Author Archives: Kyle

My Hussar Stunt Part 2: Onwards to Katharo!

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Continuing my efforts to retrace the steps of wartime secret agent Patrick “Paddy” Leigh Fermor and his landing by parachute into occupied Crete, I was once again on the main road between the villages of Kritsa and Katharo in the eastern Lasithi district of the island, having left the “old path” behind me. 

The job now was to head to the spot where Paddy had landed on the night of 4th February, 1944. This would be a much simpler task, as according to the map, I simply needed to follow the established road all the way to Katharo and then down a few country lanes. I had found the coordinates of his parachute landing zone from the RAF sortie report held in the National Archives in Kew. While it wouldn’t be the precise spot Paddy hit the ground, he describes it as a near perfect landing, so shouldn’t be too far off. Close enough, at least, to get a good impression of the landscape and sense of place he was jumping into. A much simpler task, so I thought…

Back onto the main Kritsa-Katharo road, with the spectacular views of the sparkling Mirabello bay filling the horizon, and on up the plain tarmac road to my destination. Not far from the trailhead of the “Old Path”, a small, unkempt but noticeable pile of rocks on the roadside turned out to be a memorial, bearing the logo of the KKE, the Greek communist party. A quick Google Translate revealed this to be a memorial to a local group, founded on this remote roadside spot a few years after the war.

A short distance further, a hand painted arrow sign marked “cave” pointed off the road down another dirt path.

While I was aware I was short on time, it was still relatively early and as I was unlikely to be back in this part of Crete for quite some time, it wouldn’t do much harm to quickly “pop in”.

The dirt path led to a rusted and, given the general decrepit state of the accompanying fence, redundant iron gate, followed by rock cut steps leading down into a wide circular sinkhole. All about the perimeter were nooks and crevices of various shape and size, but one side of the hole was dominated by the enormous mouth of the cave proper.

With more steps forming part of a natural path leading down into the main chamber, hundreds of stalactites and stalagmites merged together all along the walls, and a huge rock dividing the centre like a spinal column, which along with the slick of constant drips from the roof, created the impression of being inside the body of some colossal and alien fish, its ribs and bones exposed. As with Paddy’s cave, the cavern floor consisted entirely of wet decaying plant matter blown in from the surface, intermingled with the bones and tufts of fur from goats and sheep that had stumbled into the darkness and perished. Off to the left, a small low opening led to a further, smaller chamber beyond. 

Having explored enough of the cave as was sensible, it was time to get back on track for my actual object and head for the surface. It was while internally pontificating on the psychological and supernatural power of caves and the ancients belief in chthonic spirits and deities and so forth, that I ever so slightly misjudged the height of the gap between the two chambers and clipped the very top of my head on the rock! Not particularly hard or particularly fast, but enough to send an outburst of my finest Anglo-Saxon echoing all around the cave, more from surprise than pain.That and a sudden, horrible wet feeling on the forehead. A horrible wet feeling on the forehead that quickly turned into a wet trickle down the face, that turned into the entire right eye of my glasses turning red from the torrent of blood now running out of my head. Scrambling back up the path to the surface into proper light and a fumble for tissues and wet wipes in my backpack, with much dabbing and using my phone screen as a mirror, the damage was revealed to be dramatic but tiny and purely superficial.

Having determined I wasn’t actually in any way hurt, and washed away the trail of blood splatters I had created, I was up the steps, across the path and back onto the road. No more messing around, time to get to Katharo!.

The road was not particularly arduous, though steeper and steeper with every step as it snaked up and along the valleyside, and the sky slowly turning from clear crystal blue, to patches of fluffy cloud, to white, to ominous grey. The landscape as well, as the road meandered ever upwards, became more and more dusted with frost. The roofs of the occasionally passing cars and pick up trucks heading back towards Kritsa and Agios Nikolaos too were covered in snow. Some even had snowmen, complete with twig arms and carrot noses, it being something of a winter tradition when it snows to build as large a snowman as possible on top of your car and then rush home or to a beach and see how much of it is left standing.

Further along the slope the raw material for these snowmen lay thick on the ground and soon the whole valley resembled a Christmas card.

Up ahead the road opened out into a wider plateau of sorts, with a number of cars parked next to a sheltered area that formed a viewpoint back down to the valley and to the sea beyond. A little girl was loading carrier bags into the boot of one and dashed over the road to what, when not covered in ice and snow, would be the ideal picnic area, with wooden tables and stone barbeque pits dotted around. Clustered around one was a family, the children playing in the snow and the adults in the closing stages of a meal, wrapping up the leftovers and extinguishing the small fire in one of the pits. Seeing me hurry past, we exchanged polite waves and the father approached. He asked where I had come from, where I was going and if I would like a lift back into town. I explained what I was doing and why (to many exclamations of “bravo!”) and politely declined his offer, and parted with a handshake and a warning. It was going to get dark in about an hour or so.

This was ideal for my purposes, as according to my satnav, I was only half an hour or so away from Katharo and, as Paddy had landed at night, arriving just as the sun sets would make finding, photographing and experiencing the place much easier than doing so in total darkness. However, it would also be getting colder and despite being well prepared for the conditions and checking the forecasts regularly, I didn’t want to be stuck there in the dead of night in unexpected snow or rain. With new wings added to my feet, I set off, determined to get there before the nature imposed deadline.

A few minutes later my satnav chirped up and suggested I could cut four minutes off my journey time by taking a shortcut off the main road, up a much steeper but shorter footpath. Four minutes extra would surely be worth the climb and so I set off. This new path began with a boulder strewn field covered in much deeper snow, with footprints of people who had been there earlier in the day zigzagging back and forth between them and upwards, back into the tree line and the slope of the valleyside. Things started well, matching my footsteps with the footprints to ensure I didn’t have to completely trudge through the snow, but the snow quickly got deeper and the existing footprints became slippery from the refrozen and compacted ice and, coupled with the increasing steepness of the path as its zigzagged up the side of the valley resulted in another scramble. 

This wouldn’t be so bad, had I not made the classic blunder of noticing that one of my bootlaces was untied and decided that it would be fine for the few minutes it would take to get to a more comfortable place to sit and tie it. Approximately 30 seconds after making this decision, the same boot remained stuck in a patch of snow as the rest of me continued on for several steps, followed by hopping back through the snow to recover it. This was followed by the indignity of having to squelch the last few metres up the trail and back onto the main road with one very cold and very wet sock. 

By the time this diversion was complete and I had changed my socks, wrung out the now dripping original, and properly retied my laces, I’m not entirely convinced I had actually gained the 4 minutes that was supposed to be the advantage of the detour. Nevertheless another hand painted sign revealed that this had been an ancient Minoan trail and I was now within striking distance of Katharo. 

Here the road reached the top of the valley and passed through another flat, wooded area where a few diehard snowmen builders were in the final stages of packing up and heading for home, their cars juddering and skipping as the wheels fought against the ice to get them back onto the clear tarmac of the road. I was on the edge of the village of Katharo now and a sharp bend in the road and a gap in the trees provided an excellent view across the plateau. The few descriptions of the place in the books and accounts of the Kreipe mission are accurate. A long valley, narrow at the sides and spirit level flat at the bottom. A few houses scattered here and there amongst vineyards, their patterns clearly visible even from a distance and the vines having shed their leaves for winter slumber. 

With the last few rays of orange, pink and purple sinking behind the opposite valley side (rosy fingered Astraios doesn’t have quite the same ring to it) and a blanket of cloud filling the sky, I passed through Katharo itself. The main village being only a handful of houses clustered around a square with a church and a few tavernas. Several of the buildings had eye catching chimneys, beautifully decorated with metalwork in the shape of birds.

I was very close now and following my satnav to the coordinates down yet more country lanes and dirt paths, the melting snow forming miniature lakes and streams in my path.

And then without announcement or fanfare, I arrived at the coordinates.  N 35 08 30. E 25 33 56. This is the spot recorded as the team’s designated parachute drop in the sortie report for Operation Whimsical.

The edge of a field, one of the vineyards I had seen from my earlier vantage point, the stubs of vines in neat rows. A fitting place for Paddy, known for his fondness for the finer things in life, to make his grand entrance. 

Here (or at the very least, close by) is where he made an almost perfect landing, then as now in the snow. Here is where fellow SOE agent Sandy Rendel and the Cretan andartes had rushed to be reunited with their friend and colleague. Here is where Paddy desperately signalled to the rest of the team to continue their landing and then as now a sudden bank of cloud and fog obscuring the night sky. 

Unlike Paddy, I did not have a reception committee waiting with food and transport, and as the night was almost upon me, I had only a short time to reflect on the momentous footnote in history that had taken place here almost exactly 80 years prior. After spending the entire day hiking there, I was in the landing field for only a few minutes, taking enough photos to satisfy myself was sufficient and a video to capture the soundscape of the wind and babbling snow melt. With that, I was off, literally retracing my own footsteps back through Katharo and up onto the main road back to Kritsa and Agios Nikolaos . Only a five hour walk back to my hotel, a mere trifle!

After about half an hour, now in total darkness, a car approached from behind and came to a halt next to me. The occupants, four kindly looking Greek women, enquired if I was ok, if I was lost and if I needed help getting back to town, in much the same tone and manner someone would speak to a small child alone in a shopping centre. While I was grateful and moved by their offer, I was, at that point, determined to get “the full experience” as it were and complete as much of the journey on foot. It took a great deal of persuasion to convince them that I was fine and was perfectly happy to walk back into town, and they reluctantly set off without me. 

A short while later, perhaps an hour after leaving the landing zone, I again heard the sound of vehicles approaching from behind and turning around, could make out the headlights of 3 cars zigzagging down the road. They quickly caught up with me and roared past, 3 of the largest 4x4s I had ever encountered. I was almost instantly bathed in the glow of brake lights as each one neatly came to a halt not far from me. Some of the occupants got out and were having a lively discussion between themselves. As with the shepherd, my Greek wasn’t quite good enough to make out exactly what they were saying, but it was obviously about me.  

One of them waved me over, as though there was anything else I was going to do and asked, in perfect English, who I was and where I was staying. “Agios? No problem, we’ll take you!”  This now being the third time someone had offered me a lift and most insistent about it too, I decided that this was a sign that I probably should allow the legendary Cretan hospitality to run its course and I accepted. The 4×4 was so massive I had to clamber upwards into the cabin and into the back seat, itself strewn with camping and hiking gear, my new companions/rescuers hopping into the front seats. 

The man who had offered me the lift turned round and stated frankly “you must be crazy to be out here by yourself in this weather”. After flying the length of Europe and walking from dawn til dusk to find an empty cave and photograph an empty field, I couldn’t really disagree. “But” he gestured to the driver and the other vehicles, “we’re a bit crazy too”. 

And so that was that. In a few minutes of white knuckle Cretan driving, I had retraced the journey that had taken me the entire day on foot (diversions to caves and caverns notwithstanding). I was back in the middle of Agios Nikolaos, bustling with Saturday evening life, almost a different world to the near deserted countryside I had spent the day exploring.

The driver kindly dropped me on a roadside and flatly refused to accept any kind of payment for helping me, insisting it was only a few minutes out of his way. With the mandatory bang on the room to indicate I was clear, he was away down a side street and gone. I made my way back to my hotel and from there to a nearby taverna for my first proper meal all day and to raise a private toast to Paddy and the other agents of the SOE who had done this for real.

My Hussar Stunt Part 1: The Cave of the English

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I had come to Crete to retrace the steps of the author and secret agent Patrick ‘Paddy’ Leigh Fermor during his mission to abduct the German commandant of the island during the Second World War. I had stumbled across this story during my very first trip to the island, while visiting the Historical Museum in Heraklion. 

There an information board recounts the efforts by Paddy and other agents of the Special Operations Executive to infiltrate the island, disguise themselves as German soldiers, seize the commandant (by the time the mission actually went ahead, one Major-General Heinrich Kreipe), whisk him away through the night bundled into the back of his own staff car, then a daring trek to freedom across a mountain range to a waiting submarine in a concealed bay, all while being hunted by the German garrison who wanted their general back. The agents involved referred to it as their adventure, the general as a “hussar stunt”.

