Authors: Rick Stroud
The Allies landed on Sicily on 9 July, the start of Operation Husky – the invasion of Italy by land and air. On 24 July the Grand Fascist Council of Italy, meeting for the first time, passed a vote of no-confidence in Mussolini, and invited the exiled King Victor Emmanuel III to reclaim his constitutional powers.
Il Duce
was arrested by the Carabinieri and whisked out of the public eye. He was replaced by Marshal Pietro Badoglio, who started armistice negotiations with the Allies. The alliance between the Italians and the Germans was on the verge of collapse.
The Italian forces occupying Crete, led by General Angelo Carta, were in a difficult position. If there was an armistice they would have to support it. If the Allies invaded Crete General Carta and his men would be caught between the Germans and the Cretan resistance. Carta decided that he needed to get in touch with the guerrillas and SOE as soon as possible and ordered his head of counter-espionage, Captain Franco Tavana, chief of the Deuxième Bureau Siena Division, to contact the British through Mihalis Akoumianakis (codename ‘Minoan Micky’), the head of counter-intelligence for the local elements of Force 133. The first meeting took place at the clinic of a doctor who was a member of the National Organisation of Crete (EOK) which, with the encouragement of the SOE, had evolved from the Supreme Committee of Cretan Struggle (AEAK) founded just after the invasion by Colonel Papadakis and other patriots. Captain Tavana and Micky talked for five hours. General Carta’s message was simple: he wanted the Greeks to consider the Italians as allies against the Germans. He proposed that, should the Germans enter Lasithi in the east, his Italian troops would fight them and hold them up for at least two days to establish a bridgehead for the Allies at the Straits of Selinari, between Heraklion and Lasithi. Carta wanted a quick answer. A message about the proposed landing site was sent via Akoumianakis’s radio to SOE Cairo, who responded: ‘Proposal for the creation of a bridgehead to support a landing is under consideration.’
Micky asked Leigh Fermor to come to Heraklion for a conference with Tavana. He and Micky cycled into Heraklion to the surgery of a dentist Dr Stavrianidis, a member of the resistance. Leigh Fermor had been living rough and had not had a bath for six months; his clothes were filthy. Stavrianidis told his housekeeper to run the agent a bath and to take his clothes and wash them. Franco Tavana arrived, a slim young man wearing a polo shirt and corduroy shorts; Leigh Fermor was dressed in his host’s scarlet silk pyjamas. The Italian and the Englishman spoke in French. Tavana ‘struck me and all our friends in Heraklion as an admirable man’, recalled Leigh Fermor: ‘highly strung, courageous, hated Germans, polished, well educated, a lawyer, unhappily married with an eye for the girls . . .’ The Italian was in an agitated state and at one point seemed close to tears, declaring: ‘
Mon cher ami, permettez moi de vous appeler ami
– My dear friend, allow me to call you friend.’ He went on to explain that he was ‘bound by honour to remain faithful to the alliance with Germany until they make an unfriendly movement’.
On
1
August a signal arrived at SOE in London. It was an ‘unparaphrased version of a most secret cypher telegram’ which had originated from Leigh Fermor. Its importance was indicated by the people who were to read it: the Chiefs of Staff, General Eisenhower and General Alexander.
1) We have received information from Crete that Tavana . . . has contacted British officers and reported that Germans propose disarm Italians. Many large Italian Units have been ordered by Germans to move to Chania and Retimo and senior Italian officers have been ordered to report to Archanes but have not complied as they fear a trap. Carta will refuse to hand over arms and is prepared actively to assist British landing. British officer has requested supplies of demolition materials to destroy bridges and impede German troop movements and considers that Cretans are sympathetic towards Italians.
2
) In view of present situation we consider that only direct support we can give is from the air.
3) We have accordingly instructed agents to act as follows:–
(a) Urge Italians to resist disarmament at all costs.
(b) Inform them to expect support from the air.
(c) Tell Italians to give targets and bomb lines at once.
