Crete: The Battle and the Resistance (48 page)

At Meskla, an ELAS group cornered and killed eight 'Schuberaios'. The Germans decided to disband the Jagdkommando Schubert.

On 24 March, when Sandy Rendel was away on his rounds, Paddy Leigh Fermor was startled by the arrival of more figures muffled against the cold. He again recognized characters from his time with Bandouvas the year before. These were the three leading Communists who all now led their own bands: Yanni Bodias in Heraklion; Samaritis, the ELAS leader in Lasithi, 'a bitter, sneering man'; and Mitsos O Papas, a most likeable and brave individual, famous for having sunk a ship single-handed.

They had come to discuss the National Bands Agreement, which Monty Woodhouse had arranged on the mainland between ELAS and the non-Communist group EDES (see Appendix D). They wanted arms for their men, and Leigh Fermor said that he would make a recommendation to Cairo. He acknowledged that their demand was justified, but privately he feared that an unrestricted supply of arms would be dangerous if relations between ELAS and EOK deteriorated.

Finally, after all attempts at a parachute drop had been abandoned in mid-March, the rest of the team arrived from Egypt at Tsoutsouro on the night of 4 April. As sopn as their gear had been rowed ashore from the motor launch by dinghy, four Luftwaffe deserters were sent on board together with a typist from the German headquarters at Hierapetra called Antonia, who had provided the resistance with vital information.

Leigh Fermor and Rendel were on the beach to welcome the late arrivals: Captain William Stanley Moss, a very good-looking young captain in the Coldstream Guards, Manoli Paterakis, that formidable fighter and ex-gendarme from the Selino district, and George Tyrakis, a Cretan from the Amari valley who had worked closely with SOE from the start. Both Paterakis and Tyrakis had done the Ramat David parachute course with Paddy Leigh Fermor. Also at the rendezvous were Gregori Khnarakis, who in September 1942 rescued Sergeant Jo Bradley when his aeroplane was shot down, and Antoni Papaleonidas. Two goats were slaughtered for breakfast once everyone had trudged inland to a safe spot.

Leigh Fermor, after a total of exactly seventeen months on the island, now felt almost Cretan himself.

He had been saddened by the Viannos disaster of the previous September and wanted to mount a bloodless coup against the Germans which might unify rival factions in an operation that was at least as much Cretan as British — despite the fiction to avoid reprisals that it was mounted entirely from Egypt.

When he briefed the group later, he told them that their target, Major General Müller, the commander of the Sebastopol Division responsible for so much blood and misery, had been replaced by Major General Heinrich Kreipe, an officer from the Russian front about whom little was known. 'As far as the ultimate effect of our plan was concerned', Moss wrote later, 'we supposed that one general was as good a catch as any other.' SOE at that time thought that Müller had been transferred to the Dodecanese, when he had in fact replaced General Bräuer in Canea as Commander of the Fortress of Crete. In any case the plan was based on carrying out the abduction in the relatively open country of the headquarters at Arkhanes, or at his residence, the Villa Ariadne at Knossos, John Pendlebury's prewar base.

Two days after the landing, Leigh Fermor and his party met up with Athanasios Bourdzalis, an old-fashioned kapitan from Asia Minor who despite his years was an irregular fighter of great strength. They discussed the possibility of using his
andartes
as a defence force during the abduction in case of mishap.

The party from Egypt had settled themselves at Kastomonitza, to which Miki Akoumianakis came from Heraklion by bus. Although his town clothes may have looked out of place in a mountain village of Cretans in boots and baggy breeches, Akoumianakis was in many ways the most important member of the team. Not only did he know the area round Knossos better than anyone, having been brought up there, but he had even managed to cultivate the General's driver and spend a night in the Villa Ariadne. Akoumianakis was very collected when faced with sudden danger. On one of the reconnaissances for this operation he found that he had offered a German sergeant an English cigarette from the supplies which came in by launch. As the German stared at the packet in amazement, Akoumianakis casually apologized for offering him English cigarettes, and added that they came from the black market, so they were no doubt captured stock.

