by David Pratt
the monks identified
with the Resistance. They wore round hats
full bushy beards, long hair, black flowing robes
and round their necks a heavy pectoral cross.
When Father John Alevizakis’ son
was captured by the Germans, he averred,
I am a poor man and I can provide
little assistance in material terms,
I have three sons, however, all of them
if necessary will be sacrificed
to the sacred cause of Cretan liberty.
The monasteries were places of refuge
for allied escapees, and frequently
were searched and vandalized. When Germans sacked
the St. John monastery at Preveli,
an officer purloined the golden cross
that held a splinter of the True Cross
and was thought to be miraculous.
The aircraft he was on took off three times,
and every time turned back to make repairs.
He left the cross with orders to return
it to the monastery and then flew off
and made his journey without incident.
At Kato Simi, the Bandouvas band
attacked and killed the German garrison.
A German force was sent, the partisans
ambushed it, killing more than forty men.
The furious Germans sent two thousand troops,
who massacred at least eight hundred folk
and burned to cinders thirteen villages.
The Archymandrite Psalidakis then
was ordered by the Germans to affirm
a statement that exonerated them
of all atrocities. He doffed his cross
and said that he would sooner die than sign
so false a statement, since “I saw, myself,
with my own eyes, young women disembowelled.”
Nicolas Manolakakis, who had killed
four dozen paratroopers after one
had shot his wife and son, escaped into
the hills. The Germans said that they would shoot
ten of his fellow villagers each day
until he should surrender. When he heard this
Manolakakis turned himself in.
He was compelled to dig his grave, then shot.
More villages were burned, old people thrown
into their burning houses. By autumn
more than a thousand Cretans had been killed.
Koustegorako, a small community
in the mountains south of Rethymno,
home to the Paterakis family,
became a centre of resistance work.
The Germans came, lined up the villagers,
the women and the children, in the square,
in front of a machine gun trained on them.
Where are the men, shouted the Kapitan,
where are the English, where’s the radio?
The village nestled at the bottom of
a vertical cliff face, and from the top
400 yards away came the first shot
by Costis Paterakis; it dispatched
the man at the machine gun, then more shots
dropped several other men. The Germans fled.
But when they came back later reinforced
they found the village empty, and destroyed
the place with fire and dynamite.
The British gave the partisans supplies,
transmitters, guns, gold sovereigns, medicine,
boots, food. And agents, trained by SOE,
arrived by parachute or submarine.
They mostly lived in caves or shepherds’ huts
up in the mountains, eating cheese, sour milk,
wild greens the Greeks called chorta, snails,
sometimes , with luck, a sheep or goat.
The caves were damp and full of fleas and lice.
The guerillas, the andartes, would sit round
a fire, and shepherds with white sheepskin cloaks
would hold their ancient guns across their knees,
pass round the raki or a gourd of wine,
chop up tobacco on their rifle butts
and talk at length of pistols and of boots.
The SOE commandos were attired
in Cretan clothes and learned the dialect
enough to make the Germans think them Greek.
Each agent had two pills of cyanide
encased in rubber. One young Englishman
put in his pocket raisins he’d been given
by a peasant woman, and spat them out
when one of them evinced a rubber taste.
The agents and andartes at all times
were helped by people of the villages.
When British agents visited a home
the woman of the house would wash their hands
and feet, anointing them with olive oil.
When they departed she would cross herself
and say a prayer for safety on their way.
At village celebrations only men
would dance, but not the women, who had vowed
they’d never dance and would wear only black
until the time beloved Crete was free.
In 1943 the Cretan Jews
who lived in Haniá and Iraklion
were rounded up. While they were locked in jail
their homes and synagogue were looted, then
they were embarked aboard a ship for Greece
the first stage of the route to Germany.
Off Santorini, thirty miles from Crete,
a British submarine torpedoed her
and all two hundred Jewish people drowned.
One Dudley Perkins, a New Zealander
known first as Kiwi, later Vasili,
fought and was captured at the fall of Crete.
Escaping from the German transit camp,
he went into the mountains. He got sick,
was cared for by the villagers, learned Greek,
got to the coast and left by submarine.
He fought some months in Libya, then transferred
to SOE, and trained in Palestine.
Promoted sergeant, he returned to Crete
and organized a group of partisans.
In fighting with some Germans he received
a bullet in the back. Four German troops
were killed and nine surrendered to the Greeks.
The partisans then took these prisoners
to a location in the mountains where
there was a sink-hole ninety feet in depth
with the intent to shoot them there and dump
the bodies in the hole. But they were tied
together, and the first, when shot, fell in
the hole and dragged the next man after him,
and so on till they all fell in. From moans,
the Cretans knew that some were still alive.
Andonis Paterakis volunteered
to belay down and give the coup de grace.
But half way down, the rope that held him broke,
he fell, was injured, found himself among
the Germans, one of whom remarked to him,
So, Greco, now we die together. Now
Perkins, despite his wound, was lowered down
and finished off the wounded Germans, then
came up with Paterakis on his back.
That night a butcher in the partisans
dug out the bullet with his Cretan knife.
A few months later, Perkins fell into
an ambush, and was shot before he could
reach for his weapon. He was twenty nine.
His rough andartes wept when they were told,
and women came for years to deck the grave
of ‘the unforgettable Vasili.’
Through 1942 and 43
the German troops continued their rampage,
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across the island, leaving in their wake
dead hostages and burning villages,
ransacking homes and stealing sheep and goats.
How many Cretans did the Germans kill?
Some say three thousand, some say twenty-five.
They offered big rewards for turning in
soldiers or agents, but with small success.
The Germans sent out spies in battle dress
who posed as British soldiers on the run
to try to trap the people helping them.
The Cretan villagers were seldom fooled
and they would thrash these men like donkeys first
then hand them over to a German post.
There were a few ‘bad Greeks’ who would betray
Resistance members but their last reward
was often dealt them by a Cretan knife.
Some Germans treated Cretans well, brought food,
and so were welcome in the villages.
Some Cretan women fell in love with men
from German regiments, who sometimes
deserted and were hidden by the villagers.
Patrick Leigh Fermor trained with SOE;
a writer, artist, linguist, twenty-seven,
he came by sea to Crete and organized
a section of guerrilla combatants.
His Greek was excellent. In Cretan guise
he’d spend an evening in the kafeinon
carousing happily with German troops.
By 1944 he was convinced
some act was needed to increase morale
among the Cretans, and to strike a blow
against the enemy. The idea
he formulated was the kidnapping
of General Kriepe, the commandant of Crete.
He and his colleague Stanley Moss, disguised
as German military police, flagged down
the general’s car, knocked out the driver, forced
the general to the floor and calmly drove
through twenty checkpoints, slowing down enough
for sentries to salute. Abandoning the car,
they went on foot across Mount Ida through
the snow, and rendezvoused with their HQ.
The Germans sent two thousand troops to search
for them, as well as spotter planes, and threw
a cordon round the mountain the next day.
The British team holed up in mountain caves
and radioed to Cairo. They got through
the cordon with their prisoner and late
one night were picked up by a British launch
and taken off to Alexandria.
The exploit had a salutary effect
on the morale of Cretans. People say
that almost every man on Crete claimed to
have taken part in Kriepe’s kidnapping.
The war was going sour for Germany;
in Italy, in France, at Stalingrad
the Germans were forced back into retreat.
In Crete, they now decided to withdraw
to strongly held positions round Haniá;
before they did so, they sent out their troops
across the island, burning villages,
adding a