Kidnap in Crete (38 page)

Notes

A Note on Sources

The main sources I have used in the research for this book have been the collection of Second War War history in the Historical Museum of Crete (HMC), the huge private collection of the museum’s curator, Mr C. E. Mamalakis (CEMA), and the Patrick Leigh Fermor archive in the National Library of Scotland (NLS/PLF). I was privileged to be given access to this archive before it was curated and I have used the box numbers that were in use on my visits. I have also consulted documents in the National Archive (NA) and the Imperial War Museum (IWM). The London Library was a valuable source of wartime memoirs both Cretan and British SOE. From other published material I found Anthony Beevor’s
Crete: The Battle and the Resistance
,
Alan Clark’s
The Fall of Crete
and
Geoffrey Cox’s
A Tale of Two Battles: A Personal Memoir of Crete and the Western Desert,
1941
, very useful when writing my short account of what happened in the eleven days after the invasion. Finally, in the Leigh Fermor archive in the National Library of Scotland, there is a typewritten fragment of ‘The Eagles of Mount Ida’
written by the guerrilla fighter Giorgios Frangoulitakis, translated and annotated by Leigh Fermor.

1
An Island of Heroes

‘Blood vendettas over family honour’: Mr C. E. Mamalakis, in a letter to the author, wrote: ‘You would rather get cancer than be involved in a Cretan feud.’

‘Cretans, especially those’: ibid.

‘In Roman times’: Pendlebury,
Archaeology of Crete
, p.
6
.

‘When he was not moving’: author interview with Mamalakis.

‘One, an Austrian woman’: ibid.

‘Jan Knoch was a German tourist’: ibid.

‘His friend and fellow agent’: Grundon,
Rash Adventurer
, p.
291
.

‘“From the first days”’:
The Dixon Papers
quoted in Grundon,
Rash Adventurer
,
p.
256
.

2
Defenders of Crete

‘“ There was fear”’: Tzitzikas,
The Eleventh Day
.

3
Operation
Merkur

‘Clumsy as it was’: author interview Warwick Woodhouse, late Lt. Col. Royal Marines.

‘At last, each great, yellow-nose Ju
52
’: Cox,
A Tale of Two Battles
, p.
69
.

‘Feldwebel Wilhelm Plieschen took’: Sutherland and Canwell, p.
61
.

‘Aircraft and gliders stretched’: Gilberto Villahermosa,
Hitler’s Paratrooper
, p.
89
.

‘In a leading glider sat’: Becker,
p.
193
.

‘On the terrace’: Beevor.

4
The Battle of Crete

‘As far away as Paleochora’: Beevor.

‘At the northern port’: Spurr,
To Have and to Lose
, p.
186
.

‘Spurr shouted to a British’: Spurr, p.
200
.

‘By now the German commander’: Kiriakopoulos
The Nazi Occupation of Crete,
1941
–
1945
, p.
160
.

‘“You will give one”’: ibid., p.
308
.

‘At headquarters he found’: Tzitzikas,
Freedom and Glory (Memoirs
1939
–
1945
)
, p.
39
.

5
The Next Nine Days

‘On one wall’: Heydte,
Daedalus Returned
, p.
111
.

‘Very early in the morning’: Beevor.

‘At Heraklion, a group’: C. E. Mamalakis interview.

‘One, Colonel Tzoulakis’: ibid.

‘Near the harbour’: ibid.

‘A fierce firefight’: ibid.

‘only his leg’: ibid.

‘The battle lines in Heraklion’: ibid.

‘The bombers left’: ibid., p.
90
.

‘The men were ordered’: Mamalakis interview.

‘“Nobody could get”’: Fergusson,
The Black Watch and the King’s Enemies
, p.
88
.

‘There was a stench’: Gavin Long,
Greece, Crete and Syria
, p.
91
.

‘The remaining troops’: Cox, p.
94
.

‘Every ridge promised’: author interview with the late John Pumphrey, who fought and was captured in Crete. The interview, which was really a series of conversations, took place years before I had the idea for this book. Pumphrey was my uncle-in-law and his reminiscences have coloured my descriptions of the chaos that overtook the British Army on its retreat to the beaches on the south coast of Crete.

‘John Pendlebury never’: Powell,
The Villa Ariadne
,
p.
126
. The precise details of the fate of John Pendlebury have been lost in the mists of time and the Cretan habit of mythologising events. Dilys Powell’s account is the most complete, and I have used it in conjunction with an intereview with Mr C. E. Mamalakis.

6
The Occupation Begins

‘“Those who fought on Crete: Theodore Papkonstantinou,
Die Schlacht um Griechenland
,
1966
, quoted in Kaloudis,
Crete May
1941
,
p.
42
.