There is evidence that Cretan civilians have been responsible for the mutilation and murder of our wounded soldiers. Reprisals and punishment must be carried out without delay or restraint.
I hereby authorise any units which have been victims of these atrocities to carry out the following: 1. Shooting
2. Total destruction of villages
3. Extermination of the entire male population in any village harbouring perpetrators of the above crimes
Military tribunals will not be required to pass judgement on those who have assassinated our troops.
‘Extermination of the entire male population’. The words leapt off the paper. The villagers were as still as dead men, the only sound was their breathing; but how much longer would they be free to breathe at all?
The Englishman broke the silence. ‘The Germans have never before encountered the kind of resistance they are meeting in Crete. It has taken them completely by surprise. And it’s not just from men but from women and children too - and even priests. They expected a full and uncompromising surrender, from you as well as the Allies. But it’s only fair to warn you that they have already dealt brutally with several villages over in the west. They’ve razed them to the ground - even the churches and the schools—’
He was unable to continue. Uproar broke out in the room.
‘Shall we resist them?’ roared Pavlos Angelopoulos over the hubbub.
‘Yes,’ shouted the forty or so men in reply.
‘To the death!’ roared Angelopoulos.
‘To the death!’ echoed the crowd.
Even though the Germans rarely ventured out after dark, men took turns to keep watch at the door of the bar. They talked long into the small hours of the morning, until the air was thick with smoke and silvery forests of empty raki bottles sat on the tables. Knowing it would be a fatal error to be spotted in daylight, the soldiers rose to go just before dawn. From now on they were in hiding. Tens of thousands of Allied troops had been evacuated to Alexandria a few days earlier and those left had to avoid capture by the Germans if they were to perform their vital intelligence operations. This group was on its way to Sitia, where the Italians had already landed and taken control.
In the Englishmen’s view, the farewells and embraces were long and affectionate for such a short acquaintance, but the Cretans thought nothing of putting on such an effusive emotional display. While the men had been drinking, some of the wives had come to the bar with parcels of provisions almost too heavy for the soldiers to lift. They would have enough to last them a fortnight and were fulsome in their gratitude. ‘Efharisto, efharisto,’ repeated one of them over and over again, using the only word of the Greek language he knew.
‘It’s nothing,’ the villagers said. ‘You are helping us. It is we who should be saying thank you.’
While they were all still in the bar, Antonis Angelopolous, the older of Fotini’s brothers, had slipped away, crept into the house and gathered a few possessions: a sharp knife, a woollen blanket, a spare shirt and his gun, a small pistol which his father had given him at the age of eighteen. At the last minute he grabbed the wooden pipe which lived on a shelf along with his father’s more precious and ornate lyre. This was his thiaboli, a wooden flute, which he had played since he was a child, and since he did not know when he would be home again, he could not leave it behind.
Just as he was fastening the buckle of his leather bag, Savina appeared in the doorway. For everyone in Plaka sleep had been elusive in the past few days. They were all on alert, restless with worry, occasionally roused from their beds by bright flashes in the sky that told of enemy bombs blasting their towns and cities. How could they sleep when they half expected their own homes to be rocked by the impact of shell fire or even to hear the strident voices of the German soldiers who now lived at the end of the street? Savina had been sleeping only lightly and was easily woken by the sound of footsteps on the hard earth floor and the scrape of the pistol on the rough wall as it was lifted from its hook. Above all, Antonis had not wanted to be seen by his mother. Savina might try to stop him.
‘What are you doing?’ she asked.
‘I’m going to help them. I’m going to guide those soldiers - they won’t last a day in the mountains without someone who knows the terrain.’ Antonis launched into a passionate defence of his actions, like a man who expected fierce opposition. To his surprise, however, he realised his mother was nodding in agreement. Her instinct to protect him was as strong as ever, but she knew that this was how it had to be.
‘You’re right,’ she said, adding in a rather matter-of-fact fashion: ‘It’s our duty to support them however we can.’
Savina held her son for a fleeting moment and then he was gone, anxious not to miss the four strangers who might already be making their way out of the village.
‘Keep safe,’ his mother murmured to his shadow, though he was already out of earshot. ‘Promise me you’ll keep safe.’
Antonis ran back to the bar. By now the soldiers were in the square and the last farewells had been said. He raced up to them.
‘I’m going to be your guide,’ he informed them. ‘You’ll need to know where the caves, crevasses and gorges are because on your own you could die out there. And I can teach you how to survive - where to find bird’s eggs, edible berries and water where you wouldn’t expect it.’
