Patrick Leigh Fermor: An Adventure

by Artemis Cooper

  More bad news was brought by the two Antonis and Grigori, who had been responsible for escorting the General’s driver. From the outset, Alfred Fenske was so badly concussed that he could scarcely walk; and when truckloads of Germans started moving in open order across the landscape, his abductors realized they had no choice but to kill him. The enemy were too close to risk a shot, so – Antoni Ziodakis made a slicing gesture across his throat. Deeply shaken, Paddy feared that Fenske’s death had cursed the whole enterprise. As for the General, he was never informed. When he asked what had happened to his driver, he was told that Fenske was ill but was being looked after in hiding.fn1

  Paddy, Billy and the General shared a blanket that night, with Manoli and George on either side, nursing their guns and taking it in turn to sleep. They had hoped to have additional clothes and blankets delivered by Pavlos Zographistos, who had undertaken to bring up the rest of their kit; but they never saw him or the kit again. No one slept well that night, and as dawn broke and the sun illuminated the great snow-streaked hump of Mount Ida, the General murmured a line in Latin: ‘Vides ut alta stet nive candidum Soracte …’

  It was one of the few Odes of Horace that Paddy knew by heart, and which he had translated at school. Taking up where the General had left off, he went on to the end of the poem.

  The General’s blue eyes swivelled away from the mountain-top to mine – and when I’d finished, after a long silence, he said: ‘Ach so, Herr Major!’ It was very strange. ‘Ja, Herr General.’ As though, for a long moment, the war had ceased to exist. We had both drunk at the same fountains long before; and things were different between us for the rest of our time together.10

  This was one of the defining moments of Paddy’s war, the one he was most fond of recalling in interviews. In A Time of Gifts and ‘Abducting a General’,fn2 Paddy sets the scene in the cave of Mihali Xylouris. From this area, honeycombed with caves, the rising sun in spring strikes Mount Ida at a breathtaking angle. On a later occasion, however, Paddy said he had only used Xylouris’s cave for convenience: the event had actually taken place in a cave near Aghios Ioannis in the Amari.

  Climbing ever higher, they left the protection of Mihali Xylouris and, in a few hours, a friendly shout told them they were now in the territory of Kapetan Petrakogeorgis. Here they were given food and guides, as well as news of considerable enemy activity. The Germans had not fallen for the story that the General had been evacuated by submarine. They thought it far more likely that the abductors were holding him in the mountains, and that their goal was the south coast. German patrols were pouring into the southern foothills to cut them off. Yet for all their strength the enemy clung to well-known trails, and never ventured far into the mountains where they knew andarte snipers lay in wait.

  Antoni Ziodakis left the team and went on ahead; he planned to cross the watershed and find a place on the southern slope where they could all meet up, somewhere near the village of Nithavri. With the Germans busy making a cordon round Mount Ida, it would not be easy. Antoni was accompanied by two runners to take messages back to the main party, and it was agreed that bonfires would be used to guide the team to the rendezvous.

  When the rest of the team set off again, it was dark and the way became considerably steeper. The General’s mule had to be sent back, and the party had to continue on foot ‘up a slippery and collapsing staircase of loose boulders and shale and scree’.11 The General made the ascent with agonizing slowness, having to stop every ten minutes. Billy and Paddy thought he was doing well, for he did not complain and had he refused to go on, things might have been considerably harder. The Cretans, however, thought he was dragging his feet. Perhaps they expected too much, accustomed as they were to the wiry agility of their own fathers; but they did little to hide their ill-feeling. Except for Manoli, the General stayed out of their way. He sensed that if anything happened to Paddy or Billy, there were others in the party who would happily slit his throat or push him down a crevasse.

