Kidnap in Crete (15 page)

Rendel saw what looked like a little puff of smoke leaving the aircraft. The parachute unfurled and the smoke turned into a white canopy, below which dangled a tiny vulnerable-looking marionette. For a second he felt sorry for the little figure floating in the darkness, then he reminded himself that Leigh Fermor was not a man who needed sympathy. The figure got closer and Rendel prepared to stride up and greet him with a Dr Livingstone-style ‘Major Leigh Fermor I presume . . .?' Leigh Fermor took the initiative and shouted: ‘Is it all right down there?'

‘Yes,' shouted Rendel.

The ground rushed up and Leigh Fermor made a perfect landing, rolling on his side and releasing the chute which collapsed on to some of the andartes. The whole party broke into uproar, cheering and clapping, pulling Leigh Fermor to his feet, almost preventing him flashing the ‘safe landing' code to the aircraft. One of the guerrillas shouted in delight: ‘It's Captain
Livermore
.' Leigh Fermor's first request was for water: they had none with them. Overhead the plane banked and began its second run. The wind got up and huge clouds obscured the moon, mist rolled across the plateau. In seconds visibility dropped to zero. The plane circled for forty minutes. The ground party could hear the engines, sometimes loud and near, at other times distant, but not once were they able to see the aircraft itself.

The cloud cover became more and more dense, shrouding the plateau in darkness. The signal fires died, and after nearly an hour the noise of the engines faded away, never to return. Billy Moss, Giorgios Tyrakis and Manolis Paterakis and all the canisters of supplies were on their way back to Brindisi.

Rendel, Leigh Fermor and the guerrillas set off for their hideout. It was a relief to Rendel to have someone to talk to. Leigh Fermor would break off from talking tactics to start a vigorous discussion with Rendel about the relative merits of Stephen Spender and Louis MacNeice. Both men were close friends of Annette Crean. Soon after his arrival, Leigh Fermor wrote a letter to Annette from his new ‘manorial home':

 

Dear Annette,

Well, here we are at the old home, at least I am at the moment but the second we left the car a horrid cloud appeared that stopped Billy Manolis and Giorgios from jumping . . .

It's great fun being back and of course life is just one big whisker, as usual it's very cold and snowy and rather beautiful. Wish you were here. Must stop now as a runner is champing in the snow by the box hedge in the front drive. So God bless you and my love to Nina and all the girls and boys.

Love Paddy.

 

P.S. Sandy is proving wonderful company and we laugh the whole time.

 

At the top of the letter Leigh Fermor drew a map of Crete with an ‘x' showing his location, accompanied by cartoons of German and British officers.

Rendel wrote a letter of his own to Annette:

 

It is absolutely grand to have Paddy with us . . . we have been talking everything from Bloomsbury to Bayswater and Chaucer to Noël Coward – a change from sheep stealing (which however is a romantic and enthralling subject too – carried out with a fine code of honour. You steal sheep in proportion to the nearness or distance of the relationship to the owner . . .)

 

Like many British officers, Rendel did not understand fully the subtleties of sheep stealing on Crete, which could be far from romantic or enthralling. It was a crime that could cause enormous disruption, often ending in death.

Rendel admired the relationship Leigh Fermor had with the guerrillas. One minute he could be in deep discussion about Cretan jackboots, talking knowledgeably about what sort of patch to put on the heel or toe, the next he would be singing Cretan songs with the gusto and accent of a local. One evening two ex-gendarmes appeared dressed in German uniforms and escorting a man they said was a traitor. They had trapped him by pretending to be military police and had ‘arrested' him for black-marketeering. Fooled by the uniforms, the man pulled out papers and said that he was an informer working for them. The papers ordered German troops to cooperate with him and also authorised him to carry a firearm. Too late he realised his mistake, he had confessed his guilt to his own countrymen.

The former gendarmes wanted to interrogate him, which Rendel and Leigh Fermor knew meant torture him; instead they persuaded the policemen to take the man away and shoot him. They sent two others as witnesses to make sure that he was shot quickly and ‘humanely'. The prisoner was a Muslim and asked to be allowed to kneel facing east for his execution. He was shot in the head over a hole at the end of a low cave. His body fell into the void and was never retrieved. In a report to SOE Cairo Leigh Fermor described the man's death as ‘good riddance'.

For the next two months there were many attempts to parachute in the rest of the team. Twice a week Rendel and the others went to the Omalos plateau to wait for an aircraft. Once the plane arrived too late, just after the reception committee had extinguished the fires and were about to move off. The men on the ground raced about trying to relight the fires, an impossible task. The pilot could not see the prearranged flare pattern and flew off.

They had another problem. The pink flare dropped from the RAF Halifax the night Leigh Fermor arrived had aroused the suspicion of the Germans. Hundreds of reinforcements had been moved on to the mountain,
30
0 onto the plain of Lasithi on the opposite side to the hideout and another 500 on the side where the SOE man were hiding. The troops searched and surrounded Tapes, a village on the route to the rendezvous point and where many of the men who were helping organise the landing zone lived. The garrison at the neighbouring village of Kritsa had been increased, and patrols sent out over the plateau itself.

One evening the guerrillas heard shooting and feared the worst. The shots turned out to have come from two German patrols who had run into each other in the darkness and opened fire; two soldiers died and several more were wounded. At dawn the guerrillas had the ‘grim pleasure' of seeing the invaders carrying their injured and dead comrades down the mountain.

After several frustrating weeks the group began to get ner­vous, telling Rendel that it was only a matter of time before the Germans found the hideout. The problem was solved when they received a signal from Cairo saying that the air drop had been cancelled and the rest of the kidnap team was going to be sent in by motor launch. They packed up the cave, hid the radio and moved out.

