Authors: Rick Stroud
15
In the afternoon Micky and Ilias Athanassakis arrived from Heraklion. They brought more black market food and two German uniforms. A resistance worker in the city, Demetrios Balahoutis, had a brother who owned a tailor’s where the Germans got their uniforms mended. The tailor had made up two suits from offcuts and old pieces of uniform lying around his workshop. Micky had also laid his hands on a military police traffic paddle, a circle of tin fastened to a handle, the disc was red on one side and green on the other. The police used it to wave down vehicles.
Under the critical eye of ex-gendarme Manolis Paterakis, Moss and Leigh Fermor tried on the uniforms. The larger of the two jackets had a corporal’s stripes on the sleeve: this one went to Leigh Fermor, the taller of the two men. Micky had found some military decorations and two small cloth cap badges. Leigh Fermor’s jacket had a small round swastika badge pinned just under the left-hand chest pocket. The crowning touch to their disguise was two leather belts with silvered buckles bearing the words ‘
Gott Mit Uns
’ set around an imperial crown. When the staff car was stopped and the two SOE men approached the windows, their buckles would be the most prominent things the driver and the general saw. For good measure the leather scabbards of their lethal British commando daggers were added to the belts, plus holsters for their Colt automatics.
The two men paraded in front of Micky and Manolis. Micky said that Moss looked like a typical disappointed German of
1
944; Moss posed for a photograph and Leigh Fermor said that he looked like an Englishman dressed up as a German propping up the bar at the Berkley. Leigh Fermor was told to shave off his moustache; when he did so Moss found that his companion had a presence that was unnervingly close to the genuine article. They all agreed that, given the cover of night, the uniforms would pass muster, even if the sleeves were a bit short.
They took the uniforms off for Pavlos’s sister to sew on extra bits and pieces, including some campaign ribbons. Her work was interrupted by Pavlos storming up the ladder. A group of German soldiers, possibly a patrol, was heading towards the house. They all waited in the small, stuffy upper room to see what the soldiers wanted. Moss, Leigh Fermor and Paterakis sat on their beds, cocked their weapons and waited for developments. Micky and the others sat with them, unarmed.
The soldiers hammered on the door, shouting for it to be opened. This was followed by the creaking of the hinges as Pavlos opened it and asked what the soldiers wanted. Upstairs the abductors kept their eyes and their guns trained on the entrance. Below them an argument took place, steel-shod boots tramped about on the stone floor as if the owners were looking for something. Then the door slammed, the sound of heavy footsteps followed by silence.
Moss peered through the dusty window. He saw four dust-covered German soldiers slouching away, their rifles over their shoulders, their kit hanging heavily from their belts. The men in the room let go their breath, put away their guns and waited for Pavlos to appear and explain that the Germans had come looking for food. He had persuaded them that there was none to be had.
Later that night Leigh Fermor composed a letter to be left in the car, stressing to the German command that the abduction was a purely British initiative. He wrote:
To the German Authorities in Crete
Gentlemen. Your Divisional Commander, General KREIPE, was captured a short time ago by a British raiding force under our command. By the time you read this both he and we will be on our way to Cairo.
We would like to point out most emphatically that this operation has been carried out without the help of the CRETANS or CRETAN PARTISANS, and the only guides used were serving soldiers of his HELLENIC MAJESTY’S FORCES in the Middle East, who came with us.
Your General is an honourable prisoner of war, and will be treated with the consideration owing to his rank.
Any reprisals against the local population will be wholly unwarranted and unjust.
Auf baldiges Wiedersehen
! [See you soon!]
PATRICK LEIGH FERMOR
Major
WILLIAM STANLEY MOSS
Captain.
P.S. We are very sorry to have to leave this beautiful car behind.
The two men signed the paper and added the imprints of their signet rings for good measure. Then they folded it and put it carefully in a heavy, important-looking envelope.