  For Kreipe, being on the other side of the occupation was an eye-opener. He had had no idea that the Cretans and the British were working so closely together, and he was appalled by how many of his captors had German papers, giving them permission to travel about. When George Tyrakis wanted to go and see his parents in Phourphoura and asked if anyone could lend him an identity pass, two or three were immediately produced. The incident was recorded by Giorgios Phrangoulitakis (known as Skoutello, or Scuttlegeorge), who joined the team in early May and later wrote his war memoirs: ‘The General turned to Lifermos and said, “Have they all got our identity papers? See what people we have to deal with!” Lifermos translated it to us and we all laughed.’12

  The trees thinned out and vanished altogether. As they crossed the saddle of Mount Ida, ‘mist surrounded us and rain began to fall. We stumbled on, bent almost double against the blast …’ The descent, as steep as a ladder in places, was even worse. ‘It was appalling going for everyone; for the General, in spite of our help, it must have been an excruciation. There was not a glimmer of Antoni’s guiding fires in the dark void below.’13

  They took shelter in a cave, which proved to be ‘a measureless natural cavern that warrened and forked deep into the rocks, and then dropped, storey after storey to lightless and nearly airless stallactitic dungeons littered with the horned skeletons of beasts which had fallen there and starved to death in past centuries …’14 Billy was sure it must be the legendary cave supposed to be the childhood home of Zeus, and it says much for his energy and Paddy’s that they ventured to explore it at all. Since they had left Petrakogeorgis they had eaten nothing but a little bread and cheese given them by a friendly shepherd, and since then nothing but wild herbs. It was the last day of April. On that night, and the one after, the BBC announced that General Kreipe had been captured and ‘is being taken off the island’. Considering their circumstances, a past tense would have been more helpful. The RAF leaflets, which Paddy was waiting for so eagerly, never materialized.

  The kidnappers were hiding in the cave when they received a message from Antoni: ‘In God’s Name come tonight.’ They set off after dark, hoping the thick mist and pouring rain would keep them hidden since there was no hope of seeing any fire. On reaching the rendezvous, they found no sign of Antoni. After several anxious hours, they pulled out the message again. A second reading revealed, ‘In God’s Name don’t come tonight.’15 They spent the day in a ditch about half an hour from the village of Aghia Paraskevi, with the rain still pouring down. George went to the village and fetched Antoni, who could not believe what they had done: against all the odds, they had somehow stumbled through the German lines in the dark. George and Antoni returned to the group, carrying a huge basket of much-needed food and wine.

  They were now in the Amari: a valley high above sea level, contained by the slopes of Mount Kedros to the west and Mount Ida to the east. Along the valley lay a string of villages, known for their loyalty to the resistance. All of them had provided clothes, food and hiding places to Allied soldiers after the Battle of Crete, and now did the same for the kidnappers. There was some good news: no villages had been burnt, even though more than three days had passed since the abduction. On the afternoon of 2 May a German plane came over, dropping leaflets. ‘It had now been ascertained, we read, that the kidnapping was the work of “hired tools of the treacherous British and the Bolsheviks. Those who were responsible would be mercilessly hunted down and destroyed.”’16 This was a terrific relief to Paddy, for it seemed to exonerate the Cretans from having taken part in the abduction.

  The enemy were everywhere, although reports of their positions and strength were shifting and contradictory. Messengers brought news that German troops were swarming around the lower folds of Mount Ida, calling ‘Kreipe! Kreipe!’ as they went. The team did not tell the General how close his compatriots were, in case he tried to make a break for it: he was feeling very downcast at the thought that they were making almost no effort to find him. Paddy and Billy still had no ide
a what had happened to the messages they had sent from Xylouris’s cave, asking for a motor launch for their evacuation. If only they could find Tom Dunbabin, he could put them in touch with the other wireless stations.

  Tom later claimed that, having sent his set and operator to Paddy at Xylouris’s cave, he went down with an attack of malaria and was obliged to lie low till he had recovered. Paddy had his doubts. Though kept informed, Dunbabin had not been party to the plan when it was hatched in Cairo; it was not necessarily an escapade he would have approved of, and as head of station he might have stopped it. Yet he did not, and later wrote a report that expressed no reservations about its success. But while that success still hung in the balance, Paddy had the feeling that Tom did not want to be too closely identified with the abduction.