It’s a true Boy’s Own adventure, and I was fascinated. Upon my return home, I immediately set to researching as much as possible about this mission and these men. A few trips to the National Archives, the Imperial War Museum and the National Library of Scotland later, along with consultations with other like minded individuals and I’d built up a pretty decent understanding of the mission and the personalities involved (even if I do say so myself), but one question remained. What was it actually like to do this? I knew the timeline of events from the formal reports of the mission, I knew the escape route from Paddy’s hand drawn maps and I knew the conditions the SOE agents and their Cretan allies lived in from the brief diaries and accounts they have left. But what was it like?

With 2024 being the 80th anniversary of the operation, I resolved to find out. Nowadays there is a distinct lack of German commandants in Crete and it would probably be frowned upon to kidnap one even if there were any, but I could still walk along the routes the mission took and see the things they saw, as much as modern development (and my annual leave) allowed. Early February marks the arrival of Paddy via parachute jump into the remote Katharo plateau in the eastern part of Crete, then taking shelter in a nearby cave hidden amongst a forest of cypress trees while arranging the rest of the mission. Having found the rough location of the cave (apparently still known as “the cave of the English” and appearing as a waypoint on published hiking trails) and the precise coordinates of the parachute landing zone from the RAF’s flight records, it would be (in theory at least) a relatively easy hike from one to the other within the same day. I booked my tickets and was away!  

Due to the lack of direct flights in February I sadly, tragically, unfortunately had to spend a day in Athens, before boarding a Minoan Lines ferry, the “Festos Palace”, to Crete, arriving in Heraklion harbour just after dawn broke and pierced the late winter clouds.

A quick trip to the Historical Museum to be reunited with the information boards that had sparked this whole expedition and the Archaeological Museum (almost deserted apart from a clutch of diehard tourists and the skeleton staff, an unusual sight when every other time I had been it was packed to the rafters with huge queues), then it was off, by bus, to Agios Nikolaos (Saint Nicholas), famous for its fresh water lake like a great blue eye at its centre, and the closest large town to where this part of the mission took place. 

I checked into my hotel, the Nine Muses (it would be a lie to say the name hadn’t played a significant factor in my choice of accommodation), a small but comfortable place with windows and balconies doors opening to a breathtaking panorama of what the Venetians had named the Mirabello, aptly, the “beautiful view” and the islet of Agioi Pantes. After a brief foray to a supermarket for last-minute supplies, I attempted to settle in for an early night. Sleep, however, proved almost impossible due to excitement and trepidation at the adventure to come. 

I woke early to make sure that I had plenty of time to make it to the station for the bus to Kritsa, a village on the bus route closest to both the cave and the parachute landing, yet still managed to almost make myself late by agonising over how many spare jumpers and emergency changes of socks to pack, change my mind and then repack (as it turned out, too many of one and not enough of the other). Bustling through the still sleeping town, I arrived just in time to purchase my ticket and catch my breath before the bus, a full sized coach and I the only passenger, emerged around the corner of the station depot. No turning back now!

The bus journey took only a few minutes (compared to the few hours of walking), and I was sudden in the centre of Kritsa,a picturesque little town, with many narrow streets built up on top of each other, with squares for shops and tavernas mixed in between, connected by winding tunnel-like passages. There were several churches, and as it was a Sunday, plenty of elderly parishioners on their way to the morning service. The largest church, Agios Giorgios (Saint George), was more like a small cathedral, its dome dominating the skyline of the north side of town. Outside was an icon of the saint and a small collection box. I am not in any way religious, but given the occasion and the nature of the task ahead, I popped in a few spare coins, hoping the saint was in a good mood and would keep an eye on me anyway. 

A set of concrete stairs on the very edge of the village led onto the long, meandering and convoluted tarmac road onwards and upwards to Katharo, and there was nothing more to do for now but push on and admire the view. Ahead the mountains, covered in snow, seemingly distant yet also looming over me. Behind, a spectacular view of Kritsa and the entire valley all the way down to the Mirabello, the Sea of Crete glittering in the clear sunlight.

It was a glorious day of clear blue sky and warmth despite being so early in the year and going proved slower than expected, mainly due to having to stop and take in the view, hardly believing that this is a real place, and also to avoid the hidden goats springing themselves out of the roadside undergrowth at exactly the right time to emerge directly into the path of the occasional car.

After about an hour of walking I had reached the first waypoint I had marked on my map, a dusty trail departing from the main road and a hand painted sign in the shape of an arrow pointing me towards the “Old Path to Katharo Plateau”.

A very dramatic, almost cinematic trail stretched out with snow-covered mountains on one side and a cypress forest clinging to the foothills directly in front of me, though far distant. Long and undulating, the trail passed quickly, with herds of curious goats and the clinking of their bells for company.

The trail gradually began to slope down into a valley, gnarled and ancient trees gradually getting thicker and thicker as the scrubby land gave way to the forest proper.

It then started to peter out at the valley floor, itself what appeared to be a large dried up river bed, with innumerable rocks, from small pebbles to vast boulders, frozen in their march towards the sea (the riverbed turned out to be that of the Kálos Potamós, which emerges further along the valley and flows back down through Kritsa and then onto the Mirabello).

With the trail coming to an end it was time to put my research to the test and find out if the hiking app that has the cave as a way point as part of a larger trek is accurate and I’m not going to be aimlessly wandering the woods.

 After a few minutes exploring the riverbed and valley floor to get my bearings, I continued along the last dying gasps of the trail, now going up the other side of the valley, little more than the ruts and potholes left behind by 4x4s that had passed through. Such a vehicle, a pickup, was a short way along, and I would soon be introduced to the owner. The trail finally gave up the ghost at a wide clearing strewn with rocks, goats and sheep grazing amongst them. 

Out of the corner of my eye, I suddenly noticed the presence of a human figure, rising from where they had been bending down tending to the goats. We spent a moment just staring at each other in surprise, not quite sure we were actually seeing what we were seeing, before I called out my cheeriest “Hello!” and waved. Quickly double checking the post it-note of useful Greek I had taped to the back of my phone (as though I haven’t rehearsed it a dozen times over already) I followed up with “Spilia ton Anglon? (Cave of the English?)”. The figure, a man dressed in mismatched camo, clearly a shepherd, approached closer to get a good look at me. He looked me up and down, sighed and in a rough voice said “come here” and gestured for me to follow. 

It would be a cliche to say he bounded across the rocks as nimbly as one of his goats. That is exactly what he did, as I struggled to simultaneously keep up and maintain my balance following his path. He paused in the centre of the clearing and pointed up, and up, and up at an alarming angle, towards the valley side and the mountain that loomed above it. Up close, he had a round, kind face, skin darkened by working under the Mediterranean sun, pure black hair buzzed extremely short, with several teeth on the right side of his mouth missing. 

He gesticulated back and forth between the valley side and a nearby rock, tracing patterns with his hands as he went. Both hands held fingers towards each other and curved – a roof? A hill? Then three fingers placed flat down. The logs/branches that I had seen photos of that indicate the mouth of the cave? He was clearly describing the cave! I was on the track! He could not speak enough English nor I enough Greek to properly talk, but I thanked him as best I could, then we turned back to our respective tasks. Continuing on through the goat field, the terrain amongst the trees becoming rougher and the slope steeper. The orange soil giving way more and more to bare grey rock and the hike more and more into a clamber, with the slope in some places so steep I had to grab on to every available rock and branch to haul myself up the side of the valley.

A misplaced step, a trip and a shower of pebbles cascading down, caused me to stop and wonder, as I supported my entire weight with one hand on a incredibly uncomfortable rock, if this may have been a bad idea, but the map app was showing I was within striking distance of the cave, and trying to get back down at this point would probably be more dangerous than pressing on. Plus, the view was becoming increasingly spectacular!

Towards the middle of the valleyside the slope levelled out a tad and reverted back to being a hike, albeit one at great height and an almost sheer drop to one side, with the formations of the rocks creating a new trail upwards, with the occasional rift to squeeze through or boulder to be awkwardly vaulted.

These crags, in turn, gave way to a large open plateau, flanked by trees that now have space and soil to grow in abundance. Pushing across, I became aware of patches of frost still clinging to the shadows and amongst the rocks.

Now back into the forest proper, according to the map I was now almost directly on top of the cave and, matching the shepherds directions, the ground to the left side of the plateau was forming a low mound, distinct even amongst the trees and rolling landscape all about. Like Gawain searching for the Green Chapel, I looked all about, trying to match what I could see with the photos I had found from others who had been there before. Then, suddenly, there it was, I had very nearly walked past it!

A jagged cleft in the earth, with three logs placed across to form a roof and darkness beyond it. This was the place! The place Paddy and his comrades had sheltered, from the elements and from the enemy.

Carefully lowering myself down the rocks that formed natural steps and crouching to avoid the low dividing rock that formed a corridor downwards, shon my torch to get a good look at the interior.

The interior of the cave was roughly circular, about 10 meters across. To the left-hand side, about half the cave floor was flat, forming a ledge where a few men could comfortably sit, huddled together, or a radio set and its equipment could be set up. To the right, a slope depending into a jumble of rocks and bones, all slick from the constant drip from above. All around, the walls and ceiling were thick with mineral formations and stalactites. All in all, the very image of a cave from some romantic adventure story.

Emerging back into the sunlight, it was time for some lunch and to take stock. This was a nice little jaunt in the lovely sunshine with a nice hotel to return to, via taxi if things got too bad. But to live like this, for months and years at a time, having to scramble across this sort of terrain to avoid a merciless enemy and no one coming to help you? Even the cave, while interesting, was cold and damp, and though friends, fire, wine and song could have made things more comfortable, it would still be a miserable place to spend a winter, as Paddy, the other SOE agents sent to Crete and the Cretans themselves had done.

The strength and toughness, physically and mentally, of all these people, to continue to fight for their freedom in such conditions must have been incredible.

Though I had spent hours reaching the cave, I could only a spend a short time there, as the day was only half done and I had to move on to my next target, the drop zone, and it was a long way back down as well. Bidding farewell to the cave and a small herd of inquisitive goats who had gathered to see what I was up, I checked my map and deciding that trying to climb (more like tumble) down the slope I had barely managed to scramble up, was not in my best interests, opted for a longer though gentler route back to the trail head, via the dried up river.

Once out of the bulk of the trees and the off the hill, I came across a long, rectangular clearing, picked out with snow? Could this be “the front drive” Paddy refers to when briefly describing the cave in a wartime letter?

The river bed was a much easier hike than the way up, mainly being an exercise in following the natural path cut into the valley, and lowering myself down from one layer of rocks to the next, trying to find  a spot where it was not too high and perilous to do so. 

I was soon back where I started, the valley floor where the river bed met the end of the trail from the main road. I did think to quickly dash back up the slope to see if I could find the shepherd and somehow tell him I had found the cave thanks to his help, but time was pressing on, it was by now mid afternoon and despite the lovely clear blue skies and sunshine all day, it was still early February and darkness and cold would be fast approaching. Back up along the trail, back to the hand painted sign and on my way, once again upwards to Katharo.

I still had a long way to go to reach Paddy’s landing zone, the road was steep and clouds were starting to gather…

W L Lamb Diary Crete 1941

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A trip to the Imperial War Museum reading room earlier in the year produced a number of unpublished memoirs by veterans of the battle of Crete, covering a wide array of topics and perspectives of the island and on the battle. Amongst them is the rather dryly labelled “Private Papers of W L Lamb” (IWM Documents.12070).

W L Lamb is almost certainly William Lindsay Lamb, a doctor from Scotland who joined the Royal Army Medical Corps prior to the start of the Second World War and served in multiple different theatres, including Norway, Egypt, Crete, and Normandy, before returning to Edinburgh and enjoying a long and successful medical career.

