later, he struck out on a reconnaissance mission to find a suitable landing beach for Tom Dunbabin’s return to the island, which was planned for the next moonless night. He had made it as far as Gerakari, above the Amari Valley, when a runner intercepted him with a message from Minoan Mike, his right-hand man in Heraklion. According to Mike, the unrest among the Italians had surged to new levels in the wake of Mussolini’s fall on July 25. Italian soldiers had been seen stripping off their black uniform shirts and tearing down portraits of the Duce.
General Carta’s intelligence officer, Lieutenant Franco Tavana, had begun making overtures to the Cretans and their British allies. Leigh Fermor reported this initial contact to Cairo using typically irreverent code names for the Italian commander and his staff officer. “Ravioli,” he wrote, “sent out Lieut. Spaghetti to approach leading Cretans in the provinces.” What Carta was desperate to learn was how the British would respond if the Germans turned their weapons on the Italians in Lasithi, and how the Italians would be handled in the event of a British invasion of the island.
Leigh Fermor learned that Lieutenant Tavana had first approached a priest in Neapolis, the town where the Italians had their headquarters, asking to be put in touch with a British officer. But the priest, who in fact was an SOE agent, merely threw up his hands, professing to be interested only in “spiritual matters.” Eventually Tavana made contact with a prominent figure in Heraklion, a surgeon who had recently begun working with the British, and through this man he was put in touch with Minoan Mike. Neither Mike nor the surgeon—who was called Leonidas, after the Spartan king who died in a daring last stand against Xerxes at Thermopylae—admitted to having any connection with British agents on the island, but they suggested that Tavana put anything he had to say in writing.
The letter, written in halting French, the one language the two men had in common, laid out the situation as the Italians saw it. With Italy’s government in flux and the prospect of an Italian withdrawal from the war on the horizon, the Germans on Crete appeared to be preparing to attack their former allies. “We are ready to defend ourselves with great force,” Tavana wrote. But he admitted that the Italian garrison had little chance of defeating the German forces in a protracted fight. “We could defend ourselves for two or three weeks.”
Tavana implied that he had already secured some promise of help from the Cretans. But he feared the reprisals such a move would almost certainly bring. He sought assurance from Leigh Fermor that the British would step in if the Germans launched an attack against Lasithi, “because the Greeks can give us but a few men, in which case it would be bad for all the Cretans, because the Germans are stronger and they will defeat us and then they will do evil things against the Greeks.” In return for British assistance, Tavana promised that, “in the name of my general commanding the Italian troops,” the Italians would defend the island until the end of the war. This was to be an agreement between soldiers, he made clear, and in no way did his letter bind the Italian government in Rome. “If the Germans don’t attack us quickly,” he concluded, “we can make other agreements.”
“Spaghetti was in a very nervous and distressed state,” Leigh Fermor learned from the run
ner, “and said that the Italian troops would undergo any sacrifice rather than surrender their arms to the Huns, whom he cursed by every name under the sun.” Tavana’s demeanor had quickly convinced Minoan Mike and the others that the man was sincere.
In a second meeting at Neapolis they agreed to put him in touch with a British officer. Tavana was elated to have finally made contact. He wished to arrange a tête-à-tête right away, he told Mike. He would send a staff car for his British counterpart whenever he wished and would have him driven directly to Neapolis to meet with General Carta. Tavana would even provide an Italian uniform as a disguise.
MUCH OF THE intelligence Leigh Fermor had been able to dig up on Franco Tavana appeared to support Mike’s intuition. “He is a very Latin and nervy Italian; well educated and polished, and hates the Germans with a deadly hate.” He was by profession a lawyer, the son of a respectable family from Syracuse. He had served in Albania and had been General Carta’s intelligence officer since the Italians arrived on Crete. “He is also one for the girls,” Leigh Fermor learned, “like all the Italians in Lasithi, without exception.” These details Paddy sent to Cairo under the heading “Social Snippets.”