  Yet if the messages had got through and the launch were preparing to meet them on 2 May, then it could already be lying to off the coast. It might still be possible to evacuate the General. The night of 2 May was hard to bear. Everyone lay awake in an agony of suppressed excitement, hoping against hope that a messenger would arrive to say that the launch was waiting.

  No runner came, and by the next day it was too late. A force of two hundred Germans had moved into Saktouria. The beach was now unusable, and their way to the south coast was blocked. Billy Moss and Paterakis were once more left to guard the General, while Paddy and Tyrakis set off to try and locate another wireless and gather information about other possible beaches. They spent the first night in George’s village of Phourphoura. No sooner had Paddy and George left than Billy received two messages: one from Dick Barnes, the other from Sandy Rendel. The launch would indeed be there for the next four nights, though it seemed increasingly unlikely that the party would be able to reach the south coast in safety.

  Paddy and George headed northwards through the Amari valley. Being able to move freely in bright sunshine made everything look better, but their cheerful mood did not last. On 4 May, at about noon, the Amari valley shook with a noise like distant thunder as four villages were razed to the ground. The following day, an announcement appeared in the German-controlled newspaper Paratiritis, listing a series of ‘crimes’ that had unleashed this punishment:

  The brazen and criminal deeds of the outdoor bandits who abducted and spirited away General Kreipe brought about the inevitable measures against these elements; elements guilty of illegal activities against the security of the occupation forces and the general peace of the area … Especial severity has been brought to bear on three mountain regions in the Heraklion area … The villages of Lochria, Kamares and Margarikari were surrounded by German troops on 3 May 1944 and emptied in the course of a large-scale operation waged against the bandits of Mount Ida. After the evacuation of the villagers the villages themselves were razed to the ground.

  Reasons for the destruction were given in detail. These villages had ‘adopted a treacherous posture’ to the occupying forces, and had given food, shelter and every possible help to the ‘bandits’ Petrakogeorgis, Bandouvas and other andartes. Not only that, but the villagers had turned out in force for the funeral of Petrakogeorgis’s mother. This showed that the Germans had plenty of other grudges against these villages, apart from the abduction. Yet the Kreipe Operation was so theatrical, so celebrated both in Crete and abroad, that many saw it as the chief cause for the reprisals.

  While Paddy was trying to make contact with Dick Barnes and his wireless station, the presence of more and more Germans in the area forced the General’s captors to move on. In Patsos they found shelter in a stone-walled hut, surrounded by trees and built against the side of a cliff. The place belonged to the Haracopos family, who gave them food and wine in abundance though they were far from rich. They had a son, George, who spoke a little English and was involved in the resistance: he wanted to go to Cairo, so as to train and join the Greek brigades in Egypt.

  On 8 May a message arrived from Paddy. A contingent of Raiding Forces, under George Jellicoe, was due to land on the Saktouria beach to contact the abductors and, if necessary, help them to fight their way off the island. Paddy had signalled Cairo to say that this force had to be stopped at all costs, for Saktouria was now held by a strong enemy force.

  Paddy joined Billy the following night, and next morning came a message to say that the raiding party had been postponed. Their communications with Cairo were now re-established, and the runners – particularly George Psychoundakis – were covering huge distances to bring the messages while their news was still fresh. Yet they still had to find an isolated beach, at a time when the Germans were reinforcing the south coast with more and more men. Psychoundakis contacted a friend, who undertook to find a cove free of Germans. For the moment, all they could do was to stay out of sight and move westwards.

  Before leaving Patsos, Paddy approached their host, Efthymios Haracopos, and tried to give him some money. The family had been more than generous, and Paddy was taking his only son to Egypt. The General, who had been watching this scene, was impressed by the way the old man flatly refused payment. Over the days of his captivity he had seen how the Cretans treated the British as friends, while they loathed the Germans. The contrast had come as a revelation.