It is his time in Crete that this particular document relates to, covering the period in which he is assigned to the 7th General Field Hospital, which would quickly become a battleground and the patients used as human shields by invading paratroopers during the initial stages of the battle. Lamb’s diary gives a first hand account of his travel to Crete from Egypt, a description of the hospital camp, the day to day running of a military hospital prior to the battle, air raids and landing of parachutists, sheltering and treating the wounded in caves nearby, the retreat over the mountains and evacuation back to Egypt onboard HMAS Napier. Throughout he mentions the weather, the landscape and the other officers and soldiers he interacts with.

Lamb also includes a hand drawn map of the camp, with labels showing the layout and buildings/tents. This is recognisably a set of bays to the west of Chania, and can roughly match up with modern maps and aerial photos of the area.

Hand Drawn Map of 7th General Hospital
Hand drawn map overlaid on Google Earth

As a photograph of a screen of a microfilm photocopy of a hand written diary, seemingly written while events are in progress, it is relatively easy to read and make out much of the text, but there are the occasional sections where the writing is too cramped or the letters too small or bunched up to properly make out, which I have marked with square brackets and question marks.

Crete 1941

May 6th 1941.

At last we set sail from Port Said. Woke up about 6.30a, to find we are getting under way. We are soon out of port but are going slowly. Two cargo ships are with us + we are escorted by a sloop. We have all to carry steel hats + life belts now. The ship is bristling with Lewis guns. There are 3’ altogether including two big ones on the poop. Can see land for quite a long time.  Read for most of the day but snooze in my cabin in the afternoon. It is still warm but [???] overcast later on in the day. About 6pm our engines break down completely. The convoy stops + circles round. It is rather an eerie feeling to be floating about helpless, somewhere in the Med with the possibility of submarines, planes, etc about. However noone seems to be worried. The engines remain quiet for the rest of the evening but luckily it is dead calm + feels like being in port. All precautions against emergencies seem to have been taken; lets hope they wont be needed. 

May 7th Wake up about 1 am to sound of engines. They must just have started. Soon off to sleep again – peaceful night. Get up at [?????] at 7.30 – much cooler and strong breeze from west . We seem to be going N.W. sloop is still with us but other two ships have gone. During morning make up with other two ships + find there are now about 6 destroyers as escort. Later on in the day a fourth ship joins convey. About 6pm we seem to stop and so very slowly all ships are going round and round together. We continue to do this for the rest of the day though noone known why. Pass day in the usual way chiefly by reading Clyde Valley by Cathie Gavin which I enjoy very much + which keeps me from snoozing. Finish it in a day. 

May 8th


We all told to sleep in our clothes. I do so remarkably well. Am more or less ready but wake up to find we are crawling along + continue like this all day. By evening many bird, chiefly swallows, are flying about the ship so we can’t be far from land though there is nothing in sight. An day as usual reading + snoozing. Am called in by M/O. to see man with diarrhoea + temp of  105o. Wrote air mail card to Jean as I may not be able to write again for a few days. We will all be glad to get ashore as we haven’t had any news for the last few days. About 7pm see two of our own Blenheims flying over convoy as we pass eastern end of Crete. Half an hour later alarm goes + we are attacked by four enemy torpedo carrying planes. One ship in convoy is hit – buts as though she would float so is taken in tow by destroyer. We leave them behind. One torpedo misses us but all our guns go into action + though plane is hit not definitely brought down. All is over quite soon + steam along as fast as we can. No further incidents. Go to bed in clothes. 

May 9th

Wake up after uneventful night about 6am. I can see mountains of Crete through porthole. It looks lovely and cheers me up. What a change to the flat of Egypt. Coastline is mostly steel cliffs. By breakfast time we are approaching Souda Bay + after breakfast pass through the boom + enter harbor where several ships are beached. Tie up at small pier + get disembarkation orders. Luckily for me there are two sick men on board need admission to hospital so I contact A.W.M.S + arrange for ambulance. It soon arrives + we get the men and own luggage on board. Padre + I get into first seat. No 7 General Hospital is some distance away + we go over very bad roads through Canea – takes 3 / 4 hour but scenery is lovely – high mountains to left + sea to right. Hospital site is also lovely right on edge of sea with three sandy bays between rocky promontories quite near. Meet Colonel Driberg; Deb + all the others. It is grand seeing them + they seem to be glad to see me. They have been very busy indeed, owing to evacuation from Greece but seem to have done extremely well under very difficult circumstances. There are, of course, no sisters. I meet John Bain, Ronald + other officers who have got away from Greece. As my tent is being temporarily occupied by some of these officers I get a room in the mess and am very comfortable. Spend rest of day talking to Deb, Leishman, Magham etc + being shown round camp. It is rather cloudy + dull all day. 


May 10th

Sleep very well – Rain + wind during night but lovely morning – warm + bright sun. Start off morning + get into routine – 9am discharges, 9.30 meet my officers for talk + discussion, 10 am conference with Col Driberg + Deb, then walk round camp to get lie of the land. Its a bit difficult at first. It’s an ideal camp site + we should be able to run a good hospital if left in peace. Just now medical cases are predominantly mild dysenteries + we are over flowing into surgical tents. The hospital too, is over flowing + though things are still a bit chaotic + there are many problems to face, its a very creditable performance. Its lovely to see mountains + grass + wild flowers of all colours but chiefly red poppies, olive groves + vineyards. Some of the tents are amongst olive trees + vines. We are being well fed + I feel so pleased and happy. The Germans seem to be respecting the Red Cross though there have been air raised on other parts of the island chiefly Souda Bay + the aerodrome at Maleme. It’s also grand to have a lot of work. Got letter from M. G. but none yet from Jean.

May 11th

Another lovely day – cloudless sky + bright sun. The sea and mountains look lovely + my first impression of their beauty is continued. I spend a busy day discussing things with my officers + then looking round on my own. The immediate problem is dysentery as we are getting a lot of cases but none of them is severe. The hygiene of the camp just now is rather crude and the orderlies very ignorant but trying to do their best. A few Sisters would make all the difference but these are not allowed just now so we must just do the best we can. Flies are getting bad but as bad as in Egypt. So far I haven’t had time to go into my wards to see cases as most of my time is spent looking round + administering. We have to take over yet another 40 bed tent from the surgeons – have now about three times the number of cases they have. 

May 12th

Rather a disturbed night owing to air raid but no bombs dropped near hospital. Good A.A. barrage + several planes brought down. Main danger to us is from shrapnel. A lovely day + spent morning going round sanitary annexes + ward kitchens – find them in a deplorable state + try to get things pur right but it will take time. I must say that considering the circumstances things are wonderful + everyone is trying their best. After tea go round again with The Colonel as I want to impress the importance of dysentery on him. Like me, he is a bit horrified. It is a tiring job walking about all day + I’m glad to go to bed. Am still sleeping in the mess though a tent is available.

May 13th

More air raids during the night just before dawn. Quite a few bombs dropped and a lot of A.A. fire + many searchlights. Bombs dropped on Canea + all round about but none very near the hospital. Go round annexes with Seaford this am. In afternoon Maj. Gen Freyberg V.C., G.O.C. Crete, and A.W.M.S visit us. They both impress me as being efficient. After tea go round ward 2 with Smith. I have now taken over officers ward as the Colonel wants Easton to devote all his time to company matters, much against Eastons will. It has been a dull rather cold day – no sun. Good news today – Hess has flown from Germany in an M.E.110 + landed near Glasgow where he has given himself up. Does this mean a split in Nazi party?

May 14th

A lovely day – bright sun + warmth. The hills + sea look lovely. Spend busy day after disturbed night owing to German planes blitzing aerodrome. There was a good deal of noise pf gunfire + bombs + a lot of shrapnel landed in the camp. We have only 2 or 3 casualties brought into hospital however. Another convoy arrives in Souda with, I believe, tanks. Tomorrow is supposed to be Der Tag for the invasion + we are all rather amused at our own position, is in in no mans land between the sea + our own defences further inland. It must be a unique position for a hospital to be in. If they come I suppose we sit still + watch what happens. In the afternoon we waste time getting ready for possible evacuation of patients, which does not come off. The hospital is very full, in fact over flowing, especially the medical side + we could do with a hospital ship. Letters from M.G. + W. Send letters to Jean and Derrick.


May 15th

A very peaceful undisturbed night – no gunfire or aeroplanes. It is rather colder than usual + a strong wind blows all day across camp raising clouds of sand + making things unpleasant. The Colonel inspects 1 / 2 of medical division in am. In afternoon we heard that hospital ship is coming tomorrow + that we can evacuate 580 patients so all get to work preparing for it. Spend most of day walking round camp other wise very peaceful day. No raids or gunfire. Letter from Jean dated 5.2.41. We are very cut off here + get very little news as there is no wireless + letters are few + far between. 

May 16th

Another perfect day. Cool in morning but warming up + atmosphere is very clear. Hills look perfectly beautiful. The Aba (hospital ship) arrives soon after breakfast + evacuation of patients is soon under way, walking cases first, then lying. There is slight delay with latter owing to Sergt [?]Moyles[?] slackness with stretcher parties. Donald Bain + some other attached R.A.M.C. officers also go. Evacuation is more or less complete by 6pm + ship sails about 7pm. It anchors in bay outside Canea + is later bombed + machinegunned, but no damage or casualties. Spend morning walking round + seeing that things are O.K. In after noon to small bay near at hand, sunbathe + go in for swim. Water is lovely + warm + sea quite clear + clean. It is lovely. A German plane hovers about most of the afternoon. After tea, about 5PM, many planes (20-30) come over + raid Souda, dive bombers etc. It does not last long but they hit several ships + we get a good view of it all. Lot of A.A. fire + some Hurricanes go up. At least 5 + probably 7 planes brought down. 30 – 40 bad casualties brought in about 7PM + surgeons get busy.

May 17th

A peaceful night for me though surgeons + some of my M.O.s are up till 4AM. Several brought in dead + many seriously wounded. Ship alongside quay, oil tanker etc were hit but hospital is quite quiet otherwise + I go round the wards in the morning. Officers war is rather chaotic owing to orderlies being poor – this is a general complaint + makes things difficult. What a pity we haven’t got any sisters. Long conference in morning + afternoon with CO.After tea there is another big raid on Souda + we see many planes quite distinctly. Shell splinters fly about camp but Germans seem to be observing Red Cross strictly. A German officer bright in yesterday was rescued by our men from Greeks who set on him with knives etc + then on our men for interfering. Four planes said to be brought down today. There is a lot of smoke coming from Souda? [?]think[?] Cable from Jean – she is anxious for news.

May 18th 

Very hot + sultry day. Wards filling up again + everyone especially Leishman a bit bad tempered owing to constant change of personnel by C.O. There are many things that might be better but on the whole we are not doing badly. We need more + better orderlies. The New Zealand orderlies attached to us are especially poor. Several raids over Souda in the morning. Fairly quiet meet afternoon. Writer letters in my room. As we are sitting at tea in the mess we hear an aeroplane overhead + very soon 8 – 12 bombs whistling down. We all dive under the tables – windows etc are shattered but though bombs drop very close to mess. 

None of us is injured. After smoke + dust have subsided we see we have had a very close shave. Several tens have had direct hits + we all go out to collect wounded + help. At least two batmen killed. One bomb dropped on shore on exact spot where usually sunbathe + killed Wardrop (surgeon) + Rouse (anaesthetist), Easton very badly wounded, Gourevitch + Smith have very narrow escape but are not hurt. None dropped on hospital itself. It is a tragic day. Raids heavy + continuous – said to be 19 in all over Souda + aerodrome but very few casualties. Rumours also say 21 planes shot down. We are all very depressed + down in the dumps. 

May 19th

Sleep fairly well but raids start early – about 7am. Several during am on Souda + aerodrome. Long conference with C.O. About passing air defence,then go round my wards with him. In afternoon we attend Rouse + Wardrop’s funeral. It is fairly quiet but gets livelier about 6.30PM when raids begin again + last on + off till 8.30PM. We don’t seem to have any planes but A.A. Barrage is very heavy, splinters falling all over the camp. Everyone feels a bit off colour + depressed today. It is a bloody [?]war/waste[?].