While the work was going on in the house, Boutzalis and his men sat doing nothing in the gloom and heat of the disused wine press. After twenty-four hours they were getting restless. At first the kapitan only allowed his men out to answer the demands of nature. Before long he found it impossible to stop them crawling through the tiny passage that led to the tempting, bright, green outside world. He argued to himself that they had lookouts posted and were not likely to be surprised by a German patrol, so he too came out of hiding, followed by all the others.
It is difficult to keep a secret in any rural community, and no more so than on Crete, where even the most deserted, scrubby hillside vineyards have eyes. A rumour began to spread in the village that something odd was happening in Pavlos Zografistos’s old wine press.
Later that day Leigh Fermor told Pavlos what the mission was really about. The Cretan was horrified, asking if they had any idea of the reprisals the abduction could cause. He ordered the men to get out, ‘Leave my house I don’t want people to be killed.’ Leigh Fermor tried to persuade him that the letter he had written was going to make it clear that no locals were involved in the kidnap. Zografistos demanded to be allowed to talk to his father in the nearby village of Patsides about the wisdom of collaborating in ‘a big job’ with such potentially lethal consequences.
Other men arrived to support the abduction team. Nikos Komis from Thrapsano and Mitsos Tzatzas, from Episkopi, two ‘silent mountain men’ who were to act as guides once the general was a prisoner. Another guide appeared, Yanni Vitoros, a young man who was to lead them from the abandoned car up to the village of Anogia, where they were to rendezvous after the kidnap. Anogia was one of the strongholds of resistance fighters, an almost impregnable and remote village, which the German soldiers hated going near. Another man joined the group, Stratis Saviolakis, a serving policeman from Sfakia, stationed in the Archanes area. The Germans knew and trusted him, which meant he could move about without causing suspicion. He had already reconnoitred the road from Archanes to the Villa Ariadne, pacing the junction and driving by in a car to see how long it would take to drive from Heraklion to the kidnap site. Stratis reported to the team morning and evening, keeping them abreast with events at the garrison in Archanes.
The next day Zografistos returned from the meeting with his father. He had calmed down and said he would do everything he could to support the operation; he later confided to Tyrakis that his father had got angry with him and told him that he ‘was not a man’ if he did not help with the operation, even if it meant the ruin of the whole Heraklion region and the death of many hostages. Tyrakis wondered who else Pavlos had spoken to.
Ilias Athanassakis was as good as his word. He had kept the general’s car under constant observation, night and day, until he could distinguish it from any other vehicle on the road. He knew the sound of the engine, the silhouette of the car and how the headlights looked at night: even though they were covered by slotted blackout cowls, they were still bright. He and Micky Akoumianakis had abandoned the plan to use a warning system of wires and buzzers; they would rely on torches alone. Ilias’s plan was to watch Kreipe leave and then jump on his bicycle and pedal to a spot where he could signal by torch to Mitsos, who would relay the signal to the abductors who were in his line of sight. One flash meant the car was on its way and on its own; two flashes meant that it had an escort.
On
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4 April, the day earmarked for the operation, Micky brought bad news: Kreipe had gone to his office as normal after lunch, but had returned to the Villa Ariadne before sunset. The team did not know why he had he done this. They wondered whether someone had tipped him off that bandits were in the area. Pavlos thought someone might have noticed the amount of activity near the normally quiet farm, and that perhaps this was the real reason for the visit by the four-man patrol the previous day.
Pavlos Zografistos began to lose his nerve. What would happen, he wondered, if the Germans searched the area? They were capable of throwing a cordon of two or three hundred heavily armed men round a suspicious area and searching it with a fine-toothed comb. The abduction team had grown to twelve men; together with Boutzalis’s back-up men they were putting a strain on the villagers’ resources. Twenty-four extra mouths could not be fed for long. Pavlos Zografistos told Leigh Fermor that he had to do something to reduce the risks.