  They set off in good spirits, with a mule for the General. They were marching to the village of Photineou when the beast lost its footing and the General was sent tumbling down a steep precipice. He was in considerable pain, and his captors thought he had damaged a shoulder blade. A sling was arranged, which he kept on for the rest of the journey. The cumulative strain of the past week was beginning to tell on some of the others too. Antoni Ziodakis was doubled up with sciatica, while Paddy was beginning to experience a numbness and tingling in his right arm.

  As they approached the south coast they were under the protection of Yanni Katsias, who had returned to Crete on the same boat as Billy, Manoli and George in April. He had a fearsome reputation as a bandit, murderer, and veteran of innumerable vendettas, and was accompanied by two of the shiftiest-looking sheep rustlers the party had ever seen. According to Billy, ‘they moved with such swift silence, such uncanny goat-footed agility, that they appear to do a job which would normally occupy a dozen scouts.’17

  By 11 May the team were outside the village of Vilandredo, a few hours north of Rodakino beach, which – so far – remained undefended. Their hideout was a cave ‘that clung to the mountainside like a martin’s nest’, as Paddy put it.18 The last hour of the climb was particularly hard going: they had to scramble to a point above the cave, and then let themselves down, clinging on to trees and creepers, till their feet found the narrow ledge. Here they were given a wild welcome by Paddy’s godbrother, Stathi Loukakis (during his first months on Crete he and Xan had baptized Anglia, his little daughter) and his brother Stavro. Dennis Ciclitira, who had replaced Xan, was asleep nearby, and his wireless set was a few miles away at Asi Gonia. They got to work at once, writing signals and planning the next stage. With a deserted beach and a functioning wireless nearby, the operation might succeed after all.

  Dennis left the next morning for Asi Gonia, to send the signals. Stathi then moved the party thirty feet higher, to a far more spacious and commodious cave with cushions and coloured blankets, where a spectacular feast was laid on. According to Billy Moss, it was the first bedding they had seen since the abduction; he estimated that none of them had slept more than three to four hours a night in the last two weeks.

  In the late afternoon, the Loukakis brothers came running up to the cave: seven truckloads of Germans – over two hundred men – had just detrucked in Argyroupolis, the old road terminus less than an hour away. Over the next few hours the group moved three times, trying to find better shelter; and it was well after dark when the General stumbled on the path, and fell about twenty feet. Billy described how he raved and swore, then ‘relapsed once more into that whimpering state of self-pity’19 – or, as Paddy put it: ‘Utter depression succeeded the fury unleashed by this last mishap.’20 The night was bitterly cold: the
y gave the General all the coverings they had, and everyone else sat and shivered through the dark hours. At 5 a.m., Stavros and Stathi appeared with bread, cheese and raki. They asked a runner to take a message to Dennis, but the runner refused: it was too dangerous.

  They did not hear from Dennis till mid-morning on the 13th. Whilst there were a great many Germans in the vicinity, he reported, none were too close for comfort. He had also had a message from Cairo: they would try and send a boat the following night but the plan was provisional, subject to confirmation that afternoon. Paddy had another severe attack of what felt like rheumatism: he could now hardly move his right arm, a condition not helped by the bitter cold of the night before.

  The Loukakis brothers brought them food and blankets, so the night of the 13th was more comfortable than the one before. They settled down to sleep, only to be woken at ten o’clock by Dick Barnes, who had arrived in person to give them a message from Cairo. The boat was coming the following night, and would wait for them off Rodakino beach. He gave them a map reference, and the code: the launch would approach only when they flashed the letters ‘S.B.’

  They rose hurriedly, for several hours of darkness had already been lost and the General, battered and bruised from two falls, could not be expected to complete the long march to the beach in a hurry. Once again the team was split, partly to disguise their numbers as they moved over relatively open country. Paddy, Manoli and the General would take the longer, safer route, though it would still be hard going. Billy and the others, led by the sheep-thieves, took the more strenuous and dangerous path, and reached the rendezvous at dawn. It was perched high among the rocks and still several miles from the beach, and afforded a sweeping view of the coast. Just below them was a German coastal garrison behind a barbed wire fence. Through his binoculars, Billy watched them hanging out their washing and playing leapfrog.