4
) We have also instructed Political Warfare Executive to conduct propaganda action as follows.
(a) By broadcasting to Cretans in name Commander in Chief instructing them not to rise prematurely but to avoid impeding Italians in any action they may take against Germans.
(b) By leaflets to Italian troops in Crete urging them to resist German attempts to disarmament and informing them that if Germans succeed they will be transported to Germany to work for Germans.
(c) By leaflets to Italians in Rhodes on lines of (b) above and in addition informing them of German actions in Crete and inciting them to make active efforts themselves to disarm Germans.
Leigh Fermor’s signal ended with the words ‘I am moving to Heraklion perhaps Lasithi August first in Italian car and uniform sent by Italian staff to Gerakari – RPT Gerakari – on own responsibility.’
Leigh Fermor did not know that General Carta had also opened negotiations with the formidable Kapitan Bandouvas, Bo-Peep, now leader of the largest guerrilla force on the island. Bandouvas’s headquarters were on a mountain plateau overlooking the province of Viannos. Men were arriving every day from all over the island including shepherds, mountain villagers, priests, students, army officers, two heavily armed monks, escaped British soldiers and a handful of communists. The camp was self-sufficient and boasted rows of huts for accommodation, a baker, a cobbler and an armourer. Bandouvas had 120 men under his direct command and claimed that he could summon over 2,000 more if there was a call to arms.
Carta told Bandouvas that the Italians would collaborate and had already instructed some Italian units to surrender their weapons and ammunition to him. Bandouvas thought that the hour of liberation was at hand. His view was confirmed when Leigh Fermor too promised to supply him with arms and ammunition. On
20
August, a huge drop of arms, ammunition, clothing and other equipment floated from the sky in silver containers. It took a whole day to unpack and distribute the drop. As well as rifles, Bren guns, Sten guns, grenades and quantities of .303 ammunition, some of the containers were packed with British uniforms, enough for Bandouvas to dress his men up as regular British soldiers.
On 8 September the Italian government signed an armistice with the Allies. Bräuer sent German troops into the Lasithi province and redeployed some Italian troops to new locations, trying to break up the Italians’ military cohesion. General Bräuer’s number two, the brutal General Friedrich-Wilhelm Müller, sent out a ‘General Order to all Italian Troops in Crete’. It began ‘The Commander of Fortress Crete has charged me with the defence of the province of Lasithi’. He went on to describe what that meant. The Italians could do one of two things: they could remain loyal to ‘Mussolini’s new government’ and carry on fighting under the command of the German military authorities; or they could hand over their weapons and work on alongside the Germans in non-combatant roles.
The Italians were left in no doubt as to what would happen if they stopped collaborating with their former allies: ‘Whosoever . . . sells or destroys arms of the Italian forces, or whosoever deserts from his unit, will be considered a
franc-tireur
and as such shot.’
When General Carta forwarded this order to his men he wrote: ‘The above is a natural consequence of the situation resulting in the armistice. We are in a besieged fortress. It is therefore essential to follow the orders of the German Command with a sense of realism.’
Bandouvas took the war into his own hands. Thinking that the Allies were only days away from storming ashore and liberating his homeland, he led his newly equipped force on a premature attack which started with the killing of two German soldiers collecting potatoes in a field near Kato Simi. Bandouvas broadcast a call to arms, mobilising the whole province of Heraklion. On the 11th he set an ambush near the village. A German unit was caught unawares and in a fight that went on into the afternoon more than 400 enemy soldiers were killed; many more were wounded and twelve were taken hostage.
Retribution was swift. Under the orders of General Müller,
2
,
0
00 troops of the 65th
Luftlande
(Infantry Division) poured into the area on 12 September. Their orders were to: ‘Destroy Viannos and promptly execute all males beyond the age of 16 as well as everyone who was arrested in the countryside, irrespective of age or gender.’
