Kidnap in Crete (41 page)
Authors: Rick Stroud
‘All the while the group was’: Moss,
Moonlight
,
p.
118
.
| | ‘General Heinrich Kreipe’: NA/HS 5 / 671 . |
| | ‘The night duty officer’: BBC internal inquiry into what happened to the SOE request for a transmission 8 May 1944 . NA/HS 5 / 671 . |
‘At
8
.
30
the next morning’: Miss Barker was an important figure in the BBC internal inquiry. Her trip from the World’s End in SW
3
is a fiction which I have used to give a feel for the state of London after four years of war, and the Blitz and later bombing. Miss Barker’s journey is based on interviews with BBC employee Betty Willingale, who worked for the Corporation during the war and went on to become a distinguished television producer.
‘
Festungskommmandant General Oberst
’: NA/HS
5
/
671
.
‘At the same time’: ibid.
| | ‘By now a frustrated’: ibid. |
| | ‘Dearest Paddy, the word’: NLS/PLF/ 13338 / 6 . |
| | ‘The Kapitan shook his head’: Frangoulitakis, NLS/PLF/ 13338 / 30 . |
‘The group set off in daylight’: ibid.
‘Tsikritsis showed the leaflet’: ibid.
‘The general’s state of mind’: ibid.
| | ‘They made their’: Moss, unpublished diary. |
| | ‘The Cretans worried’: ibid. |
| | ‘Scuttlegeorge was impressed’: ibid. |
| | ‘What are you doing’: NLS/PLF/ 13338 / 1 . |
| | ‘At the same time’: Paterakis, CEMA. |
| | ‘Giorgios Psychoundakis was with Barnes’: Psychoundakis, The Cretan Runner , p. 268 . ‘In the late afternoon’: NLS/PLF/ 13338 / 5 . |
| ‘the Germans set up’: Frangoulitakis, NLS/PLF/ 13338 / 30 . |
| | ‘In his diary he fumed’: Moss, unpublished diary, IWM, 05 / 74 / 1 . |
| | ‘On 5 May, Tyrakis’: NLS/PLF/ 13338 / 1 . |
‘Eventually Psychoundakis tracked’: Psychoundakis, p.
267
.
| | ‘Moving a wireless station’: Fielding, Hide and Seek , p. 133 . |
‘Leigh Fermor asked that Psychoundakis’: Psychoundakis, p.
268
.
| | ‘Psychoundakis returned the next day’: NLS/PLF/ 13338 / 1 . |
| | ‘This was a comic improvisation’: Psychoundakis, p. 269 . |
‘At Cairo the SOE’: NA/HS
5
/
671
.
| | ‘Dear Billy, All’: NLS/PLF/ 13338 / 6 . |
| | ‘Moss wrote in his diary’: Moss, unpublished diary. |
‘When Kreipe heard this’: ibid.
‘After this outburst’: See Powell,
The Villa Ariadne
, p.
177
. Kreipe did not like Moss. He told Dilys Powell that: ‘Paddy, I liked Paddy, but Moss, always with his pistol, it was childish.’ He also claimed that Moss hit him with a rifle butt during the kidnap moments. This is unlikely, because Moss was on the opposite side of the car dealing with the driver and taking control of the vehicle; he was not armed with a rifle.
| | ‘Manolis Paterakis began’: Paterakis, CEMA. |
‘The brazen and criminal’: Cooper,
Patrick Leigh Fermor
,
Kindle edition.
| | ‘It was the local raki factory’: Moss, Moonlight , p. 143 . |
| | ‘Leigh Fermor, Tyrakis’: Harokopos, p. 164 . |
‘Dear Paddy, have already’: original signal NLS/PLF/
13338/31
.
| | ‘In the afternoon’: Harokopos, p. 169 . |
| | ‘A few days before’: Frangoulitakis, ‘The Eagles of Mount Ida’, MS, NLF/PLF. |
| | ‘The SOE officers told’: Harokopos, p. 185 . |
‘They walked towards the rising moon’: NLS/PLF/
13338
/
31
.