The main party had to hide in a cave for a week while Paddy Leigh Fermor and Miki Akoumianakis went off to study the route between the German headquarters at Arkhanes and the Villa Ariadne at Knossos — 'Theseus House' in the very insecure code of the British Military Mission. Leigh Fermor wanted to seize Kreipe in the Villa Ariadne itself, but Akoumianakis persuaded him against the idea.

The house and grounds were heavily guarded and surrounded by double apron wire. During their tour of inspection of the district, they saw General Kreipe drive past and could not resist waving. He looked astonished and waved back. This gave them the idea of carrying the general off in his own car.

Having agreed upon the ambush site — where the Arkhanes road joins the Heraklion—Kastelli road

— Miki Akoumianakis then left to collect a pair of German .uniforms for the two Englishmen. Leigh Fermor returned to the cave on 19 April, Easter Sunday, with Akoumianakis's lieutenant, Elias Athanassakis, a student, who then went back to Knossos to watch the Villa Ariadne. In Leigh Fermor's absence, the party had been joined by some Russian prisoners escaped from a road-gang.

Billy MOM, whose mother was a White Russian, was entranced with the idea of creating a force out of Red Army deserters, but the Russians were later sent off to another hideout. Three other Cretans who would be of much greater use in the circumstances — Nikos Komis, Dmitiri Tzatzas and lastly Pavlos Zographistos, who owned a vineyard conveniently near the vital road junction — were recruited at about this time.

Leigh Fermor and Moss decided that they did need Bourdzalis and his
andartes
as a blocking force in case reinforcements arrived. A runner left with a message, and two days later Bourdzalis and his fourteen
andartes
arrived at, the rendezvous having completed a fast day's march. But three days later, after the operation was postponed for the second time, local peasants spotted Bourdzalis's men who were strangers in the neighbourhood, and the
andartes
had to be sent home. At the last moment, two more Cretans were recruited: Antoni Zoidakis, an old friend of Leigh Fermor's, and Stratis Saviolakis, both gendarmes. This brought the group to eleven in all. But even with their Marlin sub-machine guns they could only have put up a brief resistance if a truckload of soldiers had arrived at the wrong moment.

On three consecutive days they waited until evening, then had to stand down because the General returned to the Villa Ariadne before dusk. On the fourth day, 25 April, waiting for nightfall, rain began to fall. This forced them to move from their hiding place in the old river-bed, because villagers came in search of snails. But on 26 April the General had not appeared by the time it grew dark, so they swallowed their benzedrine tablets and took up position near the road junction.

After numerous false alarms, the General's car came in sight at 9.30. Elias Athanassakis, the student, had spent days and nights studying the car and the shape of its headlights. He gave the signal, and several hundred yards down the road an electric bell connected by wire rang near where Leigh Fermor and Moss waited in their German uniforms.

They stepped out into the middle of the road to wave the car to a halt. They went up to it, one on each side. Leigh Fermor flashed his torch on the General inside and demanded to see his papers. The driver protested impatiently, whereupon they wrenched open the doors. Moss coshed the driver with a life-preserver, then the Cretans behind dragged him out on to the road. On the other side, while Leigh Fermor covered General Kreipe with his Colt and pulled him out, Manoli Paterakis and two of the others grabbed and handcuffed him. Miki Akoumianakis, carried away by the intensity of the moment, yelled into the face of this senior representative of the men who had killed his father:
Was wollen sie
in Kreta?'

Moss took the wheel, and the General was bundled back in on the floor at the rear, where he was sat on by Tyrakis, Paterakis and Saviolakis. The whole operation had taken less than a minute. Paddy Leigh Fermor, having put on the General's forage hat, sat in front and, bidding goodbye to the rest of the group with whom they would rendezvous on Mount Ida, they drove off towards Heraklion. As they approached the Villa Ariadne, the sentries on the gate presented arms, only to see the staff car sweep past.

Miki Akoumianakis had kept away from the driver's side, because he did not want to be recognized by the man he had befriended. Afterwards, however, when two of the band were about to lead the driver off — the plan was to meet on Mount Ida — he sensed they might disobey Leigh Fermor's strict instructions not to kill him. The objective of the operation was to achieve a dramatic, yet bloodless, coup which could not justify any reprisals against Cretan civilians. Akoumianakis reminded them of this and also emphasized that the man had helped them, even if unwittingly. Later, he discovered that they had taken the driver a few kilometres and found a spot where his body could be hidden. They had allowed him a last quick look at a snapshot of his family by the light of a shaded torch, then cut his throat because of the need for silence.

