Unconquerable Crete: An Epic Poem

the monks identified

  with the Resistance. They wore round hats

  full bushy beards, long hair, black flowing robes

  and round their necks a heavy pectoral cross.

  When Father John Alevizakis’ son

  was captured by the Germans, he averred,

  I am a poor man and I can provide

  little assistance in material terms,

  I have three sons, however, all of them

  if necessary will be sacrificed

  to the sacred cause of Cretan liberty.

  The monasteries were places of refuge

  for allied escapees, and frequently

  were searched and vandalized. When Germans sacked

  the St. John monastery at Preveli,

  an officer purloined the golden cross

  that held a splinter of the True Cross

  and was thought to be miraculous.

  The aircraft he was on took off three times,

  and every time turned back to make repairs.

  He left the cross with orders to return

  it to the monastery and then flew off

  and made his journey without incident.

  At Kato Simi, the Bandouvas band

  attacked and killed the German garrison.

  A German force was sent, the partisans

  ambushed it, killing more than forty men.

  The furious Germans sent two thousand troops,

  who massacred at least eight hundred folk

  and burned to cinders thirteen villages.

  The Archymandrite Psalidakis then

  was ordered by the Germans to affirm

  a statement that exonerated them

  of all atrocities. He doffed his cross

  and said that he would sooner die than sign

  so false a statement, since “I saw, myself,

  with my own eyes, young women disembowelled.”

  Nicolas Manolakakis, who had killed

  four dozen paratroopers after one

  had shot his wife and son, escaped into

  the hills. The Germans said that they would shoot

  ten of his fellow villagers each day

  until he should surrender. When he heard this

  Manolakakis turned himself in.

  He was compelled to dig his grave, then shot.

  More villages were burned, old people thrown

  into their burning houses. By autumn

  more than a thousand Cretans had been killed.

  Koustegorako, a small community

  in the mountains south of Rethymno,

  home to the Paterakis family,

  became a centre of resistance work.

  The Germans came, lined up the villagers,

  the women and the children, in the square,

  in front of a machine gun trained on them.

  Where are the men, shouted the Kapitan,

  where are the English, where’s the radio?

  The village nestled at the bottom of

  a vertical cliff face, and from the top

  400 yards away came the first shot

  by Costis Paterakis; it dispatched

  the man at the machine gun, then more shots

  dropped several other men. The Germans fled.

  But when they came back later reinforced

  they found the village empty, and destroyed

  the place with fire and dynamite.

  The British gave the partisans supplies,

  transmitters, guns, gold sovereigns, medicine,

  boots, food. And agents, trained by SOE,

  arrived by parachute or submarine.

  They mostly lived in caves or shepherds’ huts

  up in the mountains, eating cheese, sour milk,

  wild greens the Greeks called chorta, snails,

  sometimes , with luck, a sheep or goat.

  The caves were damp and full of fleas and lice.

  The guerillas, the andartes, would sit round

  a fire, and shepherds with white sheepskin cloaks

  would hold their ancient guns across their knees,

  pass round the raki or a gourd of wine,

  chop up tobacco on their rifle butts

  and talk at length of pistols and of boots.

  The SOE commandos were attired

  in Cretan clothes and learned the dialect

  enough to make the Germans think them Greek.

  Each agent had two pills of cyanide

  encased in rubber. One young Englishman

  put in his pocket raisins he’d been given

  by a peasant woman, and spat them out

  when one of them evinced a rubber taste.

  The agents and andartes at all times

  were helped by people of the villages.

  When British agents visited a home

  the woman of the house would wash their hands

  and feet, anointing them with olive oil.

  When they departed she would cross herself

  and say a prayer for safety on their way.

  At village celebrations only men

  would dance, but not the women, who had vowed

  they’d never dance and would wear only black

  until the time beloved Crete was free.

  In 1943 the Cretan Jews

  who lived in Haniá and Iraklion

  were rounded up. While they were locked in jail

  their homes and synagogue were looted, then

  they were embarked aboard a ship for Greece

  the first stage of the route to Germany.

