from Crete - The Battle and the Resistance

by Anthony Beevor

The Allies agents were often helped in their communications by Cretan Messengers. One of these messengers was George Psychoundakis

[ George Psychoundakis describes his time as a runner for the British intelligence officers who were put on Crete to help run the resistance.  ] editeurs note

who later wrote his memoirs in a book called The Cretan Runner. Many years later the Germans established their war cemetery on Hill 107 above Maleme. Psychoundakis, with a good dash of Cretan humour, applied for the job of keeper. During the 70's George Psychoundakis and that other hero of the Greek resistance, Manoli Paterakis, worked in the German cemetery together, When taking a break from work, they would chat in the shade of a tree, looking over out Maleme to the sea, One afternoon over thirty years after the war, an elderly visitor limping from an old injury, clearly a former German officer, suddenly came to a stop and began to stare at Manoli Paterakis with a disturbing intensity. His features- Paterakis had the profile of an eagle-where unmistakable. "I have seen you before," he said with a smile of grim certainty. "You never saw me," the German officer confirmed,"but I saw you. You were with the man who lost one hand, and rested his rifle on the stump of his forearm." The German went on to explain that he had been lying hidden under a bush when the two of them had stopped next to it. On the very first morning of the Battle of Crete, severely hit soon after his descent by parachute, he had dragged himself out of sight like a wounded animal. His battalion had almost been wiped out, and Cretan irregulars were searching for survivors. He had lain there for three days without water before being found by German reinforcements. He had never forgotten Manolis Paterakis face.

macrakis@earthlink.net  

from Crete - The Battle and the Resistance
by Anthony Beevor

With th..... the island of Crete was a glorious haven - a place of great beauty and of great friendliness where glasses were perpetually lifted to the common cause. Cretans although robust drinkers themselves, were astonished at the Anglo-Saxon compulsion to get drunk...

Evelyn Waugh depicted the collapse in Crete as symbolic of the collapse of the British ruling class. In a letter to Diana Cooper some months afterwards, he wrote: "The English are a base people. I did not know this living as I did. Now I know them through and through and they disgust me"

Waugh subsequently claimed that officers had behaved disgracefully in Crete, with many of them taking places in the motor transport and leaving the wounded to walk.
The degree of disgrace of course is hard to assess.

The New Zealanders and Australians in Crete were neither regulars nors conscripts, but volunteers for the duration, and their lack of reverence - almost a point of Antipodean honor - made British officers stay clear of them whenever possible.....
With the coming of the Second World War and the occupation of Greece by he Germans, the Cretans again rose to the occasion and started the famous Battle of Crete, a fight against another brutal conqueror that cost many lives and long guerilla warfare against the German forces immobilized in the Cretan mountains. On May 20, 1941, the Germans attacked and seven thousand parachutists and glider troops of the Seventh Parachutists Division began to land around Malame airfield....................

e coming of the Second World War and the occupation of Greece by he Germans, the Cretans again rose to the occasion and started the famous Battle of Crete, a fight against another brutal conqueror that cost many lives and long guerilla warfare against the German forces immobilized in the Cretan mountains. On May 20, 1941, the Germans attacked and seven thousand parachutists and glider troops of the Seventh Parachutists Division began to land around Malame airfield....................

The Allies agents were often helped in their communications by Cretan Messengers. One of thesrman cemetery together, When taking a break from work, they would chat in the shade of a tree, looking over out Maleme to the sea, One afternoon over thirty years after the war, an elderly visitor limping from an old injury, clearly a former German officer, suddenly came to a stop

"I have seen you before," he said with a smile of grim certainty.

"You never saw me," the German officer confirmed,"but I saw you. You were the man who lost one hand, and rested his rifle on the stump of his forearm."

The German went on to explain that he had been lying hidden under a bush when the two of them had stopped next to it. On the very first morning of the Battle of Crete, severely hit soon after his descent by parachute, he had dragged himself out of sight like a wounded animal. His battalion had almost been wiped out, and Cretan irregulars were searching for survivors. He had lain there for three days without water before being found by German reinforcements.

He had never forgotten Manolis Paterakis face.


macrakis@earthlink.net