Crete: The Battle and the Resistance Read Free

was a moving moment. They were the first British forces openly back on European territory since the fall of France.
    The young pilots who followed had the happy-go-lucky attitude of the time. In 211 Squadron, a number were motor-racing enthusiasts who had known each other from the paddock at Brooklands.
    Nicknames were compulsively applied to everything and everyone, with 'kites' called 'Bloody Mary'
    and 'Caminix', and pilots known as 'the Bish' Gordon-Finlayson, 'Twinkle' Pearson and 'Shaky Do'
    Dawson.
    They soon settled into their new life. By day they carried out bombing raids on the Albanian ports of Durazzo and Valona — a dangerously repetitive pattern known as 'same time, same place' jobs. And by night they enjoyed themselves in Athens, starting at Zonar's, then going on to Maxim's or the Argentina night-club, where they rubbed shoulders, and occasionally came to blows, with unconvincing German 'holiday-makers'. At the Argentina, they used to chat up a blonde singer and dancer called Nicki after the show, unaware that she was the girlfriend of a member of Section D
    (another forerunner of Special Operations Executive) working under cover in the Legation.

    As a further gesture of support, and to provide 'close-up information about the relative merits of the two armies', Churchill had demanded the dispatch of a British Military Mission to the Greek army.

    GHQ Middle East received this instruction within a few days of the Italian invasion, and at the end of the second week of November, Major General Gambier-Parry was sent from Egypt, followed by a skeleton staff.
    Although the Military Attache, Colonel Blunt, was put in a difficult position, he and Gambier-Parry got on well. But Gambier-Parry was recalled towards the end of the year for a short-lived appointment as commander of British forces on Crete. His replacement was Major General T.G.
    Heywood.
    Heywood had been Military Attache in Paris prior to the fall of France. His refusal to acknowledge defects in the French army was an inauspicious qualification. Harold Caccia, the First Secretary at the Legation, considered him 'intelligent, but not very wise.' Heywood was a fastidious man. He had a muscular military face, with moustache, hard, narrowed eyes and a monocle. Ambitious and
    'politically minded', he increased the size of the British Military Mission from little more than half a dozen officers to over seventy at one point, a growth which convinced many in the Greek army that his organization was destined to form the nucleus of an expeditionary force.
    Heywood also put his fellow gunner, Jasper Blunt, in an intolerable position. Blunt, a perceptive man, had accumulated an excellent knowledge of the Greek army. He was also the only British officer in Athens who had managed to reconnoitre the threatened north-east before the Greek General Staff vetoed further visits. Colonel Blunt, with his superior local knowledge, should have joined the mission as the senior intelligence officer, but Heywood had brought in his own man, Stanley Casson
    — Reader in Classical Archaeology at New College, Oxford — who although brilliant and a veteran of the Salonika front in the First World War, was rather out of touch. Perhaps the most eccentric addition was Colonel Rankin of the Indian Army in a curiously cut pair of jodhpurs and a long cavalry tunic which stuck out so much at the sides that he was known as 'the Indian evzone'.
    Most members of the British Military Mission were either picked regular officers, or wartime volunteers with knowledge of the region. The chief staff officer for operations was a well-known Coldstreamer, Colonel Guy Salisbury-Jones. His number two was Major Peter Smith-Dorrien, later killed by the terrorist bomb at the King David Hotel.
    The ranks of young captains and subalterns included Charles Mott-Radclyffe, a diplomat turned soldier who had served en poste in Athens only a few years before; Monty Woodhouse, a 23-year-old Wykehamist of stern looks