Not long after passing the astonished sentries outside the Villa Ariadne, they reached the heavily guarded gates of Heraklion. Moss slowed down to give the sentries time to see the pennants on the front of the car, then Leigh Fermor in front wearing Kreipe's cap shouted
'Generals Wagen!'
from the window. Inside Heraklion the evening crowds in the streets prevented them from advancing at much more than walking pace. All the time they were afraid that an off-duty soldier would stare in through the windows. And they still had to leave by the Canea Gate, the most heavily guarded of all. But thanks to the pennants on the car, the General's hat and the German soldier's automatic respect for authority, they passed through with Leigh Fermor acknowledging the salutes.

On the Rethymno road at Yeni Gave (now called Drosia) the car stopped and the party split. Moss and two Cretans escorting the General, now unbound, set off on foot towards Anoyia on the northern slope of Mount Ida. Paddy Leigh Fermor carried on with George Tyrakis to dump the car as close to the coast as possible to suggest that the party had already left by submarine. On the front seat he placed a sealed letter addressed to the German command announcing that the operation had been carried out entirely from Cairo with British officers and members of His Hellenic Majesty's forces based there, so no form of reprisal against the local population would be justified. For good measure, various articles of British manufacture were also left in the car. Leigh Fermor and Tyrakis then snapped off the car's pennants and carried them off as souvenirs.

Moss and his party escorting the General walked up to a hideout near Anoyia, where they spent the rest of the night. The General was greatly preoccupied by the loss of his Knight's Cross which must have come off during the struggle. Next morning they had to hide in a cave when warned that German search parties had already arrived in the area. Fieseier Storch reconnaissance planes flew with an exasperating slowness round and round the flanks of Mount Ida, from time to time dropping hastily printed leaflets threatening the destruction of villages if the General were not handed over.

Paddy Leigh Fermor and George Tyrakis only reached Anoyia at dawn. Leigh Fermor's German uniform provoked looks of intense hatred. Men turned their backs, women spat and slammed windows shut, and the Cretan call to warn of the presence of the enemy — 'The Black Cattle have strayed into the wheatfield' — heralded his progress up the street. For both men it was a strange sensation. They went to the priest's house, where the wife of Father Skoulas, the parachute priest, vigorously refused to admit them until finally convinced that this figure in the hated uniform was indeed her husband's friend.

That night, fed and cared for in every way, the two of them set off into the mountains to join up with the rest of the party. Then together they went on to the hideout of Mikhali Xylouris's band where a British trio of Tom Dunbabin's group led by a cavalry subaltern, John Houseman, awaited them eagerly.* The next day, 28 April, the party trudged up and over the snowcap of Mount Ida, a gruelling climb. On the way, an escort from Petrakageorgis's band turned up to take over from Xylouris's men.

Scouts went on ahead because large German detachments were said to have moved into the Amari valley ahead of them.

* Xylouris had taken over the leadership of the Anoyian band in the previous winter after the Germans had shot their kapitan, Stephanoyannis Dramoudanis.

That night, as they hid in a huge labyrinthine cave used by the klephts fighting the Turks, it seemed as if everything had begun to go wrong. Dunbabin had gone to ground with a bad bout of malaria, and could not be contacted. The wireless set at his hideout failed to work, so they could not confirm the rendezvous on the coast at Saktouria with a motor launch. Runners were sent off in different directions — to Sandy Rendel in the east; to Dick Barnes, the officer in charge of the Rethymno area, on the north coast; and to Ralph Stockbridge of ISLD who was also near Rethymno — with copies of the message for Cairo.

Kreipe became increasingly depressed. He could imagine only too well the jokes likely to be made at his expense in officers' messes. (With dreadful irony, his promotion to Lieutenant General, for which he had waited so long, came through the day after his disappearance.) Uncertain about the state of the German cordon round the Mount Ida region, the party moved down the mountain. A fortunate misreading of a note advising them not to move led them to break through the German line at night during a downpour. They spent several days in a thicket of saplings dripping from intermittent rain. The only consolation at the time was to hear that there had been no reprisals, despite the threatening leaflets.