| | ‘Taking no chances’: A few months later, Antonis Zoidakis was wounded and captured at exactly the same spot. German soldiers knocked him to the ground, tied his feet to the back of a lorry and drove off, dragging him for four miles. His flayed and unrecognisable body was left by the road, a warning to others. |
| | ‘After a while he began’: Moss, unpublished diary. |
‘Moss took a’: Moss, unpublished diary.
| | ‘The tensions of the last’: Moss, Moonlight , p. 162 . |
| | ‘An hysterical, feminine’: Moss, diary. |
| | ‘In an attempt to warm’: Moss, Moonlight , p. 166 . |
| | ‘Leigh Fermor talked’: Moss, unpublished diary. |
| | ‘Most of the men had fair hair’: NLS/PLF/ 13338 / 31 . |
‘The party sat overlooking’: ibid.
| | ‘You must be pleased’: ibid. |
‘They were in a tiny’: ibid.
| | ‘“Bloody fools,” replied Ciclitira’: author interview with Paul Ciclitira. |
| | ‘The men heading for Egypt’: ibid. |
‘Surprisingly many of the andartes’: Paterakis, CEMA.
| | ‘The weary Cretans’: Paterakis, CEMA. |
‘Around mid-morning a klaxon’: NLS/PLF/
13338
/
1
.
| | ‘The reception party watched’: Moss, Moonlight , p. 182 . |
| | ‘They found the Cretans’: author interview with Paul Ciclitira. |
| | ‘The Cretans were moved’: Harokopos, p. 226 . |
‘On
19
May a signal’: NA/HS
5
/
418
.
| | ‘The general’s debriefing provides’: NA/WO 208 / 4208 . |
| | ‘A long time after’: Sweet-Escott, Baker Street Irregular , p. 198 . |
‘“Oh we’ve got boxes”’: Smith-Hughes letter to Leigh Fermor, NLS/PLF/
13338
/
19
.
25
Moss and the Battle of Damastas Bridge
| | ‘A modern doctor’: I am grateful to Dr Richard Staughton MA, MB, BChir., FRCP, Emeritus Consultant Dermatologist, for this diagnosis. |
‘He received the medal’: author interview with Prof. N. M. J. Woodhouse, MSc PhD.
| | ‘From the start Ilias’: Athanassakis/Mamalakis, CEMA. |
‘In the end Moss received’: ibid.
‘The reality was that the letter’: George Tyrakis/Mamalakis, CEMA.
‘He returned to his’: Moss,
A War of Shadows
, p.
20
.
| | ‘On 7 August’: Harokopos, p. 242 . |
| | ‘At the same time’: Mamalakis. |
‘The group carried Hawkins’: ibid.
‘He carried a camera’: ibid.
| | ‘The armoured car rumbled’: ibid. |
| | ‘The battle of Damastas Bridge’: the remains of some of the men who died in the battle have recently been discovered in the area. One of them is thought to be the Russian Vanya – Mamalakis. |
| | ‘When Moss got to Cairo’: Moss, Shadows, p. 65 . |
| | ‘A captured German agent’: Beevor, Crete: The Battle and the Resistance . |
| | ‘General Benthack . . . contacted’: ibid. |
‘When Ciclitira offered’: author interview with Paul Ciclitira.
‘In a surreal moment’: ibid.
| | ‘In his final report’: Lt. Col. T. J. Dunbabin, Final Report on SOE Missions in Crete, NA/HS 5 / 724 . |
‘Leigh Fermor and Ralph Stockbridge’: Stockbridge interview with Mamalakis. There was an interesting incident when Mr Mamalakis was driving Stockbridge round Crete and told him that he had some SOE weapons in the boot of his car. Stockbridge’s response was disapproving, he said: ‘That was what Paddy and the SOE liked, not us in the ISLD.’
| | ‘His friend Xan Fielding wrote’: Fielding, Hide and Seek , Kindle edition. |
| | ‘a German intelligence officer’: quoted in Harokopos, The Abduction , pp. 217 – 18 . |