He also suspected there was more to the story. Among the Cretans in Lasithi, opinions regarding Tavana were “mixed.” It was widely held, on the one hand, that the Italian officer had protected a good many Cretans. When the German command handed down death sentences against Lasithi residents, Tavana staged “dummy executions and filled in empty graves.” At the same time there were darker rumors, none of them entirely substantiated. “There is a tale of three men found dead under a pile of stones in Seteia,” Leigh Fermor wrote to Cairo, “but no public blemish.”
Despite these “one or two dark patches” in the Italian’s résumé, Leigh Fermor shared Minoan Mike’s inclination to trust Tavana. At the very least it was worth taking some risk to speak with him. He sent a runner back to his wireless station with a message telling Harry Brooke, the wireless operator, to move the set to Bandouvas’s hideout in the Lasithi mountains. This was the one spot he could think of that would put the radio station close to the events unfolding in the Italian-held province.
The following day Minoan Mike, having wisely decided that an Italian staff car would attract undue attention in the remote Amari Valley, showed up in a taxi, with the surgeon he had met with in Heraklion, to pick Paddy up. Accompanied by Manoli and Mike’s sister—a fellow SOE supporter known, predictably, as Minoan Minnie—they left immediately for Heraklion. The party had not driven far when they spotted a pair of German soldiers standing alongside the road. As the car drew closer, they waved for it to halt. All four passengers stiffened as the driver brought the vehicle to a stop. The German soldiers motioned to have the door opened. Leigh Fermor held his breath a moment, waiting to see which way this would go. Then, one after the other, the two men climbed in. It seemed they simply wanted a lift back to their base near Heraklion. “We took them to their barracks, exchanged cigarettes and bright chat, and drove on,” Leigh Fermor told Cairo.
From Heraklion they drove south again to Knossos, where they spent the night in the house where Mike had grown up. This had once been John Pendlebury’s home too, Leigh Fermor recalled. Now the German commander of Heraklion province, General Friedrich-Wilhelm Müller, had moved into the Villa Ariadne, the house Arthur Evans had built for himself adjacent to the famous archaeological site. Paddy and Mike bedded down for the night literally next door to the enemy commander’s residence. The next morning Leigh Fermor received a communication from Cairo. Headquarters had decided that he should ask Carta to provide the British with bombing targets to ensure the destruction of key facilities if the Germans were to launch an offensive against Lasithi.
Leigh Fermor sent Mike out to telephone Tavana in Neapolis. He then borrowed a bicycle and pedaled the three or four miles into Heraklion, where an SOE collaborator known as Dr. Cross, a dentist from George Psychoundakis’s town of Asi Gonia, was to put him up until Tavana’s arrival.
When he reached Dr. Cross’s house, Leigh Fermor settled in to wait for Tavana. Feeling ragged and dirty after a month in the mountains, he took advantage of the rare opportunity to have his clothes cleaned and ironed. An hour before the lieutenant was due to arrive, Paddy was lying on the sofa reading in a pair of crimson silk pajamas and crocodile slippers, when he heard a knock at the door.
Moments later Minoan Mike, who had apparently mistaken the time, escorted a slender, dark-haired man into the sitting room. As Leigh Fermor rose to greet Tavana, whatever embarrassment he felt about his unusual attire quickly evaporated. The lieutenant was a pleasant-looking man and his demeanor was amiable. But he was himself dressed very oddly, Paddy saw. He wore “the strangest of plain clothes—no stockings, sandals, green corduroy shorts and a sort of polo vest.” For an awkward moment no one spoke; then, as the rival intelligence officers stood looking at each other—one in flamboyant short pants and the other in silk pajamas—both began to laugh.
It was a propitious start, and the two men were soon on friendly terms. But the meeting did not progress as Leigh Fermor had hoped. Once the preliminaries were out of the way, he explained to Tavana that he needed to meet with Carta himself as soon as possible. His headquarters, Leigh Fermor explained, wished him to deliver a message to the general. Such a meeting, Tavana avowed, was now unlikely. Much had changed since he had written his initial list of proposals.