  Off Santorini, thirty miles from Crete,

  a British submarine torpedoed her

  and all two hundred Jewish people drowned.

  One Dudley Perkins, a New Zealander

  known first as Kiwi, later Vasili,

  fought and was captured at the fall of Crete.

  Escaping from the German transit camp,

  he went into the mountains. He got sick,

  was cared for by the villagers, learned Greek,

  got to the coast and left by submarine.

  He fought some months in Libya, then transferred

  to SOE, and trained in Palestine.

  Promoted sergeant, he returned to Crete

  and organized a group of partisans.

  In fighting with some Germans he received

  a bullet in the back. Four German troops

  were killed and nine surrendered to the Greeks.

  The partisans then took these prisoners

  to a location in the mountains where

  there was a sink-hole ninety feet in depth

  with the intent to shoot them there and dump

  the bodies in the hole. But they were tied

  together, and the first, when shot, fell in

  the hole and dragged the next man after him,

  and so on till they all fell in. From moans,

  the Cretans knew that some were still alive.

  Andonis Paterakis volunteered

  to belay down and give the coup de grace.

  But half way down, the rope that held him broke,

  he fell, was injured, found himself among

  the Germans, one of whom remarked to him,

  So, Greco, now we die together. Now

  Perkins, despite his wound, was lowered down

  and finished off the wounded Germans, then

  came up with Paterakis on his back.

  That night a butcher in the partisans

  dug out the bullet with his Cretan knife.

  A few months later, Perkins fell into

  an ambush, and was shot before he could

  reach for his weapon. He was twenty nine.

  His rough andartes wept when they were told,

  and women came for years to deck the grave

  of ‘the unforgettable Vasili.’

  Through 1942 and 43

  the German troops continued their rampage,
>
  across the island, leaving in their wake

  dead hostages and burning villages,

  ransacking homes and stealing sheep and goats.

  How many Cretans did the Germans kill?

  Some say three thousand, some say twenty-five.

  They offered big rewards for turning in

  soldiers or agents, but with small success.

  The Germans sent out spies in battle dress

  who posed as British soldiers on the run

  to try to trap the people helping them.

  The Cretan villagers were seldom fooled

  and they would thrash these men like donkeys first

  then hand them over to a German post.

  There were a few ‘bad Greeks’ who would betray

  Resistance members but their last reward

  was often dealt them by a Cretan knife.

  Some Germans treated Cretans well, brought food,

  and so were welcome in the villages.

  Some Cretan women fell in love with men

  from German regiments, who sometimes

  deserted and were hidden by the villagers.

  Patrick Leigh Fermor trained with SOE;

  a writer, artist, linguist, twenty-seven,

  he came by sea to Crete and organized

  a section of guerrilla combatants.

  His Greek was excellent. In Cretan guise

  he’d spend an evening in the kafeinon

  carousing happily with German troops.

  By 1944 he was convinced

  some act was needed to increase morale

  among the Cretans, and to strike a blow

  against the enemy. The idea

  he formulated was the kidnapping

  of General Kriepe, the commandant of Crete.

  He and his colleague Stanley Moss, disguised

  as German military police, flagged down

  the general’s car, knocked out the driver, forced

  the general to the floor and calmly drove

  through twenty checkpoints, slowing down enough

  for sentries to salute. Abandoning the car,

  they went on foot across Mount Ida through

  the snow, and rendezvoused with their HQ.

  The Germans sent two thousand troops to search

  for them, as well as spotter planes, and threw

  a cordon round the mountain the next day.

  The British team holed up in mountain caves

  and radioed to Cairo. They got through

  the cordon with their prisoner and late

  one night were picked up by a British launch

  and taken off to Alexandria.

  The exploit had a salutary effect

  on the morale of Cretans. People say

  that almost every man on Crete claimed to

  have taken part in Kriepe’s kidnapping.

  The war was going sour for Germany;

  in Italy, in France, at Stalingrad

  the Germans were forced back into retreat.

  In Crete, they now decided to withdraw

  to strongly held positions round Haniá;

  before they did so, they sent out their troops

  across the island, burning villages,

  adding a