by Wes Davis
29 “I’m afraid there is no”: HS 5/728, September 1943.
30 “I hope the service”: HS 5/728, July 1943.
CHAPTER 5: SPAGHETTI AND RAVIOLI
1 “Viva Inghilterra!”: HS 5/728, National Archives of the UK.
2 “Italian nonsense”: HS 5/728, April 1943.
3 “The German authorities”: Ibid.
4 “Ravioli … sent out Lieut. Spaghetti”: Ibid.
5 “spiritual matters”: Ibid.
6 “We are ready to defend ourselves”: Ibid. Here and following, Lieutenant Tavana’s communications with the British, which took place for the most part in French, are quoted or paraphrased in French, and sometimes English, in the field reports Leigh Fermor sent to Cairo.
7 “because the Greeks can”: Ibid.
8 “Spaghetti was in a”: Ibid.
9 “He is very Latin and nervy Italian”: Ibid.
10 “mixed” … “dummy executions”: Ibid.
11 “one or two dark patches”: Ibid.
12 “We took them to their barracks”: Ibid.
13 “the strangest of plain clothes”: Ibid.
14 “kissed him on both cheeks”: Ibid.
15 “This struck him as a good idea”: Ibid.
16 “disappointed and apologetic”: Ibid.
17 “I am bound by military honor”: Ibid.
18 general’s position was a “delicate” one: Ibid.
19 “to liberty and peace” … “Spaghetti nearly wept”: Ibid.
20 “Oh, mon Capitaine”: Ibid. Leigh Fermor’s communications with Carta are quoted or paraphrased in the field reports Leigh Fermor sent to Cairo.
21 “be ready to take advantage”: Winston Churchill, Closing the Ring (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1951), 204.
22 “This is no time”: Winston Churchill, message to General Pug Ismay, quoted in ibid.
23 “godmothers” … “The poor thing was christened”: HS 5/728.
24 “liquidated” … “Three ‘rubbings out’ ”: Ibid.
25 “take up positions”: HS 5/723, National Archives of the UK.
26 four hundred men: This was Harry Brooke’s estimate. HS 5/722, National Archives of the UK.
27 “joyfully” launched a clutch of flares: HS 5/728.
28 “Large numbers are now in bush shirts”: Ibid.
29 “Long live Paddy … Long live England”: Harry Brooke, HS 5/722.
30 “It was like Bo-Peep’s birthday”: HS 5/728.
31 “Mon general … What an honor”: Ibid.
32 “My dear friend,” his letter began: Ibid.
33 “is very unlike my present appearance”: Ibid.
34 “The cigars were excellent”: Ibid.
35 “Please excuse my scrawl”: Ibid.
36 In each case a donkey was accepted: Tom Dunbabin reports this as a “Silly Story”: HS 5/723, report 5, p. 7.
37 Bandouvas believed the British were preparing: George Harakopos, The Abduction of General Kreipe, trans. Rosemary Tzanaki (Heraklion, Greece: V. Kouvidis–V. Manouras, 2003), 38.
38 “He was dressed in”: HS 5/728.
39 “This was the result”: Ibid.
40 “He is plump, rosy”: Ibid.
41 “their old comradeship of arms”: Ibid.
42 Anyone caught destroying or trafficking: Ibid., appendix: “General Order to All Italian Troops in Crete by the German General Muller.”
43 “an uncomfortable half hour”: HS 5/728.
44 “I found him beaming”: Ibid.
45 “arms had been landed by parachute”: Ibid.
46 “fuss and anxiety”: Ibid.
47 they killed or captured every last man: HS 5/723. Later accounts differ on the outcome of this firefight.
48 “regaled … with lively anecdotes”: HS 5/728.
49 “They landed right at our feet”: Ibid.
50 “The Italian General Carta”: HS 5/728, “Translation of a German leaflet printed in Greek, Italian and German.”
51 “Carta,” Paddy noted, “was very amused”: HS 5/728.
52 “lean and chastened”: HS 5/723.
53 “The behaviour of this force”: Ibid.
54 The fiction he devised: Harokopos, Abduction of General Kreipe, 56.
55 “arrested our mule”: HS 5/723.
56 with a radio operator: Rendel’s radio operator was George Dilley.
57 what he called “soft jobs”: A. M. Rendel, Appointment in Crete (London: A. Wingate, 1953), 8.
58 “wound itself with sickly”: Ibid., 7.
59 “in some intelligence job”: Ibid.
60 “There were plenty of letters”: Ibid., 7–8.
61 “doing nothing at all”: Ibid.
62 “scrambling about at night”: Ibid., 9.