At first the troops persuaded the villagers that they meant no harm and coaxed some who had fled into the mountains to return. The next day, the
1
3th, the soldiers went berserk. For two days they murdered, raped and tortured villagers. Then they blew up the buildings and set them alight with flame throwers. No one was spared, not children, women or the infirm. A German daily report stated: 44
0
enemy dead, 200 taken hostage and that fresh action was being taken against newly reported enemy concentrations in the area. The survivors were not allowed back into the ruins, nor were they allowed to bury their dead.
The reprisals so terrified the people in the villages surrounding Bandouvas’s headquarters that they refused to continue helping him. Bandouvas sent a message which asked: ‘When are the British landing to help us fight the Germans?’ He realised that the British were not going to land after all. He was now wanted by the Germans, and the Cretans were angry with him for the havoc that he had brought down on them. Bandouvas asked Tom Dunbabin to evacuate him and the remains of his group to Alexandria, something that Dunbabin was only too happy to do.
Leigh Fermor saw that the situation with the Italians was spinning out of control. It was decided to get General Carta off the island as soon as possible. Carta agreed, and, led by Leigh Fermor and the Cretan officer Manolis Paterakis, the party set off across the mountains with several of the Italian’s senior staff. The trek took three days and nights. On the first morning they were woken by a German reconnaissance aircraft. The plane circled the olive groves dropping leaflets with a message in Greek which read:
The Italian General Carta, together with some officers of his staff have fled to the mountains, probably with the intention of escaping from the island. FOR HIS CAPTURE DEAD OR ALIVE IS OFFERED A REWARD OF:
THIRTY MILLION DRACHMA
Carta’s response to the dropped message was: ‘
Ah! Ah! Trente pièces d’argent! C’est toujours un contrat de Judas!
’
He folded the leaflet into his pocket, vowing to reply.
Eventually the fugitive party found their way to a huge cave by the sea where Tom Dunbabin, Bandouvas and forty of his guerrillas were waiting to depart. Bandouvas argued that he and his men should be evacuated first.
In the dark they heard the noise of a motor launch, about a hundred yards off the beach. It was commanded by a Conradian figure, the white-bearded Captain Bob Young. Since the fall of Crete he had put ashore and taken off many SOE operatives in his
1
12-foot motor launch; on its forward deck was mounted a Hotchkiss 3-pounder gun. Calm and unflappable, Young stood on the armour-plated bridge peering through his binoculars, looking for the line of white surf that would tell him he was near the shore and for the Morse code signal flashed by torch that would tell him he was off the right beach.
As soon as the recognition signals were seen, a rubber dinghy splashed into the sea, men clambered aboard and rowed towards the land, paying out a line as they went. A storm was brewing, sending up a swell. Leigh Fermor stood watching on the sand holding a large leather briefcase in his hands which, without Carta’s permission, Franco Tavana had given him. It contained comprehensive details of the defences of Crete. Leigh Fermor was anxious to get aboard, hand them personally to Captain Young, and return to the beach. The wind blew harder, drenching the fugitive party in spray as the dinghy bucked though the waves. Once on board Leigh Fermor went below to hand over the documents. On shore the noise of the sea drowned out the voice of Bandouvas, who was shouting, arguing that he should have been the first to go aboard.
The sea was now very rough and Young decided that it was too risky to hang about so close to shore. He ordered his crew to weigh anchor and head for home. Leigh Fermor came back on deck and realised what was happening. He was being taken to Cairo. Bandouvas stood on the beach, humiliated by his rejection in favour of the Italian general, watching the wake of the launch as it powered south towards the horizon.
It took another month before the another launch appeared to take Bo-Peep to Egypt.When General Bräuer realised that the kapitan had gone he had thousands of leaflets printed and distributed:
17.11.43
APPEAL
The gang leader Bandouvas has abandoned the island altogether with his bodyguard. Thus has Crete been delivered from this paid subject who has caused so much harm to the peaceful population. If so many women have to be widowed and children orphaned, then this criminal is to blame.