The Cretan Runner

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It involved immense journeys carrying vital messages, smuggling arms and explosives, and guiding Allied soldiers, agents and commandos through heavily garrisoned territory. By the autumn of 1941, the SOE were beginning to organise with British liaison officers on the island, one of whom was Patrick Leigh Fermor. The Nazis exacted heavy reprisals which served only to foment one of the most determined campaigns of resistance of the entire war. While in confinement he wrote his memories of service in the SOE and the Cretan resistance movement.

The Cretan Runner by George Psychoundakis: 9781590179048 The Cretan Runner by George Psychoundakis: 9781590179048

Müller had gained a reputation for brutality and was despised by the Cretan people, being responsible for mass executions, torture, the razing of villages and conscripting civilians into labour units. I am working my way through all of Patrick Leigh Fermor's books and, whilst he is only the translator here (also adding a few helpful footnotes and an introduction) Crete feels an important part of his myth, as well as an interesting slice of WW2 history in its own right. In later years he would make deft accounts of his experiences running weapons and messages across the high trails of remotest Crete. Reading these seems repetitive, yet the reader has guilt in jumping ahead because this is disrespectful for each person, each woman, whose murder is described.British officers had considered the idea of capturing a senior German officer as early as November 1942, when a SOE agent on Crete, Xan Fielding, proposed seizing the island's chief military governor at the time, Alexander Andrae. His book, written some ten years after the war, is an intensely personal and captivating account of his adventures. Patrick Leigh Fermor claims the Cretan Resistance movement was one of the most successful in Europe. Consequently, the early preoccupation of SOE at the Middle East Headquarters (MEHQ) was concerned with evacuating these men. This memoir begins with the battle of Crete, the German parachute invasion, at dawn on the 20th of May 1941.

The Cretan Runner - Penguin Books UK The Cretan Runner - Penguin Books UK

A few minutes later we could see his small figure a mile away moving across the next moonlit fold of the foothills of the White Mountains, bound for another fifty-mile journey.

A day later dispatch runner George Psychoundakis brought SOE officer Dick Barnes and a wireless set to the village. The shepherd took part in miraculous resistance to the invasion and later helped ferry British soldiers to the south to be evacuated. For those who travel to Chania Prefecture, you may wish to make a visit to the Cretan Runner Museum. As an airborne Nazi invasion began on 20 May 1941, Psychoundakis immediately went to the nearest town (Episkopi, Rethymno) about 15km away. Leigh Fermor was the only one airdropped, due to a sudden weather change that caused the area to be obscured by clouds.