63 “Well I’d better tell you something”: Ibid.
64 “But Tom … if you go”: Ibid.
65 “Spy … an ugly word”: Ibid.
66 “sentimental and unreal”: Ibid., 15.
67 “must be a person entirely”: Ibid., 14.
68 “Didn’t you get covered”: Ibid., 11.
69 “by hook or by crook”: Ibid., 16.
70 “On the march,” he thought: Ibid., 28.
71 “How good the Cretans were to you”: Ibid., 19.
72 “The supplies were usually”: Ibid.
73 “What about the salad dressing?”: Ibid., 20.
74 “It shot low and I saw”: Ibid., 34. Years later Rendel was still moved by this recollection and remarked that it was strange to recall the fury of that morning in such a different setting, “from the depths of an armchair with my wife sewing quietly at the other side of the fireplace” (ibid).
75 “Bob Young himself, looking”: Ibid., 35.
76 “a tall fair-haired boy”: Ibid.
77 “The old cliché about”: Ibid., 36.
78 “Bob Young signaled that we”: Ibid., 38.
79 “suitably down-at-heel”: Ibid., 50.
80 “looked cold and distant”: Ibid., 22.
81 “he called many times”: Ibid., 56.
82 “would be carried out from the land”: HS 5/723.
83 “It should be easy to kidnap”: Ibid.
CHAPTER 6: FLESHPOTS
1 “I am sure I can be useful”: HS 5/728, National Archives of the UK.
2 interrogators, who were particularly: KV 3/319, National Archives of the UK.
3 “I am in Egypt”: Angelo Carta, quoted in G. Harokopos, The Abduction of General Kreipe, trans. Rosemary Tzanaki (Heraklion, Greece: V. Kouvidis–V. Manouras, 2003), 56.
4 “while there was still time”: Winston Churchill, Closing the Ring (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1951), 207.
5 loyalty of Germany’s remaining allies: Ibid., 208.
6 “There was death and tragedy in Europe”: Suzy Eban, “A Cairo Girlhood,” New Yorker, July 15, 1974, 64.
7 “Dickens would have had no need”: Christopher Sykes, A Song of a Shirt (London: Derek Verschoyle, 1953), 11.
8 “What was so remarkable”: Margaret Pawley, In Obedience to Instructions (Barmsley: Leo Cooper, 1999), 60.
9 “an atmosphere of permanent holiday”: Eban, “Cairo Girlhood,” 64.
10 “the most magnificent sports grounds”: Artemis Cooper, Cairo in the War (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1989), 37.
11 then dinner and dancing: Annette Crean, unpublished memoir, Documents.6433, Private Papers of Mrs A Street, Imperial War Museum, 38.
12 “The air we breathed”: Pawley, In Obedience to Instructions, 62.
13 “Hope you’re enjoying the fleshpots”: Xan Fielding, report 12, HS5/725, National Archives of the UK.
14 “keep alive the tradition”: Robert St. John, From the Land of Silent People (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, Doran, 1942), 331.
15 “The hot dusty streets”: Pawley, In Obedience to Instructions, 57.
16 “The food was good”: Julian Amery, Approach March (London: Hutchinson, 1983), 317–18.
17 known as Hangover H
all: Cooper, Cairo in the War, 285.
18 “charming figure, with his”: Patrick Leigh Fermor, “Afterword” in W. Stanley Moss, Ill Met by Moonlight (London: Folio Society, 2001), 203.
19 “He always did it”: Moss, A War of Shadows (New York: Macmillan, 1952), 3.
20 “Most of the rickshaw”: Ibid., 2.
21 “We are in the soup”: W. Stanley Moss, Diary 1939, Estate of I. W. Stanley Moss.
22 “It had been wonderful”: W. Stanley Moss, unpublished diary, Documents.13338, Private Papers of Major I W S Moss MC, Department of Documents, Imperial War Museum, 18.
23 “lovely feeling of advancing”: Ibid.
24 “The floods of tears”: Moss, War of Shadows, 1.
25 “No, I can’t possibly”: Andrew Tarnowski, The Last Mazurka (London: Aurum Press, 2006), 216.
26 “Mrs. Khayatt is so sorry”: Ibid., 217.
27 “rude comments about the Mother Superior’s body odor”: Ibid., 62.
28 “Goodbye—Sophie”: Ibid., 63.
29 “They were going so low”: Quoted in ibid., 96.
30 “Hurrah,” he called out: Ibid., 96–97.
31 “Altogether it is a bit of a fairy tale”: Ibid., 172.
32 “A throne, a throne”: Ibid., 184.