In the evening, after the sun had set, the SOE men moved quietly along the goat track, through the olive groves to the wine press for a conference with Boutzalis. The big Cretan leader was devastated when Leigh Fermor told him that he and his men were no longer part of the operation and must go back to their base hideout at once. He was to take the two Russians with him in the hope that they could form the basis of the resistance group of escaped POWs that Moss planned to lead later in the year.
In spite of their kapitan’s disappointment, Boutzalis’s men themselves did not seem to be too upset at having to go. They filed off into the night, shaking hands and each taking the gold sovereign which Leigh Fermor offered them. The Russians were given a Marlin sub-machine gun each and some ammunition. Then they embraced their English rescuers, and left. They were a real loss, being strong walkers always ready to carry twice as much as anyone else. With Boutzalis gone the team had no armed escort to protect them during the kidnap. Things would get worse later in the operation when they had to lose Micky and Ilias, whose job was to clear up the kidnap area, and then get back to Heraklion, where they could not be spared from counter-intelligence work. Moss and Leigh Fermor considered abandoning the plan.
Micky knew that an old friend of Leigh Fermor’s was in the area, Antonis Zoidakis, another policeman, based in the Amari valley. A runner left with a letter begging him to join the group. Zoidakis had been with the resistance ever since fighting in the battle of Crete. In 1943, SOE had arranged for him to go to Egypt to be trained at their irregular warfare school near Haifa. According to Giorgios Tyrakis, Antonis’s favourite sport was ‘throat slitting’.
Antonis Zoidakis appeared at around two in the morning full of enthusiasm and worried that he might have missed out on the big adventure. Leigh Fermor was delighted to see him and the two men spent the rest of the night reminiscing. He described Antonis, ‘sitting on my bed in his old policeman’s jacket, his cheerful face lit by an oil lamp. We talked and smoked until dawn.’
The waiting and the constant threat of German patrols began to wear the group down. ‘Spirits were low,’ wrote Leigh Fermor, ‘anxiety hung in the air. It needed much outward optimism and cheerfulness to keep spirits from flagging. We talked, read out loud and worried.’ The man who found the stress most difficult to deal with was the guide Yanni Vitoros, who was becoming physically ill. Pavlos’s sister was also breaking down under the strain of hiding guerrilla fighters in her house. In the early morning of 25 April news came in that there was more enemy activity in the area; she could take it no longer and asked them to leave.
On the border of Pavlos’s property was a deep dried-up river bed. It had an overhanging rock that formed a sort of cave. The area was surrounded by saplings; not as comfortable as the upstairs room they had just vacated, but much more peaceful. The men spread their blankets and slept. The next day they were brought eggs, cheese and wine and they ate under a warm sun, enjoying the peace and quiet of their new hideout.
At midday Pavlos Zografistos appeared, creeping up the dried river bed, his clothes and boots covered in dust. In his hand he held a letter from the National Organisation of Crete, the EOK, an organisation normally sympathetic to the SOE. The letter warned Leigh Fermor that they knew about the plan and demanded that it be called off because the risk to the local population was too great. If he refused they threatened to expose him to the Germans. A special envoy arrived from the EOK, Dr Lignos, a senior member of the group. He repeated that the proposed operation was madness and must be abandoned because of the harm it would do to Crete, even if it was successful.
The usually resourceful Leigh Fermor was stumped; he had no idea how the plan had become so widely known. Gathering the kidnappers together, he told them that he was calling the whole thing off. He ordered them to pack up and leave the area at once. The men looked at him in grim silence, shifting their weight, the rocks crunching under their feet.
The silence was broken by Paterakis, who had been Leigh Fermor’s right-hand man for more than two years. ‘Major,’ he said, ‘we have come here to carry out a mission, and carry it out we must!’ One of the others added: ‘Dr Lignos is waiting for your answer in Pavlos’s house. Do not let him browbeat you, we are not leaving without the general, alive or dead.’ The others murmured their agreement. Leigh Fermor threw down his cigarette, trod it into the ground, and said: ‘Right we’ll talk to him again.’