Authors: Rick Stroud
All the while Manolis Paterakis and Giorgios Tyrakis guarded the cave, sitting quietly, their automatic weapons at the ready in their laps.
19
The next afternoon the runner reached Sandy Rendel. Leigh Fermor’s message was sent at once to SOE Cairo, from where it was relayed to London, arriving on 30 April at 21.55. It read:
General Heinrich Kreipe. RPT. KREIPE. kidnapped night 26 April by Major Leigh Fermor and Capt Moss. Now held in mountains. Hope evacuate party on three or four May. Germans dropped leaflets stating KREIPE RPT KREIPE captured by Greek bandits and threatening direst reprisals against villages and population if not surrendered within three days. ESSENTIAL RPT ESSENTIAL fullest possible broadcast made by all stations be made by midday tomorrow FIRST RPT FIRST May to effect that KREIPE RPT KREIPE captured by BRITISH RPT BRITISH party and ALREADY RPT ALREADY arrived in CAIRO RPT CAIRO. Most urgent as Cretan party report situation UGLY RPT UGLY.
The request went from SOE Baker Street to the home of the BBC Overseas Service at Bush House in London’s Aldwych. It was from here that the BBC transmitted to the conquered peoples of Europe, and had become a beacon of truth and honesty, as well as a useful weapon in the endless war of deception being waged against the Axis powers.
SOE emphasised the urgency of the request, asking for a broadcast to be made not later than noon the next day, Monday 1 May. The night duty officer realised that the request was urgent and serious but did not have the power to authorise the transmission. He rang the BBC Balkans Section for clarification and was told not to worry, ‘there was no point in trying to do anything during the night’. The message, which was headed ‘Most Urgent’, was placed in a tray to be worked through the next day.
At 8.30 the next morning, Miss Barker, a BBC employee, set off from her digs in the World’s End, Chelsea to walk to work at Bush House. Her route took her along the Embankment north of the Thames and past evidence of the battering London had taken over the last few years from bombing and incendiary attacks: the ruins of Chelsea Old Church, next to it Jacob Epstein’s studio, now just a huge hole in the ground; Bush House itself bore the shrapnel scars of the two 800-pound bombs that had exploded nearby.
Miss Barker was on the committee that liaised with SOE about special broadcasts. She reached her office at nine and began to sift through the signals that had come in during the night. Leigh Fermor’s urgent signal now read:
Festungskommmandant
Generaloberst
Heinrich Kreipe kidnapped night 26th April . . . now held in mountains. Hope evacuate party on 3rd or 4th May. [The Germans] are threatening direst reprisals against villages and population if not surrendered within three days. Essential fullest possible broadcast that Kreipe captured by British party and already arrived in Cairo. Matter most urgent as Cretan party report situation ugly. Endeavouring arrange from here to drop leaflets this sense.
At the same time, Lieutenant Colonel David Talbot Rice, Head of SOE’s Balkans desk and on the same committee as Miss Barker, read Leigh Fermor’s signal. He had been waiting anxiously all week for news that his agents were safe and that the kidnap mission had been successful. He was alarmed by the words ‘situation ugly’ and telephoned the senior officer on the liaison committee, and the man in charge of the Political Intelligence Department (the cover name for the Political Warfare Executive, which had offices at Bush House).
By 10.30 that morning, Talbot Rice had failed to make contact with any person in authority. He decided to break protocol and contact the BBC direct, ringing his opposite number at the corporation and asking him to prepare a broadcast along the lines requested by Leigh Fermor. A transmission was scheduled for noon that day. Talbot Rice emphasised that the matter was of the greatest urgency but was forced to point out that nothing could be broadcast without authority from the Political Warfare Executive. In the meantime Miss Barker found her copy of the signal from Crete and immediately took it to the PWE offices; the officer there said he could not approve the transmission, but was willing for it to be referred to the Foreign Office, who could, if it chose, overrule him. Eventually an amended version of the broadcast was authorised and transmitted. It said that General Kreipe was being taken off the island; it did not say that he had already left and was in Cairo.