33 “This is like being in heaven”: Quoted in ibid., 182.
34 “I’ll be damned”: Ibid., 182.
35 “the best looking couple”: Fermor, “Afterword,” 205.
CHAPTER 7: TARA
1 “made the air of summer”: Suzy Eban, “A Cairo Girlhood,” New Yorker, July 15, 1974, 64.
2 “thronged assemblies of all”: Standish O’Grady, The Story of Ireland (London: Methuen, 1894), 51–52.
3 “the mule who-riding”: Xan Fielding, One Man in His Time (London: Macmillan, 1990), 13.
4 “He struck me as a”: Ibid., xxii.
5 “I’m damned if I’m leaving”: Ibid., 38. The fellow officer was Peter Kemp, who had met Julian Amery when both took cover in the same ditch during the Spanish civil war and later told him this story.
6 “After the breakthrough at Alamein”: David Smiley, Albanian Assignment (London: Chatto & Windus, 1984), 2.
7 “In Palestine I had”: Ibid., 3.
8 “We studied German and Italian”: Ibid., 4.
9 “my dirty tricks course”: Ibid., 7.
10 weakness for what he called “smells”: W. Stanley Moss, unpublished diary, Documents.13338, Private Papers of Major W S Moss MC, Department of Documents, Imperial War Museum, 15.
11 “perhaps he was happier with the sword”: Patrick Leigh Fermor, “Foreword,” in Smiley, Albanian Assignment, xii.
12 “Smiley lived for action”: Julian Amery, Approach March (London: Hutchinson, 1983), 328.
13 “You bloody communist”: Moss, unpublished diary, 14.
14 Paddy thought him “quixotic”: Fermor, “Foreword,” xi.
15 As Pixie grew by leaps and bounds: W. Stanley Moss, A War of Shadows (New York: Macmillan, 1952), 149.
16 “Oh, it’s nothing”: Andrew Tarnowski, The Last Mazurka (London: Aurum Press, 2006), 215.
17 “It so happened that I”: Ibid., 222.
18 “Life at Tara was”: Amery, Approach March, 319.
19 “She reclined on the pillows”: Ibid.
20 “Were such a thing possible”: Patrick Leigh Fermor, “Afterword,” in W. Stanley Moss, Ill Met by Moonlight (London: Folio Society, 2001), 202.
21 “A sort of road was here”: Quoted in Tarnowski, Last Mazurka, 219.
22 “Not yet,” he replied: Fermor, “Afterword,” 203.
23 “would be a dead giveaway”: Annette Crean, unpublished memoir, Documents.6433, Private Papers of Mrs A Street, Imperial War Museum, 48.
24 “During a parachute course”: Lawrence Durrell, The Greek Islands (New York: Viking, 1978), 92.
25 “is undeniably contrary”: Amery, Approach March, 328.
26 “As the roar of the engines”: Ibid., 329.
27 “the full horror of falling”: Ibid.
28 “He used to lock ladies into boxes”: Fermor, “Afterword,” 206.
29 “The air of sorcery”: Moss, War of Shadows, 13.
30 “as though I were a witch’s bowl”: Ibid.
31 the ether knockout drops: This was the experience, for instance, of an SOE captain named Arthur Reade in November 1943. HS 5/730.
32 “Most of the day it had rained”: A. M. Rendel, Appointment in Crete (London: A. Wingate, 1953), 120.
33 move his radio station to a spot near Kritsa: When I talked to villagers in a rural area east of Kritsa in 2009, they still recalled hearing about a British wireless station that had been set up nearby during the war, though they believed the set had been kept in a hollow tree. Whether the story reflects Rendel’s station is impossible to know.
34 “a stately old hawk”: Moss, unpublished diary, 16.
35 “but before they had made”: Patrick Leigh Fermor to Moss, quoted in Moss, unpublished diary, 15.
36 “Is this the last time?”: Moss, unpublished diary, 3.
37 “staring wistfully at Paddy”: Ibid., 4.
38 “Everyone in the canteen”: Ibid., 5.
39 “like triangles cut out”: Ibid.
CHAPTER 8: MOONSTRUCK
1 coordinates chosen for the drop: These and other details of Leigh Fermor’s parachute drop are drawn from Squadron 148 Sortie Reports, AIR 23/1443.
2 “Perhaps I have been”: W. Stanley Moss, unpublished diary, Documents.13338, Private Papers of Major I W S Moss MC, Department of Documents, Imperial War Museum.
3 so full of mishaps: Details of Fortune’s earlier mission are drawn from AIR 23/1443.
4 “hit a colossal bump”: AIR 23/1443.