The C.O. wants some of the beds Dug in + the mess shifted to a tent with a slit trench. A very hot, sultry day. 

May 20ths

Probably the most exciting + certainly the most unpleasant day of my life so far. Have just finished dressing when German planes appear in large numbers + of all sorts including gliders  right over camp. I make a dash for a slit trench beside my tent just in time before they start to bomb + machinegun the hospital from a very low height. There seems to be 100s of the, flying all over the place + machinegun bullets are whizzing about all round us. Some of the tents go up in smoke + after a bit we can see the parachutists landing + rounding up patients + orderlies + marching them off down the road. We daren’t look up much because of the sniping. After a bit Debenham comes in beside me + we both are sure we will be captured at any moment. After about 4 hours of this ?? about mid day + in intense heat N.Z. Troops appear + order us out of the camp to some caves in one of the bays. We are told we will be shot if don’t go so we do so during a lull. We lie there under a ledge of rock till dusk having had nothing to eat + little to drink all day. After dusk we go back to the hospital tents + evacuate the lying patients we had been left to other caves. There is great confusion [long section of about 2 lines crossed out and unreadable] but by dawn we have squeezed over 100 patients into three caves + have got water, food etc for them. Its a hectic night but we manage somehow + apart from firing inland are left alone. We leave M.O.s + orderlies in the caves which are packed + very stuffy. The medical store + dispensary have gone up in smoke + we have very few drugs apart from those we can scrounge from tents. Get to bed in cave about 5AM + am very glad to do so. It seems the situation is well in hand + that Germans have had to pay heavily.

May 21st 

Don’t sleep much though quite comfortable. Have greatcoat + blanket but floor of cave is very hard + sandy. Cave is a great big one hidden among rocks + entrance + exit is difficult but we are glad to be in it though slit trenches were very good. We have breakfast of tea, bread + marmalade about 7am  + then rest + sleep apart from odd bites of food for rest of the day. We are doggo all day preparing for work after dark. N.Z. ?A to M S? Comes in afternoon _ tells us our captured patients + personnel are returning  tonight as well as their wounded. We try to arrange things for them. Just before dusk Leishman + I Leave to go look at caves on headland across bay for our dysentery patients. They are big but have low roofs but are grand + we arrange for getting water, food, etc over. Then go round tents looking for drugs + end up at mess where I collect some more of my belongings. There is a lot of activity all day on land + in air but not so much as yesterday. Patients start arriving at 10pm + we try to sort them out in the dark. There seems to be 100s of them and we collect about 90 dysenteric. Leishman takes them over to caves while I go + see about water + rations. About 11pm very heavy gunfire + bright flashes at sea – must be a naval battle. Soon we see two ships burning fiercely + one explodes – probably an attempted invasion by sea. Firing goes on for some hours but there is less activity on land. Our troops are all round the coast + bays + we often are challenged. All own personnel have returned to us with the patients except for S/Sgt Whetton who has been killed. The cave is very crowded + noisy when we do get to bed + I don’t sleep much. The main diversion is when Post (radiologist) arrives in the dark dripping wet from head to foot. When coming back to cave he saw some vague figures in the dark who he took to be Germans as they didn’t answer him – so he + another man (unknown) took to their heels + dived into the sea. He was carried out to sea for a bit but eventually swam ashore again near the caver after being in the water 1 / 2 hour. He doesn’t know what happened to the other bloke. The mysterious men were probably N.Z.s on patrol. [?Hughes? Maghes?] + I go into hysterics about it all + cant stop laughing for about 1 / 2 hour as it is quite the funniest thing that has happened though it might have been a tragedy. Such is war. 

May 22nd 

We are becoming real cave men. Noone has shaved + or even washed except in salt water as fresh water is very scarce + difficult to get. We look pretty awful sights. Owing to some orderlies sloping off before everything was finished last night we all on short commons for water + rations today. Spend fore noon snoozing + chatting in cave + after dinner of M + V (tinned meat + vegs) + biscuits, Leishman + I visit our dysenterics in cave. There are 94 of them all dead tired after having been prisoners. There seems to be no activity near us today on land but see dozens + dozens of German troop carrier planes flying low over the sea towards aerodrome. There is heavy firing at sea all day – sounds like A.A. I wish we could get latest news. In PM troop carriers continue to go to and from aerodrome which later on is bombed + machinegunned. I have my first decent wash in the sea + manage a bath in between planes flying about overhead. We have now between 400-500 patients in caves, mostly surgical. Many are serious + the surgeons have to do the best they can with inadequate equipment + drugs. Quite a few only slightly wounded. What an extraordinary position for a general hospital to be in. We are certainly in no mans land + at times it is not very comfortable but we might be worse off. We have no planes at all + the Germans do what they like. Leishman + I go out on rounds after dusk. 

May 23rd

A fairly quit night. Numerous civilian refugees men, women + children, come into the camp after dark from Galatas which has been bombed. Its difficult to deal with them but after much gesticulating we allow them to go to the shore + look for what shelter they can find. German planes come over as usual soon after dawn there is nothing particular until late morning when there is a lot of bombing + machinegunning overhead +not far off. Sounds as though it was coming from the hospital area (tents) + along road to aerodrome. We heard Germans have established themselves at aerodrome + are landing more troops from planes. N.Z.s have had to retire. N.Z. Field ambulance has established itself in our mess + we are visited by one of their M.O.s + the [?]WAQMG[?] In the cave. Things on our other side are OK provided we can get enough troops up to help N.Z.s all should be well. Such absolute + complete air superiority is undoubtedly the main factor in the German success. In fact it is the only factor as other things being equal we are just as good as they are. The parachutists are picked troops + they have been slaughtered. From all accounts wounded prisoners + our own troops get on very well together. It makes the whole war so fantastic + futile + I still believe that we + the Germans are in many ways like each other + could get on with each other. After dusk Leishman + I go over ot the cave + 70 of our 90 dysenterics. They have to report at Souda. We look for more work afterwards but fail to find any so go back to own cave + to bed. There are now about 540 patients in caves. The N.Z. brigade is returning + is being relieved. They have put up a very good show especially the Maoris. 

May 24th

Apart from intermittent shell fire a quiet night followed by a very quiet morning. Only a few planes over head but ferry service of troop planes is resumed to aerodromes in morning. Things brisken up a lot about 1PM  when bombing + machinegunning begins not far off. The G. prisoners seem to be confident that Red Cross will be respected provided enough flags can be seen + personnel wear armlets + keep off tin hats. [Long section of about 5 lines crossed out and unreadable] Blitz lasts most of the afternoon till dusk + is very fierce. Firing gets nearer + nearer + we are all beginning to think of being captured. We have had no news or orders all day. At 9PM C.O. calls a conference of Debenham, Driberg + myself to discuss evacuation. He seems determined on it. At first Deb + I are in two minds about it but Driberg is against it. The N..Z. Field Ambulance are still working in the mess + have had orders to work in with us. This decides the C.O. to stay + after he decides we are all very relieved + glad of his decision. We clear out all patients from dysentery cave + personnel spent night brining up rations etc to surgical caves. There is not so much work as usual to do + very few casualties come is so all get to bed early + we have a good night. 

May 25th

Sleep very soundly + wake up about 7AM in time for breakfast. Much best sleep since coming to caves.During night big guns from Souda area was shelling Germans + this AM field gun + machinegun fire seems to be further off than yesterday. It gets further + further away during the morning + we think Gs must be returning back to aerodrome. No activity to speak of all morning. Padre Franklin holds a service in the cave. Everyone feels a bit cheerier + happier than am. We are getting used to sand + dirt of cave life. Had a shave two days ago. Rations are fairly good + we have two meals a day + drinks of tea. Drugs etc are practically nonexistent but there are plenty of bandages + dressings. We have had decent latrines made near the cave at last. Afternoon is very noisy. First there is a great deal of machinegunning by aeroplanes quite near at hand. They fly up and down round the mouths of caves trying, we think, to find our guns. But after planes go guns start again. About 5.30PM bombers come over + go for same objectives. We don’t think they are trying for us but its sounds too close to be pleasant. We seem to have advanced a bit today. Leishman + I are going to take over in the surgical caves for 24 hours from tonight + we are hoping we wont have to deal with too many gruesome surgical cases. German prisoners + our own patients seem to be getting on very well together. What a [?]war/waste[?] Great activity in air + on land in evening. Firing is getting closer + from mouth of cave I can see our troops coming back. We wait till it gets quite dark (9PM)m as a good many bullets are firing about outside, before sending

Men on duty + going over ourselves to cave 3 where C.O. is. He tells us we may have to move at once but he is waiting for orders. Things are rather chaotic + old Deb in his keenness rather adds to the confusion. He wants to take latrine buckets etc with us if + when we move. Eventually we get dumps of surgical instruments, operating table, dressings, rations etc at side of road. About 11PM we get orders to evacuate caves + to move eastwards to ?Neo Kourion? near Souda. Wallis, Sherman + 30 orderlies are to be left to look after the 300 patients who are too ill to be moved. The rest of us are to move off in two parties, first leaving at 12.30AM + the second soon after. 

May 26th

I go with first party with CO, Driberg + most of the officers + men. Web  + Gourevitch follow with rear party of 50 and soon make up on us. Seaford + Wilkinson both being hors de combat are left to come on later in truck form N.Z. Field Ambulance with equipment but they don’t turn up + we hear later that truck didn’t get through so they must be prisoners. It is a very dark knight but road shows up well + we have a map. Route is a bit complicated + we have to stop often to look at map but we don’t meet any German patrols + reach our destination about 4AM. The company is dispersed to look after itself in groups of 4 + told to meet at dusk. The Colonel, Driberg, Forest, Hay + self find very small but very good cave on a roadside up a steep hill into which we all pack. We are all tired + get some sleep but waken up between 7 + 8 AM Debs comes in to see us + I go down with him to N.Z. Field Ambulance which is with us + is opening up in a small church an operating theatre + tents beside it. We spend the morning relieving the N. Zealanders + looking at wounds + dressings. German planes fly overhead all the time but seem to respect the Red Cross. It is a very noisy day with a lot of bombing + machinegunning of olive groves especially in afternoon where there is a bad blitz over Canea + even nearer to us. I get into a hole with 4 men + I spend an unpleasant 1 1 / 2 hours. Bombing goes on all afternoon + evening. We get orders to move off again at 11.30PM and do so after drawing some rations etc. We are told we have a long way to go + must not delay. It is a stiff march but men stand up to it well. After passing through Souda which is in ruins + meeting hundreds of civilian refugees going to the mountains we run into about 1000 walking as well as other units all proceeding in the same directions as ourselves IE eastwards along the coast. This adds to our difficulties in keeping the unit together as it is very dark + there is a lot of motor traffic as well. Road twists + turns + goes up + down all along coast which is vert steep + precipitous on the left side high mountains tower over us to the right. It must be grand scenery in day time. 

May 27th

Eventually country becomes flatter + more open. We are all very thirsty + stop at intervals looking for water to fill our water bottles but we find none. Eventually about 4AM after marching 12-14 miles we come to a big river near Khalibes where there are olive groves for cover so we decide to stop here for the day. After a lot of walking about in the dark the C.O., Forest, Hay + myself find a suitable hideout amongst some bushes by the side of the river. They don’t give much protection but are better than nothing and nearby is a stinking old well into which we jump when we hear bombs etc near at hand. We cant [? rest of sentence hard to read?] in it? Owing to the water. Deb, Gourevitch + Driberg have gone further on with the N.Z. FD Ambulance. Nobody seems to know where we are going or what to do. During the morning troops keep passing along up the river into the mountains making for the S coast. It looks like a general evacuation so we set off about 1PM to try to find out leaving word that the other officers + men are to set off at dusk in small parties. We haven’t gone far before numerous planes come over bombing + machinegunning all round us so we have shelter first under a tree at roadside + then in a small wine press where we have to remain till dusk as staffing continues very fiercely till then. Very noisy from 6 – 8 PM +  [text blurred due to ink on opposite page]  our hideout + make our way along road to Khalibes about 1 / 4 mile away. Here we contact N.Z. Field Ambulance + Driberg. I manage to get a lift in a lorry with CO + Driberg + we set off at 10PM, the rest of the unit marching. It is a 24 mile journey in pitch darkness with no lights over rough + extremely hill + precipitous roads which are choked with troops + transport. Progress is very slow indeed + it is quite the worst journey I have ever been on – a real nightmare. 