Tavana handed over a note from General Carta that alluded to the recent developments. It was written in Italian, and Tavana explained what it said. A German attack had become much less likely, Carta now believed. If a German attack did come, then the Italian troops would think only of saving themselves … and of course their honor.
Tavana explained that Mussolini’s fall had thrown Carta into a panic. At the end of July he had believed that the Germans would attack at any minute. In the intervening days, however, he had been reassured by a visit from the German commander, General Bräuer, who had flown to Neapolis to meet with Carta, “kissed him on both cheeks,” and convinced him that there was nothing to worry about at the moment. What would happen if the Italian government surrendered was anyone’s guess. Tavana believed a German attack was sure to come eventually. Leigh Fermor offered some strategic advice. When the Germans did make their move, he said, the Italians should block the entry of vehicles and artillery into Lasithi by sealing off the Salinari pass between Malia and Neapolis, through which the only usable road ran. The only other routes into the province followed goat tracks over the mountains. “This struck him as a good idea,” Leigh Fermor reported to headquarters, “and he said he would put it to Ravioli.” They agreed to meet in two days. The plan was for Tavana to pick Leigh Fermor up at the surgery clinic on the main street in Heraklion and drive him to Neapolis, where both hoped Carta might agree to meet with him.
When the appointed day rolled around, Leigh Fermor arrived at the clinic early. He was already there—with Minoan Mike, Dr. Leonidas the surgeon, and Dr. Cross the dentist—when Tavana turned up as planned, dressed this time in run-of-the-mill civilian clothes. Leigh Fermor noticed right away that he looked “disappointed and apologetic.” In the privacy of the clinic Tavana explained that Carta had “lost his nerve at the last minute.” The general had decided not to meet with Leigh Fermor. Once again Tavana produced a note from his superior. “I am bound by military honor to remain faithful to the alliance with Germany until they make an unfriendly movement,” Carta now wrote. “When that happens, I would gladly accept British help, though I do not, of course, ask for it.” His message went on to advise the Cretans to stay out of any fighting that might erupt between the Italians and Germans. The probability of German reprisals outweighed any real assistance they could offer.
Tavana was clearly frustrated by General Carta’s timidity, and Leigh Fermor made an effort to reassure him. It was understandable that Carta should waver, he said. Under the circumstances, the general’s position was a “delicate” one.
Despite Carta’s irresolute handling of the situation, Leigh Fermor told Tavana, he had himself put the andarte leaders in Lasithi on notice that the Italians were not to be attacked under any circumstances. (This was easier said than done, since Bandouvas—Bo-Peep—had let it be known that he was itching to get hold of the Italians’ weapons, by whatever means necessary.) For his part, Tavana intimated unofficially that Italian units would do nothing substantial to oppose a British landing on the island. He also pledged not to interfere with the British organization of resistance in Lasithi and went so far as to say that if Leigh Fermor himself was ever captured by Italian authorities, he would personally secure his immediate release.
As the meeting came to an end, Leigh Fermor produced a bottle of raki and offered a toast “to liberty and peace.” The important thing, he stressed, was that the British and Italians were returning to friendly terms now that Mussolini’s regime had been ousted. The others present agreed, and someone pointed out that the Italian occupation of Lasithi had been humane, particularly in comparison with the brutality of the Germans. “Spaghetti nearly wept,” Paddy noted. “It was all rather touching and absurd.”
When Tavana rose to leave, he took Leigh Fermor by the hand and held the handshake for an awkwardly long moment. It was evident that he had reached some private resolution, though he spoke in a reserved manner, as if inhibited by the others present. “Oh, mon Capitaine,” he said by way of farewell, “we have so very many things to tell one another, but alas! this is neither the time nor the place.” He sounded like a man teetering on a precipice. Leigh Fermor believed that if he could spend some time with Tavana alone, the Italian lieutenant would open up completely. “I am planning another meeting in some sheep-fold in the mountains,” he wrote to Cairo, “with a roast lamb and a couple of magnums of Bollinger from Gen. Muller’s cellar, where we can talk all night and I am sure that I can learn a great many things we want to know.”