At just after midday, Talbot Rice telephoned Miss Barker direct to ask her what was going on. She gave him the bad news about the amendment. Later that day Talbot Rice was reprimanded for breaking protocol. By now a frustrated and angry Talbot Rice explained his motives and sent a memorandum arguing that, in future, events like those of the last twenty-four hours should be handled at a higher level by people who had the authority to act without referring their decisions for approval.
On Crete, Sandy Rendel sat in his hideout waiting to hear what arrangements were being made to pick up the kidnappers and their prisoner. While he waited he scribbled a note to Leigh Fermor:
Dearest Paddy, the word congratulations seems pallid to what I feel inclined to say on reading your triumphant note – it’s almost the best true story I’ve yet heard. Bless you! And all the best of luck of course for the rest of the trip.
We got your message off [...] today and are waiting for an answer now [...] when I will send Drake [codename for a runner] by one route which he knows and the elder of my other Manolis by another to confirm. I hope boat is on way. The messages may both get to you on time but possibly not I fear. As you know Huns are very thick on the ground. In any case the message has got there and I assume you act if it had. I hope you fixed signals beforehand. I sent an additional wire as follows.
IF NOT. RPT. NOT FIXED WITH PADDY ALREADY SEND SIGS AND TIMINGS FOR HIS BOAT ALL STATIONS. RUNNER HERE MAY NOT. RPT NOT REACH PADDY BEFORE BOAT DUE. PLEASE CONFIRM BOAT WILL COME FOR FOLLOWING NIGHT AS WELL.
The above is probably superfluous but in case you don’t get the message by the night and don’t go to the spot the boat comes that night, it still gives everyone a good chance I hope. My second messenger will go to Vasso first and try to find Tom’s haunts there and hence you – but I doubt if they can make it. Drake has good chance though everyone as you know is being stopped a good deal on the roads etc. Though tomorrow it may have all blown over.
Just after midnight Cairo transmitted the time and place of rendezvous, enabling Rendel to finish his letter to Leigh Fermor:
Later . . . we have only just got the answer [...]. They are sending a boat to Cape Melissa B605111. The message in so far as it concerns you reads:
BOAT CAPE MELISSA B605111 RPT 605111 THIRD FOURTH RPT THIRD FOURTH STOP CONTACT PADDY URGENTLY STOP EXCELLENT WORK STOP ALL SEND CONGRATULATIONS. YOUR NUMBER ONE SEVEN
‘Your number one seven’ was the second part of a message you asked me to send and was about leaflets broadcasts etc.
In haste again – our very merriest and most complete congratulations from self, Giorgios and all you know here, love Sandy.
Cape Melissa, the rendezvous beach, was just below the village of Agios Pavlos and was one of many beaches stretching along the south coast of the island. If it was cut off, or the arrangements changed, they might be able to find another, further west.
Rendel wrote the message out twice and handed a copy to each of his two runners, who tucked the folded fragile tissue-like sheets into tight squares and tucked them into their turbans. Assuming there were no hitches and the runners were not captured or shot, it would take at least twenty-four hours to deliver the messages. The abductors would then have less than four days to cross some of the toughest terrain on the island, travelling through occupied territory, at night and leading by mule a lame, middle-aged German general who had no interest in getting to the rendezvous point on time.
Leigh Fermor, in the knowledge that there were patrols everywhere and that they must keep moving up and over Mount Ida or be captured, decided to keep going towards Agios Pavlos and hoped that if things changed the runners could catch up with them.
During the morning Skoutello arrived. Leigh Fermor ordered him to go at once to the hideout of Kapitan Petrakoyiorgi, who Pendlebury had codenamed ‘Selfridge’, and ask him to bring reinforcements. Selfridge’s hideout was four hours away, further up the mountain. When Selfridge received Leigh Fermor’s request he set off at once, taking with him five units of men. Confusingly each group was led by men with the same name: ‘Yiorgi’. Selfridge’s men would act as guards to the kidnappers as they moved across Mount Ida. Skoutello described how ‘the men turned into swallows, they seized their guns and were like ibexes leaping over the rocks and took up positions all along the hills of the watershed.’ These were tough mountain fighters – shepherds who knew every stone, slope, path, ravine and peak of the route.