May 28th

We are at our destination which is a small village said to be near the S coat about 5.30AM. It is a pitiful sight to see so many tired troops struggling manfully along. On arrival Driberg + I chose a hide out on the side of a hole in a depression among rocks while CO goes off on his own. It is not very good cover but it is best we can find + not too far ????? in the village where there is water. This is one of our main problems. Though very tired + sleeping I can’t get off + its not comfortable! We have to stay here till dusk. Day is enlivened several times by bombing + machinegun attacks. Some of which are very close + we have some near misses, bits of rock + dust fallen on top of us. No one is killed + only one injured. I’ll be glad to get away from it for a bit + it is not easy to get used to. I should like to should like to see the road we came up last night by daylight. It was very steep + twists + I imagine very beautiful. About 8.30PM we contact an Aussie Fd Ambulance who offer to give us a lift in a truck which we accept. After about 1 mile we are stopped + turfed out + find ourselves in a large dump of walking wounded who are sheltering in a large ravine between two steep hills. It is dark + things are chaotic, there are no drugs + very little water. Driberg contacts medical officers + we try to restore order which we do up to a point though it is next to impossible under the conditions. Some of them are marched off towards the coast + we decide to go back to the village before dawn to see what is happening + to contact the unit if possible rather than on to the coast. [Section crossed out and unreadable]. We meeting Wykes who says he knows of a good cave. 

May 29th

Get a lift back to village + allow Wykes to lead us in the pitch darkness. We go over very rough country for what seems a long way up hill but fail to find any place in the darkness so we down among rocks to wait for dawn. Ground is very hard + covered with small + very prickly bushes on which we have to lie. It is very cold + we don’t sleep so as soon as it gets light enough we decide to climb the hill + look for a cave. Wykes leaves us + pushed off on his own. We cant find a cave but after climbing several hundred feet see a nice ledge of rock suitable camouflages by bushes etc so we put our things down here. Very tired + sleepy + glad to be able to rest. I don’t sleep much but waken about 7am feeling much better. It is a lovely day + we have a good view of the valley + the village below us. As the day wears on it it gets hotter + hotter as we are exposed to the full glare of the sun. Its sweltering + water is very scares so we have to ration ourselves. Our food is lasting quite well as we are not eating much + we still have a few tins left. We hope to get away from the beach tonight. About 3PM we decide to leave leave the hillside + make for Fd Ambulance which we can see in the village below. There we see several of our own unit all looking the worse for the wear. About 5pm we get a lift in an ambulance to go + see movement control about our units move + we are told they have to march at 8.30PM. I go back to let them know + arrange to meet them at roadside. Then take ambulance together with walking wounded in a convoy. Just as we sett off German planes arrive + start very fierce raid especially

Coastal areas. There are dozens of planes bombing + machinegunning all over the place. We decide not to take cover but to push on + trust to Red Cross. Raids gets worse + as we begin to go down steep hill twisting road with coast in view some miles away we are stopped + told to take cover. However we think it wiser not to do so but get out of ambulances + lorries without tin hats + sit about roadside in full view showing as many Red Cross flags as we can. This lasts about an hour + its not pleasant but it works + we are not touched. One of the lorries has to go back so I go with it + contact Driberg at place we had arranged to meet unit but A.W.M.S comes along + tells us not to wait for them as we will never find them in dark. He tells us to push off on our own as soon as possible. By the time we have met party up after we set out about 9PM we run into Padre Jones + also see [?]Mourice[?] + a few of our men marching in parties of 50. The rest of this march to the beach is the worst experience I have ever had. It is dark, the road is mostly very steep + downhill + indescribably rough + bad + one cant see where ones feet are going. We know that if we sprain an ankle we’ll be left behind. There is an unending stream of men + the pace is hot. Post has sore feet as his shoes are worn through + Driberg has difficulty in keeping up so we have to stop very frequently for rest. We get more + more tired, hot + thirsty + the road seems interminable! Its a quest of follow my leader. We pass through villages + are always told its only 2 miles more but eventually turns out to be 12. Will we ever come to the end? At one point someone says we are going the wrong way so the whole column stops + there is utter confusion. However we eventually reach the beach just before 3AM + are only a few files from the boat when we are told no more are to go tonight. Its a terrible disappointment as we could touch the boats + can see the warships as vague shapes in the dark. They steam off about 3am + that’s that. Lets hope for better luck next time. 

After this disappointment we find shelter in a bombed house just a few yards from the beach. The village has been blitzed + is in a dreadful mess – debris, telephone wires etc lying about all over the place. I find a well at the end of the village + fill the water bottles. Then lie down in house to wait till dawn when we can see better. When it is light enough I set off on my own to look for  a safe retreat + find a lovely big cave not far from the village to which I take Driberg who is more or less dead beat. Padre Jones comes too. [Section blacked out and unreadable] We manage to get a few more tins of food + then go to sleep. I have best sleep I’ve had for some time though ground is hard + rocky. Apart from some machineginning the morning we have a very peaceful day + no bombs are dropped. We lie doggo all day in the cave, our main worry being the uncertainty of wether we will be taken off tonight or not. There are various contradictory orders but they seem to be getting the chaos straightened out. The troops have been told they ave to back a mile or two + pass through a control point up the hill before embarking but Driberg says he couldn’t do it so we attach ourselves to some walking wounded again + about 9PM make our way down to the beach where we are told to sit down + wait as it is not certain whether we will be taken off tonight or not. Several battalions of New Zealanders are going. After waiting some time we are told the wounded are not to go + are rather crestfallen but decide to wait on + hope for the best. There are 21 of us altogether. The barges are loading troops the time just in front of us + naval ships touch up about midnight as black shapes in the bay. There  are however, only two of them. About 2.30AM someone shouts for us + says we may go so our prayer has been rewarded + we are soon aboard HM destroyer Napier (Australian). She sails soon after 3AM. Driberg + I share one of the officers cabins + are very comfortable. I sleep on the floor + have a very good night. Post turns up too + seems to be much relieved as we all are. Wake up, wash + shave + have a very good breakfast about 8am. We are going full speed ahead together with another destroyer + all is peaceful till about 9am.

May 31st 

When there is a shattering + deafening noise from the ships A.A. guns firing just above the cabin at some Stuka dive bombers. Bombs are dropping + ship is zigzagging at full speed keeling over as she does. Suddenly all lights go out, books on shelves, furniture etc fall about all over the place + it looks as though we had been hit but it turns out to be a near miss about 5 yards from my cabin. The side of the ship is dented a bit + the engines put out of order so that speed has to be reduced to 20 knots, otherwise all is well. Attack lasts 1 / 2 hour + is very unpleasant more so than on land. Our own fighters are supposed to be near + some have been seen. After this all is quiet except for one or two rounds of A.A. fire later on but no further attack. Both destroyed claim a possible plane each. Spend rest of morning in cabin talking + then have a good lunch. It is a lovely day + a grand sight to see the two destroyers ploughing their way through a calm sea so fast. After a bit our own planes appear to escort us + we have no further trouble apart from engines breaking down completely for a short time but they are soon O.K. again. We see coast line of desert about 5PM + arrive in harbour (Alexandria) about 7PM. Organisation at docks is excellent + we are soon ashore getting tea + biscuits. Buses take us off to a hostel where we are to spend the night. Sleep well in spite of air raid + heavy A.A. barrage. Never thought I’d be so glad to see this filthy country again. 

Labyrinth: Knossos, Myth & Reality Review

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With some time to kill in Oxford. I recently paid a second visit to the Labyrinth: Knossos, Myth and Reality at the Ashmolean Museum. This exhibition explores, as the title suggests, the myths and realities of the palace of Knossos, its discovery and its people.



Split into four main sections, the exhibition delves into the ancient legends of the Minotaur and the Labyrinth of King Minos, followed by the search for and excavation of the real Palce of Knossos, followed by an exploration of the Minoan civilisation and their culture, and finishes with the destruction of the palace and the continuing story of the site, creating a connection to the Labyrinth abandoned after the Minotaur has been slain.


The first section opens with a spectacular life sized statue of the Minotaur as its centrepiece, with a short video telling the story of Theseus and his quest into the Labyrinth. This sets the tone for the original legends of the Labyrinth from Ancient Greece itself, explained via coins and tiles featuring the labyrinth, and vases, cups and artwork depicting Theseus, the Minotaur, Ariadne and other elements of the story. Also displayed in this section is a papyrus fragment of text of the Iliad concerning the Cretan hero Idomeneus fighting at Troy.



The gallery then moved into the historical Crete, descriptions of the island and the search for the Labyrinth by later travellers and archaeologists. This section featured maps and prints of Crete under the Venetians, and the earliest map of the island, with many of the place names still recognisable.

The end of this section moves into the discovery of Knossos in the 19th and 20th century. Initial focus is paid to Minos Kalokairinos, the Cretan archaeologist who conducted the first digs and excavations at Knossos, only to be vastly overshadowed by Arthur Evans. Alongside a lifesize photo of the man himself is one of the vast Pithos vases he discovered in his excavations, letters from his dispute with Evans and drawings he made of now lost artefacts.



While it is most fitting to include Kalokairinos in an exhibition delving into the myths and realities of Knossos, this gallery section then immediately undoes itself by then spending the rest of the space on Evans and his papers, drawings and notes. I imagine this is due to the significantly larger quantities of materials by and about Evans, due to his position as Keeper of the Ashmolean, that is available to the curators and exhibition designers in comparison with Kalokairinos, but this proved to be a somewhat missed opportunity.


We then move from legend and discovery into reality, with the remainder of the exhibition displaying artefacts from the Minoan civilization. A particular focus is on the every day life of the Minoans, with objects for cooking and dining, weaving and spinning equipment (providing a link back to the legend of Ariadne), weights, jewellery and other objects, drawn from the Ashmoleans own collection, as well as loans from Heraklion Archaeological Museum.

All of these object beautifully demonstrate the unique Minoan artistic style, and often featuring bull or animal imagery tying back to the Labyrinth and Minotaur. This section rounds off with replicas of artefacts from Knossos, including a wooden version of the “Throne of Ariadne” owned by Evans, and strikingly accurate 3d scanned and printed statues of the Snake Goddess.

Alongside these 3d replicas is footage of the Knossos and Labyrinth sections of Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey. Just as the exhibition opens with the earliest legends of the Labyrinth, it closes with the newest.

The exhibition isn’t quite done after this, with more artefacts from Minoan sites around Knossos, including objects from the supposed human sacrifice at Anemospilia and the cemetery at Poros. This is in addition to artefacts from later stages of Knossos’ occupation during the Classical, Hellenistic and Roman periods, indicating there is more to the Minoans than Knossos, and more to Knossos than the Minoans.

The actual end of the exhibition is a frankly bizarre video that seems to be a stream of words and natural imagery, provided by a computer generated monotone voice. I was baffled as to how this connected to the overarching theme of the exhibition and I am not likely to ever find out given I could only stand a few minutes of the cacophony. An odd ending to an otherwise excellent exhibition.

Battle of Crete POW Memoir – Victor Edward Jones

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I recently viewed a number of unpublished memoirs and private papers of British soldiers who had taken part in the battle of Crete at the Imperial War Museum reading room. One of these was the Private Papers of Victor Edward Jones (catalogued as documents. 12254), containing his memoirs and a number of other documents. Jones was a gunner in the Royal Artillery, serving in the 27th Searchlight Regiment. His memoirs describe his capture after being left behind during the evacuation from Sphakia, time in temporary camps in Crete, Athens and Salonika, and his day to day life as a Prisoner of War in Germany.