They soon ran into a patrol of twenty-five Germans, who clearly knew there were guerrillas and possible SOE agents in the area. The soldiers were frightened and made a great deal of noise, crashing into trees and calling to each other in loud voices, not wanting to walk into a firefight. Rendel considered opening fire but decided that this might result in executions and the destruction of one of the neighbouring villages. The party hid until the German patrol detonated three smoke bombs, signalling that they were pulling out. They were nearly discovered several more times on the way to the new hideout, at one point passing within seventy feet of a German ambush, the noise of their passing muffled by the noise of the wind.

Eventually they set up a new headquarters in the Viannos valley, above the village of Malle, one of the villages that had been destroyed by Müller. The hideout was a hollow in the mountainside surrounded by rocks, which made it impossible for the men to be seen from any direction.

Leigh Fermor found the waiting taxing. On
30
March he sent a long signal to the Cretan desk at SOE Cairo:

 

My Operation

This has had many discouraging setbacks in its early stages, both in our lateness in arriving in Crete and the frequent absence of the quarry. But if Bill and the equipment and the other lads arrive tonight it looks as if our chances are as good as ever. Though it looks as if the original Quarry has been replaced so intend to try and get him as soon as possible.

The necessity of my presence in the drop ground excluded my making recces in the snatch area, so don't expect results at once. I am going to try and pull it off however.

 

DROPS

The failure of the RAF to drop the rest of the party during the three [good moon periods] seems quite extraordinary as many of the nights were perfect. I would be glad to understand what kept them back on several perfect nights when their impending arrival [was suddenly cancelled] and why on another perfect night they arrived two hours after moonset, circled for half an hour and then retired. Drops must take place as soon as possible after moonrise leaving a suitable gap for the local population or wandering Huns to clear off. This is in order to leave a good number of night hours for the collection and doing the job of work and my own drop was as near perfect as it could be. Although the weather conditions were the worst we [had experienced]. If fault there is, and to my mind there is, it should be there. The office, laying on late schedules etc backed us up very well for which many thanks. Unfortunately the results seem to prove that until the technique of timing the sorties is improved Feb. and March are not suitable for this sort of infiltration into Crete.

 

Two months had passed since Leigh Fermor parachuted on to the Omalos Plain. March turned into April and spring arrived. As the weather grew warmer the valley round the hideout filled with wild orchids and mountain lilies. Goats roamed the hillsides, the tinkling of their neck bells mingling with the lazy humming of bees. To the west the peaks of Mount Dikti sparkled white with snow. Below the snow line were belts of pine forest and below that the cultivated valley stretched away, terraces of vineyards and olive groves nestling next to strips of young corn. Patches of almond blossom dotted the lower slopes of the hills and far in the distance the deep quiet blue of the Mediterranean. From time to time Allied aircraft appeared, flying over the burnt and charred villages.

After the tension and excitement of waiting for the drop onto the mountain plain, the days at Malle passed in a warm peaceful spring dream. The only near-mishap came one night when Rendel, relishing the silence, was quietly eating raisins given to him earlier in the day by an old lady, who had thrust them into his breast pocket. He lay chewing quietly, gazing at the sky and the stars, feeling ‘sweet and good'. Half asleep, he sensed that some of the raisins were rather rubbery; a split second later he remembered that his breast pocket was where he kept his suicide pills. He spat them out across the room and, in front of his puzzled companions, began to swill water round his mouth. He did not have enough Greek to explain his curious behaviour.

At last a signal arrived giving the time and date of the ­rendezvous. Leigh Fermor suggested that on the way they visit the nearby ‘Monastery of the Twelve Apostles', where the Archimandrite, or abbot, was a good friend of the resistance and allowed them to use his church as a hideout. The young cleric was described by Leigh Fermor as being ‘alert, courageous and amusing'. The three-hour walk took them across a plain studded with young cypress trees and through vineyards and olive groves until they saw the little monastery before them, surrounded by its own fields. Apart from a theological student and a timid nun called Anna, the abbot seemed to live alone and insisted they dine with him. While Anna cooked their food, the group drank raki and were taken into the abbot's bedroom and shown a trapdoor concealed beneath a bed. It led to a cellar where they could hide if an enemy patrol suddenly appeared.

The evening was spent regaling the abbot with news of the war, drinking, smoking and singing, the trapdoor kept open, just in case. The scene was illuminated by the flickering light of a kerosene lamp. Eventually they fell asleep in the hot, smoke-filled room, their snores echoing off the walls.

The next day Rendel sat on the veranda overlooking the monastery orchard, enjoying a glass of sweetened, boiled goat's milk. A line of washing flapped in the wind, left out from the night before. Without warning two German soldiers appeared in the orchard. The washing line hid Rendel, who crept inside and warned the others to hide in the cellar. The theological student bundled their rucksacks down after them, and slid the bed back into place.

Above them the soldiers stamped into the room. The abbot offered them the hospitality of the monastery, apologising for its rough-and-ready state but assuring them that if they cared to sit down he would have a delicious omelette prepared from the freshest eggs. Could he persuade them to take a glass of raki with him?

The Germans sat complaining that the room stank of cigar­ettes. The abbot sent the theological student to the outside entrance of the cellar to fetch the wine. The SOE party waited, a dozen enemy soldiers only inches above their heads. The smell of cooked food drifted through the gaps in the floorboards and they could even see the studs on the soldiers' boots. Every now and then someone above shifted their feet or banged a piece of equipment on the floor, sending small spirals of gritty dust and cobwebs on to the hidden men.

Eventually the patrol stood up and thanked the abbot in solemn, halting Greek. The NCO handed the abbot a ‘certificate' saying that certain elements of the German army had been received and entertained in a friendly and hospitable manner, implying that the man was a good friend of the occupying forces and should receive decent treatment.