Leigh Fermor sent Antonis Zoidakis ahead with orders to check that the way was free of Germans and to light fires showing the kidnappers the safe route over the crest of the mountain and down its southern slopes Two runners accompanying him were to keep contact with the main party, who had until dawn to reach the next rendezvous, a village called Nithavri, the highest habitation on Mount Ida’s southern slopes. Skoutello asked Selfridge to try to persuade Leigh Fermor to change his route and go through the village of Vorizia instead, which the Germans had already destroyed. The kapitan shook his head saying, ‘You don’t know the British. Once they have made their minds up they won’t change them.’
The group set off in daylight. They moved in single file, cheered on their way by the guerrillas
and the British agents. The general travelled in state, astride his mule; as they left, Corporal Lewis whistled in accompaniment the Al Jolson song ‘Going to Heaven on a Mule’. The route to Nithavri took them straight over the summit of Mount Ida. On the way, a branch whipped back and hit Kreipe in the arm making him swear loudly; some of the Cretans thought he was exaggerating to cause a fuss and slow down progress. The general’s state of mind was not helped by the behaviour of one of the guerrillas, Manolis Tsikritsis, a small, wizened man wearing a sort of red fez like a deacon’s cap; Tsikritsis spent a lot of time staring fiercely at Kreipe. On the day of his capture Kreipe had left his home, dressed for work in his office followed by a game of bridge with his staff officers. Six days later, in the same clothes, he was over 7,000 feet above sea level, toiling up one of the most difficult climbs in the Mediterranean, surrounded by people who hated him.
The climb to the summit of Mount Ida took them along paths covered in slippery loose scree that proved too much for the mule carrying Kreipe. The creature kept sliding and falling; the general had to dismount and it was led off. On the way the party found an old leaflet that had been dropped the year before by the British. It ridiculed ‘the Hun’ with a picture of German soldiers begging for food from two village housewives. Tsikritsis showed the leaflet to Kreipe and grinned at him. The general turned to Leigh Fermor and said in German: ‘Don’t leave me with these people, they frighten me.’
Progress slowed to a snail’s pace. Even the fittest men found the climb exhausting. Kreipe stopped every ten minutes or so to catch his breath, or smoke a cigarette. Tempers frayed and the Cretans muttered that the general was malingering; they nagged the British officers to make the prisoner go faster, making sinister throat-cutting motions with their hands. As they climbed the general noticed Selfridge’s men watching over them from the heights and asked how many there were. Skoutello said he did not know the exact numbers but there were a lot.
The party crossed the snow line, leaving the last of the ilexes and cedars below them. The temperature dropped, it began to drizzle and a freezing wind blew the sleet into their faces, scouring their cheeks like sandpaper. The world turned into an icy white hell where every footstep might lead to a bone-shattering fall on to the rocks or a lethal plunge into a deep gorge. One of the Yiorgis went in front, followed by the general, a forage cap on his head and wearing Stratis’s gendarme jacket against the bitter temperatures. Leigh Fermor brought up the rear, carrying a curved-topped mountain walking stick. From time to time Paterakis and Tyrakis stood to one side watching progress, their Marlin sub-machine guns slung casually over their shoulders. The sun sank in the west and Bill Moss took a photograph of the group as they ploughed on into the failing light.
The mist cut visibility at the summit down to less than a few hundred yards. Paterakis worried that German patrols, some of whom were trained mountain troops, might have already climbed the south face and be waiting to ambush them. The group came to a ruined shepherd’s hut, roofless with only two walls left standing. They huddled in its shelter, not daring to go on until they got word from Antonis’s runners or could see the signal fires. The mood darkened. Even Tyrakis and Paterakis became antagonistic towards Kreipe, who could not fail to understand the murderous tone of their grumbling.
Thousands of feet below, at the foot of the mountain, where the sun was setting on a balmy evening, lorries full of German soldiers crawled across the landscape heading for the villages. Frightened men, women and children peered from their homes wondering what hell the invading soldiers were about to unleash. The lorries arrived and the villagers heard the crashing of tailboards followed by the sound of hundreds of steel-shod feet kicking up clouds of dust. NCOs shouted commands at nervous soldiers, bullying them into formation before marching them off, weapons clinking, up the mountain.