As well as photos of Victor, his friends (seeming referred to collectively as “The Syndicate”) and the troopships he sailed on, the file also contains several drawings, depicting the battle of Crete, life as a prisoner of war and drafts of the front page of POW camp newspapers.

Below is my transcription of the segment of his memoirs covering his experiences in Crete and the Greek mainland.

June 1st 1941

As the sun slowly rose, the patch of illuminated area grew, until the whole of Sparkia Valley was revealed, much as it had been for the previous three days. Groups and clusters of men moved from the centre of the valley where they had been sleeping, and sought refuge in the caves, or under the numerous olive trees, for the coming of daylight heralded a renewal of the German aircraft attacks. Only the long queue in front of the single water source remained. Volunteers were called for and dispatched to the beach to enquire if any rations had arrived during the preceding night, whilst isolated fellows grubbed amongst the ravaged gardens in the valley in a vain search for something edible, although only grass and very little of that now remained. 

The drone of an aircraft became apparent, and anxious eyes scanned the sky.  After a minute or two a German plane flew into sight, heading in the direction of the valley. There were cries of “Keep still” – “Don’t look up” – “Take cover”. The water queue wavered, scattered and silenced as if by magic, as the plane flew slowly overhead. 

Upon the hill behind, sharp bursts of machine-gun fire could be distinguished, punctuated by the heavy thud of a mortar. Slowly the sounds drew nearer until, with a shrill whine, a mortar shell whizzed over our heads, to explode with a resounding crash at the mouth of the valley. At the sound of this, the chattering that was murmuring up and down the valley ceased. After half a dozen or so shells, there was a lull in the firing. The ensuing silence lasted for about 10 minutes at the end of which an English officer made his way to a rock in the centre of the valley. Raising his voice he told us that the island had capitulated and that we were all prisoners. He advised us to take off our steel helmets and pile them and our arms in the centre of the valley. We removed the essential parts from our rifles and threw them away, and then placed our rifles and steel helmets on the ever increasing pile. Two German soldiers, armed with ‘Tommy guns’, appeared, and we were shepherded into an enclosure behind a church. 

At first it was very hard to realise that we were prisoners, and feelings were mixed. Several fellows busied themselves with  burning correspondence, papers, photographs etc, while others obtained permission to get water. A few Australians managed to procure some portions of dead donkey and set about stewing it. 

After an hour or so, we were told to make our way to the road that passed along the mountainside behind the valley. As we filed through the gate of the enclosure, we were given a cursory search, and told that we might get some food that evening, and the 5 day trek back to Kania began.

    June 5th – 18th 1941 Skenes Camp

    Skenes Camp was originally used by the British for Italian prisoners and when we arrived, there were still numerous traces of its former occupants. It was a piece of ground roughly 100 by 300 yards, enclosed by a single strand barb wire fence. Efforts to escape however, were deterred by two machine gun nests, situated on little hillocks, overlooking the camp. The ground, which was of a very rocky, stony nature, was dotted here and there with flea infested bivouacs and tents improvised of brushwood and canvas. On the left hand side of the gate (outside the wire) were the quarters of the German guards, whilst on the right were three tents that served as a hospital. The latrines were mere holds in the ground, unscreened, and in no way shut off from the rest of the camp. Flies, heat and bad sanitary arrangements soon caused numerous cases of diarrhoea and dysentery to break out, and these two disease spread, unchecked, at a terrifying rate. Rations were very meagre indeed, and after a couple of days, there was a sad lack of firing for cooking. Cigarettes quickly became exhausted and it was a common sight to see the lads plucking olive leaves to roll a cigarette in a piece of newspaper. We were able after a few days to purchase a few vegetables from the Greek villagers, but the prices were prohibitive, and the demand very large, soo only a fortunate few were able to take advantage of this. One or two chaps were caught going through the wire in order to get to the village and get food, and they were punished by being kept on water for 24 hours. A warning was given out that future offenders could, and would, be punished by death. Two chaps who were caught after the warning, were sentenced to be shot, but the Australian Padre intervened and pleaded for them, and they managed to obtain a remission of their sentence. 

    It was amazing to see the rapid havoc that bad water and short rations brought about. Cheeks soon hollowed, and bones began to protrude. There were no hairdressing facilities available, and the occupants of the camp soon became a rather fearsome sight. Attacks of dizziness assailed the men when they stood up or walked about. The nights were very cold, and blankets were a rarity. Blistered heels and flea bites rapidly turned to septic sores, and in a very short space of time, the little hospital was filled to overflowing. But in the hospital too, conditions were little better, of medical equipment they had next to nothing, and the food was no different from the main camp. We were all very glad when the day came to leave.

    June 20th – 22nd 1941 Athens

    Our stay in Athens was only of very short duration, and lasted only a matter of a day or so. On the evening of our arrival, we had our first gifts from the Red Cross, one cigarette a man.

    The camp was a disused Greek barracks, with stone walls and floors. Our room when we arrived was three quarters filled with straw, and although we removed and burnt this as soon as possible, the large number of bugs that remained behind made our nights rest a rather unpleasant one. 

    Here we came into contact for the first time with the German Ersatz coffee. This was served without milk or sugar, and although rather unpalatable at first, we quickly grew accustomed to it. As a drink, it was a necessity as the water was very bad and we had no means of boiling any, but as a refreshing beverage, it was rather a failure. We also made the acquaintance here of what afterwards received the ignominious title of “Salonika Biscuits”. This was a very hard biscuit about three and a half inches square. It was baked I think from some kind of flour, which I believe to be soya bean flour, although to judge from its extreme toughness I would not be surprised if a certain amount of concrete was also used in the mixing process. When we left the camp, the day following our arrival, we were issued with rations consisting of three of these biscuits and a fairly large piece of cheese. These rations were to last us three days. 

    June 25th – July 8th 1941 Salonika

    The first Salonika camp was an old Greek barracks and consisted of some twenty one-storied single room buildings. Ours was the smallest of these, and held about thirst men, a sergeant (who composed music which he sang most of the day) and a sergeant major. The two latter were captured in Greece and were already well established when we arrived. Rumours soon became prevalent, and although their authenticity remained undoubted at the time, it is most amusing to recall some. Turkey was most consistently talked about, she entered and left the war at an average of once every twenty four hours. Also had we added up the Russians advance daily, at the end of the week they should have been in Paris. 

    The food was very poor in quality, and exceedingly small in quantity, and the greater part of the day was spent in discussing meals past and future – mainly future/ It was attempted to start Physical Training classes as a diversion from the monotony of “lice catching”, but as it required all one’s energy to walk to the parade ground, this idea was quickly dropped. Incidentally the lice were a very unpleasant innovation into our life as a prisoner. They became first attached to us in the cattle trucks during the journey from Athens to Salonika, and grew very rapidly in number. We had nothing with which to combat them as our small stocks of soap had run out long before we even left Crete, and fresh supplies were unobtainable. However, life had its bright moments, we had almost hourly discussions as to how long the war would last, and even the most pessimistic could think of nothing over two months. Every evening some Greek girls assembled in a garden visible from the small window in the rear of our room, and sang. Their favourite song, and ours, was “South of the Border”, which they sang and harmonised to perfection. Every afternoon too, a girl of about seventeen would sit in this garden and read a book. 

    The Sergeant Major in charge of our rom conceived the idea that her sole purpose there was to try and import some news to us, and so, believer her to be able to speak French, he would spend a large part of the afternoon holding onto the bars across the little window overlooking the garden and sing – or rather chant, “Mademoiselle, avez-vous de nouvelles?”. Needless to say he never received any reply, and the only response to his efforts were the few unappreciative shouts from the German guards patrolling the barbed wire. 

    One night, the camp was searched as a quantity of bread had been stolen from the ration stores. The bread was discovered hidden in the branches of a tree by the parade ground, and as punishment we were kept on the parade ground for over six hours and put on half rations for two days. This punishment was more severe than it sounds, as the sun was exceedingly hot and we could not leave to get water, also our rations were already very small.

    Another night, during a thunderstorm, two fellows attempted to escape and were caught. We heard they were shot, but never received any confirmation of this, although it was quite feasible to judge from the harsh treatment meted out by the Germans to the Greeks over trivial offences. 

    After we had been at the camp about a week, we were allowed to dispatch our first piece of correspondence since capture, a printed card, notifying our Next of Kin that we were in good health!

    On the morning of July 8th we were paraded with our meagre kit and marched about three miles through Salonika to another camp. Here, after standing for about an hour in torrential rain, we were split up into groups of a hundred each, and allowed to find shelter where we could in the buildings of the fresh camp. 

    July 8th – August 12th 1941 Camp 11 – Salonkia

    Life at the second camp in Salonika was a pretty miserable sort of affair, we were always hungry as the food supplied by the Germans was neither nourishing or filling. When the bread and biscuit ration came into the camp (about once every two or three days) there were always a number of chaps following behind the cart picking up scraps and crumbs that happened to fall out. The meat in the soups was very tough in nature and small in quantity, (the popular fallacy was that it was water buffalo, but it was rather significant that once, when one of the German’s horses died, we had meat three days running).

    On one occasion, some old bones from the cookhouse were buried in the refuse heap, and the fact that the same evening they were removed in the hope that the cooks had overlooked something, is some illustration as to how hungry we actually were. A days menu will give some idea of the meagreness of the rations

    Breakfast 6.30 2 biscuit, 1/8th loaf of bread, Ersatz coffee (devoid of milk or sugar)

    Dinner 12.00 1 ladleful (pint) soup, manufactured from either beans, lentils or rice (incidentally, when the water was drained off, the sediment of bean etc was about 2” deep.)

    Tea 4.30 1 ladleful soup (pint) (made with about half the cereal content as the dinner soup, but containing the broken pieces of biscuit left over from the morning issue)

    The main amusements in the camp were cards, reading and the inevitable discussion of food. The war was also discussed, fought and won every day, and the so-called “authentic” news was extremely enlightening. The news was accredited to varying sources, ranging from the German guards to the civilian who told a chap who told my friend who told me. The most brazen example, I think, was the fellow who collected a crowd and produced a Greek newspaper from his pocket, proceeding to inform the world at large that Turkey had entered the war, the Russians were only a short distance from Salonika, and the whole German system was collapsing.

    The Salonika Market

    The “Salonika Market” was the name given to the Exchange Mart that formed daily on the parade ground. It commenced immediately after rations had been drawn in the morning, and apart from the breaks necessary for dinner, tea and check parades, continued until dusk. Almost anything could be bought or sold and the currency was either cigarettes or money. 

    The main item on the market was the sale and exchange of biscuits and bread. The 2 biscuit ration in the morning generally started in the running at either two or three cigarettes, but by the evening, the amount of stock had decreased and the hunger increased in proportion so that prices had risen to five or six cigarettes. 

    Boots, overcoats, haversacks, razors, belts etc. could all be bought for cigarettes. A few of the chaps went into the town on working parties and managed to buy eggs, biscuits and jam from the civilians, and these, when re-sold in the market, fetched stupendous prices. Most of the selling was done by Cypriots, who quickly cornered the market and forced prices up. It was quite a common sight to see a chap racing across the parade ground with a tin of jam under his arm, with the enraged Cypriot, whose property it was, in hot pursuit. Unfortunately for the pursued, he was sometimes caught, and in one or two cases a knifing episode followed. The main source of revenue among the majority of chaps came from the gambling schools, which were pretty numerous. Crown and Anchor, Sixes and Fives (or Exu Pendi as the Cypriots called it) and One Up, were the main types. The latter was the game that we called Heads and Tails, and was very popular with the Australians. The noise in the market was indescribable, but most prevalent was the Cypriots cry of “How Much George – You speak”.

