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Crete The Battle and the Resistance Anthony Beevor John Murray
Acknowledgements During my research, I soon learned that one should not be dismayed when people warn you that they have little of interest to offer. Sometimes a lapse of memory would be blamed — what Paddy Leigh Fermor calls 'a shot across the bows from Admiral Alzheimer' — yet those who promised little were always the ones who, often surprising themselves as much as their listener, suddenly recalled, with great clarity, incidents and individuals from half a century ago. Without their stories and insights, this book would have been very flat.
I am above all grateful to: Miki Akoumianakis, the late Lord Caccia, Dennis Ciclitira, Sir Geoffrey Cox, Xan Fielding, Ron Fletcher, Major General Michael Forrester, Hugh Fräser, Professor Nicholas Hammond, Professor Freiherr von der Heydte, Myles Hildyard, Brigadier R.W. Hobson, Lord Hollenden, Sir David Hunt, Lieutenant General Sir Ian Jacob, Manolis Kougoumtzakis, Patrick Leigh Fermor, Manoussos Manoussakis, Colonel Guy May, Sir Charles Mott-Radclyffe, Mark Norman, George Psychoundakis, John Pumphrey, Brigadier Ray Sandover, Jack Smith-Hughes, John Stanley, Ralph Stockbridge, Dr R.E.S. Tanner, the Rt. Rev. Stephen Verney, Michael Ward, Sir Peter Wilkinson, Gerry de Winton and the Hon. CM. Woodhouse. Many thanks are also due to Vincent Williams, President of the UK Crete Veterans Association, and to UKCVA members and those of allied associations who contributed their memories: Tom Barratt, Tom Bevan, R.B. Brown, J.W. Clayton, Horace Cowley, Alexander Dow, Lieutenant Commander T.J. Gibbons, Alfred Gotts, Lieutenant Commander F.M. Hutton, Clifford Pass, Kenneth Stalder and Norman Swift; and to Vassilios Fourakis and Eleutheris Tsinakis. I would also like to thank those who have helped in other ways, whether generously sharing their own research, contributing items from unexpected sources or providing useful ideas for further delving: Joan Bright Astley, Evangelos Christou, Antony Contomichaelos, Michael Davie, M.R.D. Foot, Imogen Grundon, Edward Hodgkin, Penelope Hope, Charles Messenger, Bernard Redshaw, Hugo Vickers and Christopher Woods. I owe a great debt to those who aided my research in Greece and made it so enjoyable: John Craxton in Canea; Marion Tzanakis, the British Consul in Heraklion; Captain Richard Evans RN, the Naval and Air Attache at the British Embassy in Athens; HE Richard Woods, New Zealand Ambassador to Greece; and Admiral Evangelos Sakellariou and Lieutenant Colonel Mountakis and their staff at the War Museum in Athens. I am also very grateful to all those who have lent me letters, diaries, photographs and especially unpublished reports, a number of which have proved not just helpful, but vital. Hugh Fräser, a member of the British Military Mission in Crete, has been extremely generous with his time in devilling and translating useful documents and accounts of the resistance. Dr Detlef Vogel of the Military History Research Institute in Freiburg has kindly sent me copies of relevant German documents and passed on points arising from his own work on the subject. Those with first-hand or expert knowledge who read and criticized chapters not only saved me from error, but in many cases added further illumination. I am particularly grateful to Commander Edward Thomas for examining all the Ultra-related sections, to Major General Michael Forrester, to Lord Jellicoe for looking at all the passages about SAS and SBS raids, and to all those members of the British Military Mission in Crete and Manoussos Manoussakis who also read Part Three, in some cases several times, and rang round their network of resistance colleagues in Greece double-checking incidents described in the text. Any mistakes which remain are, of course, entirely my responsibility. My greatest thanks are reserved for my wife, Artemis. Without her help, I woul