5 “Sometimes he finds something”: Moss, unpublished diary, 8.
6 “It has rained a great deal”: Ibid., 12.
7 “Western wind, when wilt thou blow”: Anonymous 16th-century lyric, reproduced in James J. Wilhelm, Lyrics of the Middle Ages: An Anthology (New York: Garland), 294.
8 One day Manoli arrived: Moss, unpublished diary. The Scottish adventure novel Leigh Fermor read was The New Road by Neil Munro.
9 and thought it “flawless”: Ibid.
10 Leigh Fermor thought the production: Patrick Leigh Fermor, “Afterword,” in W. Stanley Moss, Ill Met by Moonlight (London: Folio Society, 2001), 207.
11 “Paddy had a strange”: Moss, unpublished diary, 23.
12 “They’re exactly like our cheese huts”: Fermor, “Afterword,” 207.
13 “an eastern priest bowing”: A. M. Rendel, Appointment in Crete (London: A. Wingate, 1953), 130.
14 “How filthily artificial”: Ibid., 131.
15 “The plane flew on”: Ibid.
16 “Mr. Leigh Fermor, I presume”: Ibid.
17 “still low above us”: Ibid., 132–33.
18 “As time went on”: Ibid., 137.
19 “I could hardly have”: Ibid., 133.
20 “I have been a guest”: HS 5/728.
21 “And in your boat”: Rendel, Appointment in Crete, 134.
22 “No Germans should have”: Ibid., 138.
23 “We were contemplating a telegram”: Ibid., 139.
24 “which was partly flat”: Moss, unpublished diary, 25.
25 “Unfortunately I was due”: Ibid., 25–26.
26 “they ‘acquired’ a couple sheep”: Ibid., 26.
27 “Of course there wasn’t a boat”: Ibid.
28 “a bitter, sneering man”: HS 5/728.
29 “we had stowed the stores”: Rendel, Appointment in Crete, 140.
30 “had begun to advise the party”: Ibid.
31 “When they had climbed level”: Ibid., 140–41.
32 “a young, spectacled, alert”: Patrick Leigh Fermor, “Afterword,” 210.
33 “We could see them”: HS 5/728.
34 “If they would have”: Rendel, Appointment in Crete, 149.
35 “The actual pilot, W/O Fortu
ne”: This and the following quotations are from Patrick Leigh Fermor, field report, HS 5/728.
36 “Hope Billy and the lads arrive”: Ibid.
37 “Might go fishing with explosives”: Moss, unpublished diary, 27.
38 “as soon as possible”: Details of Coleman’s mission are drawn from ADM 199/889.
39 “the sea rougher than before”: Moss, unpublished diary, 27.
40 “As I write I can smell:” Ibid., 28.
41 Dermatos Beach, east of the village: The orders Lieutenant Coleman received from the Office of Commander Coastal Forces, Eastern Mediterranean, give the coordinates of the point off the beach: N 34°58′, E 25°19′30″. HS 5/677. Other versions of Coleman’s orders also refer to Dermatos explicitly. In the log of operations for the unit as a whole, the latitude was mistakenly transcribed as 35d 58m N, a point in the Aegean far north of the island of Crete. The mistake perhaps accounts for some later confusion about the precise location of the beach where Moss’s party came ashore.
42 In all, forty-five people: A number of the thirty-nine Greek men in the party later complained about the treatment they received at the other end of the voyage. In Cairo, according to an M Branch memorandum dated April 7, they were examined by an Indian medical officer who took an extreme approach to delousing: “This officer appears to have ordered all the Greeks to have their heads shaved, stating that the hair would grow back in a fortnight; he also ordered four Greeks to shave other parts of their anatomy.” HS 5/677.
43 “Some of the men stood”: Moss, Ill Met by Moonlight, 33–34.
44 “You friend Paddy?”: Ibid., 34–35.
45 “He wore a smart moustache”: Moss, unpublished diary, 34.
46 “We sat, chatted and smoked”: John Houseman, HS 5/727.
47 “And after three hours”: Ibid.
CHAPTER 9: THE INTERSECTION
1 “I haven’t washed”: W. Stanley Moss, Ill Met by Moonlight (London: Folio Society, 2001), 42.
2 “Xan and I like them to think”: W. Stanley Moss, unpublished diary, Documents.13338, Private Papers of Major I W S Moss MC, Department of Documents, Imperial War Museum,, 34.
3 “It was a pity”: Moss, Ill Met by Moonlight, 44.
4 “a gay rogue”: Ibid.
5 His father was an old friend: Zahari’s father was Kimon Zographakis.