    Escapes

    There were several small attempts to escape, but most of them were unsuccessful, but on one occasion a large scale attempt was made. Somebody discovered by accident that one of the manholes in the compound led into a sewer that went underground past the barbed wire entanglements and terminate in some shrubs a hundred yards or so from the main gate. A circle was quickly formed round the manhole, and a game of “one up” was started to cover movements. All through the afternoon and evening, fellows slipped away down the hole. At ten o’clock men were still going down the vent, when a chap was lodged in the narrow channel. He was overcome by the bad air and whilst being helped back, the movements were observed by a guard. A shot was fired, and another of them men who was at that moment emerging from the hole at the other end of the channel attempted to get back into the sewer. Unfortunately, he too was observed, and the guard fired some shots down the drain. There were a number of fellows still in the tunnel, and of these, two were filled and one seriously wounded. Some seventy men had already made their escape before the guards’ discovery, but it was for the main part only the Cypriots who got clear away. The English and Australians were too badly handicapped by their appearance, looks and lack of knowledge of the language, and for the most part, they were picked up in the town. Strangely the Germans did not impose any punishment upon us for this, although we had previously been punished several times for the most trivial offences. After this escape, however, the searchlights were kept burning all night and the guards were very jumpy indeed. To intimidate us, they would amuse themselves at night by firing the machine gun at the walls of the barracks. A few nights after the escaping took place, one of the chaps was going across to the lavatory situated in the middle of the rear parade ground, he was picked up in the search light, and panicking, started to run. The guard immediately shot at him and hit him in the stomach, he died the following day.

    The average rate of deaths from disease etc. was three a day. Conditions in the hospital were terrible. There were by no means enough beds or blankets to go round, and the floors wer littered with patients, some of them suffering from pneumonia. Most prevalent among the diseases were septic sores, malaria and dysentry. The medical kit and equipment in the hospital was pitifully small, and the Germans were far from helpful – they even begrudged the patient the necessary hot water with which to bathe the wounds and sores. 

    Once when I was visiting my friend who was seriously ill with septic sores, I saw three men die in the short space of half an hour. Their beds were quickly filled, and after the bodies had been take out to the improvised mortuary, the blankets from the beds were handed to someone else.

    Life in Salonika was very depressing indeed, I think that during the nine weeks that were spent there, we touched the rock-bottom of endurance. Indeed, several chaps died there through just not having the will to live. 

    What the Germans gained by treating us so badly, I do not know, although the rumour that we earned their dislike over Crete may have had a bearing on it. 

    A Roman Hotel? Letocetum / Wall Roman Site

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    On the outskirts of Lichfield lies the small village of Wall. At its centre is the Roman town of Letocetum, situated just off Watling Street, the Roman road that follows the route of the modern A5. Letocetum was a small settlement, focused around the Mansio, the Roman equivalent of a way station or hotel, where travellers on the road could safely rest for the night. However the town also had a sizable bath complex and signs of thriving industrial activity. Much of the town remains buried either under nearby farmers fields or the houses that make up the modern village, though the Mansio and baths are visible and able to be visited throughout the year.

    Also in the village is a small museum housing artefacts found during excavations at the site.

    Everyday artefacts
    Funerary artefacts
    Food and drink
    Cabinets showing the Roman artefacts found at the site.
    Industry and building materials
    Wall painting from the baths
    Stone querns and millstones.
    Roman beads and jewllery
    Roman jewellery and beads
    African warrior figurine.
    A figurine depicting an African warrior
    Carvings possibly depicting horned gods
    Roman knives and tools
    Dice and gaming tokens
    Roman duck brooch
    A beautiful enamel brooch in the shape of a duck
    A ring with seal
    Face jars, possibly from burial urns
    High status Samian ware serving bowls, cup and plate.
    Handle of a wine amphora and jug,
    Brooches and other pieces of jewellery
    Glass fragments and evidence of metalworkers

    Outside the museum is the remains of the Roman settlement itself, with the excavated remains of the mansio and baths to explore.

    Occupying most of the site is the remains of the Mansio. Individual rooms and passageways are clearly visible, arranged around a central courtyard. This courtyard may have been covered over and acted as a meeting place for both guests and the people of Letocetum. There is also the possibility that horses could have been stabled on site.

    The baths complex is across the “street” from the mansio and while small, features all the luxuries expected of Roman civilisation, with exercise yard, changing rooms and both hot and cold baths, heated by wood fired furnace.

    Further information about Letocetum is available on the English Heritage website: Wall Roman Site | English Heritage (english-heritage.org.uk) . There is also the Friends of Leotcetum Society who conduct talks and open days at the site, further information on their website: Wall Roman Site | Cheese Press (wallromansitefriendsofletocetum.co.uk).

    Thomas Babington and Edith Fitzherbert, All Saints Church, Ashover.

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    Over the bank holiday weekend I paid a visit to All Saints Church in Ashover, Derbyshire to look at the effigies of Thomas Babington and Edith Fitzherbert.

    The Babingtons and Fitzherberts were both Derbyshire gentry families, the Babingtons serving as the High Sheriffs of the county and the Fitzherberts as knights and MPs. As befitting their status, Thomas and Elizabeth have memorial effigies in alabaster, with detailed carving depicting both of them in their finery at prayer and surrounded by miniatures of their children.

    Along with other effigies in this style and status, such as those of Edith’s parents in Norbury, most of the children are each show with individual clothing and accessories, though some duplicates are thought to representative of children who died.

    One set of miniatures portrays two of their sons, John as a knight, his armour covered by a tabard and a black cloak of the Knights of Rhodes, and Thomas as a priest in robes and a holding a book.

    Returning to Thomas and Edith themselves, unusually both effigies are painted, though clearly modern coatings over the original. Though this would have been common when new (many effigies still have traces of paint in the recesses), these effigies serve as a reminder of how bright, even garish, the medieval world would have been.

    The details of the couples dress accessories are particularly interesting. In addition to the long gowns of the period, both are wearing jewellery and decorative pieces. Thomas has a chain collar, rings, a decorated purse/pouch and the remains of a sword or dagger.

    Edith meanwhile has rings and a decorated hanging chain belt or girdle, possibly ending in a scented pomander, the height of fashion for the time.

    Additionally, Thomas and Edith possibly appear twice on their own memorial, as two miniatures kneeling before images of saints (Catherine holding her wheel and a bishop, possibly Thomas Becket) seem to be wearing almost identical clothing.

    Other wonderful details include the lion Thomas is resting his feet upon and the tiny dog biting at the bottom of Edith’s gown, a recurring theme apparently in this kind of effigy.

    Ralph Stockbridge – Crete Memoir

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    A few weeks ago, I visited the National Library of Scotland to go through some of the documents in the Patrick Leigh Fermor archive. One of these is the memoir of Ralph Stockbridge (ACC. 13338/412), describing army life on Crete before the invasion, his interactions with civilians, an encounter with the famous archaeologist John Pendlebury, the battle of Crete and his desire to return and help liberate the “brave and wonderful” Cretan people.

    Following the battle Stockbridge joined the Inter Services Liaison Department (a front organisation for MI6), trained as a radio operator and returned to Crete to set up an intelligence gathering network. Though not a member of the Special Operations Executive he worked closely alongside and became good friends with many of the SOE agents who were infiltrated onto Crete.

    The following text is a direct transcription of his unpublished memoir including the capitalisation of surnames.

    Ralph Stockbridge
    Crete
    December 1940 – May 1941

    Ralph Stockbridge

    I came to Crete by accident. France was my first love, and I had joined the Field Security” Corps early in 1940 because someone had told me that, as I spoke fluent French, this was the best way of getting to France quickly. But, just as France was falling, I had found myself in one of the first Field Security Sections sent to the Middle East. Fate again intervened, this time in the shape of appendicitis, to prevent me joining the Section in Northern Greece and being involved in the subsequent retreat. Instead, I found myself in the Section sent to Crete at the end of December 1940.

    My first impressions were unfavourable. We were under canvas in an olive-grove beside the main Chania Suda road, and it rained incessantly, our encampment became a morass, and we were wet and miserable Of the few weeks spent in Chania I remember curiously little, and the town has never had for me the attraction of Rethymnon and Heraklion. Three things from this period stick in my memory, however my instant liking of the Greek people, my first encounter with the Greek language; and the death of Metaxas. Our Field Security duties brought us into contact with Greek officials, in the harbour and elsewhere, and one met and drank coffee with Greek soldiers on their way to, or on leave from, Albania.  Their friendliness and courtesy made a lasting impression on me. I have a photograph of some of them taken by the quayside at Chania, the names of four of them were loannis PALIDES, Michael KOUTROULES, LAMBAKES, and Spyros ORPHANOS, the latter with an address in Athens (108 Patission). The first words of Greek which I heard completely mystified me. They were of a peasant woman shouting at her small boy behind our tents, and she appeared to be saying “Come here at once, Adonis”. As the child was not particularly beautiful I thought this otherwise charming survival of a name from classical times somewhat inappropriate, and it took me some time to work out that his mother was really calling him Antoni (Tony in English) and even longer to learn that the accent is on the first syllable of the name Adonis in Greek.

    The modern harbour of Chania

    The sudden death of the Prime Minister, General Metaxas, whose heroic rejection of the Italian ultimatum on 28 October 1940 brought Greece into the Second World War as Britain’s only ally at that time, caused consternation in Chania. I have never, before or since that date, seen people crying openly in the streets, and this was the more remarkable in of all places, Chania, the birthplace of Venizelos whose followers professed then, as their successors still do, hatred for the right wing in general and dictators in particular.

    Early in March, two members of our Section, myself and David Bowe, he a well- informed and witty Fleet Street journalist before the war, now with the rank of Sergeant to my Lance-Corporal, were sent off on our motor-bikes to represent the Section in Heraklion. We passed through Rethymnon on March 8th and I contrived to be photographed in the company of the local Gendarmerie commander and a group of bystanders, one of whom was named Polydoros NIKOLOUDES. We rode on, through beautiful scenery, to Heraklion. I nearly coming to grief, and a premature end, on one of the dangerous comers near Yeni Kave (Drosia as it is known today) whose head-man, Mitsos KONTOGIANNES, was to play such a prominent part in resistance activities during the occupation.

    Thus began one of the happiest periods of my life. Bowe and I had the free run of Heraklion. Our section commander was a hundred miles away in Chania, and what our duties were, in this farcical unit to which we belonged I, at least, never clearly understood. I interpreted mine as the identification of pro-Germans in the town. There were probably not more than a score of these and all of them, I suspect, harmless people with business or family connections with Germany. Their names and details I passed on to Chania, to what purpose I cannot imagine Germany had not yet invaded Greece, the British Army certainly had no authority to take any action against civilians, however pro- German, while the Greek security section of the local Gendarmerie presumably knew a great deal more about the problem than we did and were geared to take any necessary action.

    Meanwhile we enjoyed Heraklion. My first friend there was George Migades, the leading tailor in the town, who invited me into his shop for a cup of coffee as I was passing by one day. In his fifties, and immensely pro-British, Migades was a mine of information about Heraklion. He was also extremely voluble: his words came pouring out in a torrent I have never heard equalled except, possibly, by Isaiah Berlin. The efforts I made during the following weeks to understand what he was saying were certainly responsible for the fact that, without any lessons, I was fluent in Greek by the time the battle began, though I knew no modern Greek by the time I arrived in Crete five months earlier. This is less strange than it may seem, I had taken my degree in Classics at Cambridge before the war, and modern Greek is only a very much simplified version of the language spoken in Greece two thousand years ago

    Migades introduced me to his wife and their four delightful children, two girls and two boys aged between 22 and 16, Modi and Rena, Yanni and Siphi (short for Joseph). All survived the war, the two girls making successful marriages, Rena to Micky Akoumianakes who was to become the most important contact in Heraklion during the occupation of successive British officers conducting resistance and intelligence activities; Yanni is today one of Greece’s best-know artists and stage designers, while Siphi retired as a senior pilot of Olympic Airways. The Migades family house was in the old part of the city which lies behind and to the east of the main street leading from Morosini Square down to the Harbour, an area of narrow streets and old houses with inner courtyards immortalized by Kazantzakes in his great novel Kapetan Mikhales (Freedom or Death in its English translation), and a tale of insurrection against the Turks during the 19th Century.

    During this period I met, many of them through Migades, a cross-section of Heraklion society. There was Eleutherios ALEXIOU, scholar and schoolmaster, with a good library, with whom I discussed French literature, talking always French, which was at that time the foreign language most readily spoken by educated people in Greece. There was the honorary British Vice-Consul, M.N. ELIADES, an elderly man who had written in English a history of Crete (CRETE PAST AND PRESENT, published by Heath Cranton Ltd, London, in 1933). After Crete fell, Eliades was arrested and spent the next four years in internment in Germany, where he was, by all accounts, well-treated, and survived the war. Edith and Harry NEWLANDS were particular friends of mine, she from Newport in Essex, he originally from Lithuania and of mixed German-Lithuanian parentage (his real name was NEULANDS-JAUNTZE). They had met and married in Athens before the war where he ran a dancing school. They were kind and gentle people.  He spoke German, of course, and during the occupation was obliged, much against his will, to act as a translator and interpreter in Heraklion, for which he was regarded with some mistrust as a result by local people. Both survived the war and lived in Crete, dying there at an advanced age, he in his nineties.

    There were many other friends too. Coffee-housing was then, as now, a favourite pastime, and Regginakis’ establishment in the main square, facing Morosini’s beautiful Venetian fountain, our favourite rendezvous. Here we would sit for hours discussing the war and politics and anything else which occurred to us. One day. I recall, an elderly and bibulous English resident, named Foster, who was the representative in Heraklion of the Eastern Telegraph Company, stuffed with oranges the mouth of the fountain lions in a sudden fit of enthusiasm. In the square itself was always to be seen Andreas, the village, or rather town, idiot, whose harmless antics were a constant source of amusement. Andreas, I am told, was the only person in Heraklion allowed by the Germans to ‘cheek them with impunity during the occupation, he was of course often put up to it by the locals, who told him what to say.

    The Morosini Fountain, even today the centre of Heraklion

    This pleasant life came to an abrupt end on May 20, 1941, a cloudless and warm day. Although for some weeks, since the Germans had occupied mainland Greece, we had been expecting an early invasion, it was still something of a surprise when it happened. Proceedings began during the afternoon with some heavy bombing of the airfield area (two to three miles East of the town), but also of the harbour. Then, around 5pm, we saw the troop carriers and the first parachutists. I was in the western part of the city and so saw only those who descended some distance beyond the western entrance to the city. known as the Chania Gate. But a total of some 2000 German troops were landed on this first day, of whom at least half were wiped out by the end of it. They had, it seems, expected to capture the town and the airfield at once and without difficulty, but their intelligence must have been very poor since Brigadier Chapple’s British force consisted of 4000 men and there were also quite a large number of Greek troops plus many armed civilians, from elderly to very young men, who fought most valiantly and effectively. The Germans failed to take the airfield that day, and never did take it until after the evacuation, they did occupy the Greek barracks immediately to the South of the airfield, and they forced their way through the town to the harbour. But from both these areas they were driven out in the next day or two.

    Just prior to the battle, I had met John Pendlebury, then in uniform as a Captain. Pendlebury, although still a young man, aged 36, had been Curator and resident archaeologist at Knossos. He knew Crete far better than any other Englishman and during this period, when there were no roads to nine out of ten villages, nor any other modern amenities, he had walked all over the island’s 200-mile length and knew hundreds if not thousands of people. It was not surprising therefore that he had been asked by the War Office (though I did not know this at the time) to organise and lead resistance to the Germans in the event of Crete being captured. In addition to his unrivalled knowledge of the terrain of the Cretans, he spoke Greek and was young and fit enough to face the physical hardships likely to be involved. He was indeed an impressive man to meet, tall, handsome, athletic-looking (he had an Athletic Blue at Cambridge and twice won the High Jump against Oxford) and with an air of considerable authority. The distinction was added to by his having a glass eye (the result of a boyhood accident) and sporting a swordstick instead of a swagger-cane. Pendlebury had in fact made detailed plans for resistance, based initially on the villages round Mount Ida (Psilorites) and this explains why, on May 21, he decided to get out of Heraklion in order to activate his resistance organisation, possibly, while the battle was still in progress and its outcome undecided. What has never been explained, and I for one have never been able to understand, is why so intelligent a man chose to leave the town by the West, or Chania Gate, and by car. All of us had seen the parachutists landing in the area beyond the Gate the day before, and it could be safely assumed that they now controlled the main road Pendlebury and his driver ran straight into a pocket of parachutists, he was seriously wounded in the ensuing skirmish, and taken to a nearby house where his wounds were dressed by a German Army doctor, and he was left overnight. The following morning more Germans returned, and Pendlebury was taken outside and shot. The assumption is that he had been identified by the Germans as potentially their most dangerous opponent in Crete and that they decided to eliminate him there and then. To shoot a wounded and defenceless enemy in cold blood was of course a war-crime, but one which could not subsequently be pinned on any individual German. It is said that, some weeks after the event, Pendlebury’s body was exhumed in order that the Germans could satisfy themselves beyond any doubt, by examination of his glass eye, that it really was Pendlebury whom they had killed. His loss was a serious one to the Allies as it put back resistance and intelligence operations in Crete until autumn when the first British personnel, of whom I had the honour to be one, were infiltrated. His reputation however lived on in the villages, and future resistance personnel always found it a valuable introduction to villagers they did not know to say they were friends of John Pendlebury. But why did he not make his way out of Heraklion on foot and to the South of the city? It must have been safer.

    Replica of the uniform worn by Commonwealth troops during the battle, from a display in Chania marking the 81st anniversary of the battle.

    My personal recollections of the battle are a kaleidoscope of confusion. Our Field Security unit had been reinforced, if that is the word, by the arrival just beforehand of some NCOS and the Section Commander, Captain BURR, from Chania. We were billeted now in a half-built house opposite the Prefecture (Nomarcheion). There was no lighting and no hand-guards to the concrete staircase, and Captain Burr shortly fell from the first floor landing and broke his thigh. He was taken to hospital but could not be moved when the evacuation took place and so became a prisoner of war. The unit, composed of linguists (anything except Greek, and so useless) was hopelessly non-combatant, being armed only with Smith & Wesson 38 revolvers. We were only a hindrance to the military proper, but did odd guard jobs, acted as messengers and anything else we were asked to do. It is really only isolated incidents I remember from these seven or eight days of the battle in Heraklion: a German aircraft coming in from the sea on which a Bofors gun scored a direct hit-it became a ball of flame as it came down into the water, finding transport for a community of French nuns so that they could attempt to get out of the beleaguered town (I never discovered whether they did), the bombing of the town, diving very fast and head-first into a ditch as a Messerschmidt machine-gunned the street where I was standing, seeing some German prisoners held near Brigade HQ in a cave somewhere near the airfield- they were very arrogant and confident about the outcome of the battle; hearing my name called out down at the harbour during an air raid, and discovering it was not me but someone else who was being addressed he turned out, from my hurried enquiry, to be from Royston, the town nearest to the village of Melbourn where my family have lived since church records were kept, but I have never discovered who he was and whether he survived the war. During this time I at least had not the slightest idea of how the battle was going. In fact, it was going well as far as Heraklion was concerned, but its fate was being decided elsewhere. The capture of Maleme airfield at Chania, and complete air control, meant that the Germans could now land as many troops as required in Crete and that the battle was to all intents and purposes over. So an evacuation was ordered, the Chania garrison began the slow and arduous retreat to the South coast at Sphakia, and the Navy prepared to lift off Brigadier Chapple’s 4000 men from Heraklion. There was no possibility of rescuing the 2000 mostly Australian troops in Rethymnon most of whom in the event had to surrender though some took refuge in the villages, and were fed and sheltered at enormous personal risk by the inhabitants, often for months and in some cases years. Of these most were eventually secretly evacuated by submarine or small boat once British officers had returned to Crete to organise such operations and co-ordinate resistance

    At midnight on May 28th a Royal Navy force of two cruisers and six destroyers reached Heraklion. For three hours the destroyers ferried troops to the cruisers which lay outside harbour and themselves took on board the remainder. We were marched down to the harbour in batches and I shall never forget the silence and desolation of the shattered town I knew so well. I took a vow at this moment to return to Crete as soon as possible and to help liberate its brave and wonderful people.

    The harbour at Heraklion, with surviving Venetian fortress and arsenal.

    We sailed about 3.30am. For six hours, from first light until noon, by which time we were out of range of the aircraft, we were dive-bombed continuously. The noise of the screaming planes and of the anti-aircraft guns was deafening. Both cruisers were hit, Orion losing her Captain and nearly a hundred men killed among her crew and troops aboard. Of the six destroyers, Imperial had her steering-gear hopelessly crippled, her crew and passengers were taken aboard other ships and she was sunk. Hereward was badly damaged and had to be run aground on the East coast of Crete, her crew and passengers became prisoners of war. On board Jackal, where I was, we were packed like sardines, but suffered only near misses and minor damage. Towards nightfall we reached Alexandria, where good ladies with tea and sandwiches greeted us on the quayside. Then it was off to Cairo, and the bug-infested Kasr-el-Nil Barracks.

    Back in Egypt, my first act was to approach my Commanding Officer Lt Col WORDSWORTH and beg him to get me transferred to whatever unit was responsible for secret operations in Crete, I am eternally grateful to him for abetting such a request. especially from a junior NCO quite unknown to him. I was introduced in the right quarters, given three months training in the operation of a transmitting and receiving wireless set and in encoding messages, and was back in Crete at the beginning of October 1941, where I was to spend a further two and a half years with the Resistance.

    While in Egypt I sat down one day and wrote the following poem (not included) [Link to my transcription here]. It is to be read as an allegory of the bonds which unite our two island races, each with a famous history. I always thought of Crete as the last bastion of those allegedly fair-haired invaders from the North who had peopled Greece in pre-classical times, in particular the Dorians. It was noticeable in Crete at that time how many people had fair hair and blue eves, and noteworthy that nearly all of these turned out to originate from those mountain fastnesses to the South and South East of the White Mountains, the area of Sphakia, into which, for hundreds of years, successive occupiers, Venetians, Turks and now Germans never penetrated except to make brief forays. And so the race remained pure, without intermarriage with foreigners. There were even unmistakable traces of the old Greek language of classical times, eg the word “pempo” (I send) was regularly used instead of the modern Greek ‘stelno’.

    Note:

    Ralph Stockbridge was made an Officer, awarded the Military Cross in 1942 and a Bar in 1944, in which year he also received the Honorary Citizenship of Rethymnon on its liberation from the Germans.

    Ralph Stockbridge – Crete Poem

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    Part of the Patrick Leigh Fermor archive in the National Library contains correspondence (File reference Acc. 13338/412) with and a few papers of Leigh Fermor’s friend and colleague Ralph Stockbridge. He wrote this poem shortly after being evacuated from Crete, having fought in the battle as a Lance Corporal in the British Army.

    Lines Written in Egypt in June 1941 after the Battle of Crete
    By Ralph Stockbridge

    We will go out, hand in hand, from the torn sad streets
    Into the cool night;
    Hand in hand, we will go up, through the dark olive-grove,
    Past the vine-trellis, to the bare hillside.
    The moon will light our footsteps; we shall see,
    Faintly, the snow-gleam on the mountain-side,
    Pale gold bars on the gently heaving sea.

    This same moon, we shall muse, hallowed the old
    Forgotten priest-kings’ palaces
    When Minos ruled, on ever Europe claimed
    This beauty for a natural heritage.
    When, in the mountain cavern, Zeus was born,
    It shone, perchance; under its dim light
    Bold Theseus hoisted the dark sail
    Set forth to brave the dreaded minotaur,
    And break with grief an aged fathers heart.

    So we shall muse –
    Of Paul borne hither by an unruly sea;
    Of the painter called The Greek; did he
    In days of childhood draw from Crete
    That mystic inspiration?
    Of others too: of noble chieftains famed throughout the land
    In years gone by, waging unceasing fight
    Gainst Roman, Turk, Venetian,
    Of much oppression, and heroic deeds;
    Of this last suffering and sacrifice-

    Then, silent, we shall turn, our hearts grown full,
    And on each others shoulders place our hands,
    And in the other’s eyes look long, read there
    The pledge of friendship till the end of days