There was a murmur of appreciation from the soldiers and the Greek-speaker stepped forward. ‘It’s treacherous out there. We have already discovered that to our cost, on many occasions. We are very grateful to you.’
Pavlos stood back. Like his wife, he felt sick with fear at what his firstborn was committing himself to, but he also felt admiration. He had brought his two boys up to understand how the land worked and he knew Antonis had the knowledge to help these men sustain themselves, like goats on apparently barren land. He knew what would poison them and what would nourish them; he even knew which type of scrub made the best tobacco. Proud of Antonis’s courage and touched by his almost naïve enthusiasm, Pavlos embraced his son, then, before the five men were out of sight, he turned away and began walking home, knowing that Savina would be waiting for him.
Giorgis related all of this to Eleni when he visited the following day.
‘Poor Savina!’ she exclaimed hoarsely. ‘She’ll be worried sick.’
‘Someone has to do it - and that young man was ready for an adventure,’ replied Giorgis flippantly, trying to make light of Antonis’s departure.
‘But how long will he be away?’
‘Nobody knows. That’s like asking how long this war is going to last.’
They looked out across the strait to Plaka. A few figures moved about on the waterfront, going about their daily business. From this distance everything looked normal. No one would have known that Crete was an island occupied by an enemy force.
‘Have the Germans been causing any trouble?’ asked Eleni.
‘You would hardly know they were there,’ answered Giorgis. ‘They patrol up and down in the day but at night they’re nowhere to be seen. Yet it’s as though we’re being watched all the time.’
The last thing Giorgis wanted to do was make Eleni aware of the sense of menace that now pervaded the atmosphere. He changed the subject.
‘But how are you feeling, Eleni?’
His wife’s health was beginning to fail. The lesions on her face had spread and her voice had become gravelly.
‘My throat is a bit sore,’ she admitted, ‘but I’m sure it’s just a cold. Tell me about the girls.’
Giorgis could tell that she wanted to change the subject. He knew not to dwell on the subject of her health.
‘Anna seems a bit happier at the moment. She’s working hard at school but she’s not much better round the house. In fact she’s probably lazier than ever. She can just about clear away her own plate but she wouldn’t dream of picking up Maria’s. I’ve almost given up nagging her—’
‘You shouldn’t let her get away with it, you
know,’ interjected Eleni. ‘She’s just going to get into worse and worse habits. And it puts so much more pressure on Maria.’
‘I know it does. And Maria seems so quiet at the moment. I think she’s even more anxious about the occupation than Anna.’
‘She’s had enough upheaval in her life already, poor child,’ said Eleni. At moments like these she felt overwhelmed with guilt that her daughters were growing up without her.
‘It’s so strange,’ she said. ‘We’re almost completely unaffected by the war here. I feel more isolated than ever. I can’t even share the danger you’re in.’ Her quiet voice shook and she fought against the possibility of breaking down in front of her husband. It would not help. Not in any way at all.
‘We’re not in danger, Eleni.’
His words were a lie, of course. Antonis was not the only one of the local boys to have joined the resistance, and tales of the Germans’ infamously vicious behaviour at the slightest whiff of espionage made the people of Plaka shiver with fear. But somehow life appeared to go on as normal. There were daily tasks and those that the seasons dictated. When the late summer came, the grapes had to be trodden; when the autumn arrived it was time for the olives to be harvested; and all year round there were goats to be milked, cheese to be churned and weaving to be done. The sun rose, the moon saturated the night sky with its silver light and the stars blazed, indifferent to the events happening below them.
Always, however, there was tension in the air and the expectation of violence. The Cretan resistance became more organised, and several more men from the village disappeared to play their role in the unfolding events of the war. This added to the sense of anticipation that sooner or later life might change dramatically. Villages just like theirs, where men had become andarte, members of the resistance, were being marked out by the Germans and targeted for the most brutal reprisals.
One day early in 1942 a group of children, including Anna and Maria, were taking the long walk home from school along the water’s edge.
‘Look!’ shouted Maria. ‘Look - it’s snowing!’
Snow had ceased to fall some weeks ago and it would only be a matter of time before there was a thaw on the mountaintops. So what was this flurry of white around them?
Maria was the first to realise the truth. It was not snow that was falling from the sky. It was paper. Moments earlier a small aircraft had buzzed overhead, but they had barely looked up, so common was it for German planes to fly low along this part of the coast. It had dropped a blizzard of leaflets, and Anna grabbed one as it floated down towards her.
‘Look at this,’ she said. ‘It’s from the Germans.’ They clustered round to read the leaflet.
A WARNING
TO
THE PEOPLE OF CRETE
IF YOUR COMMUNITY GIVES SHELTER OR
SUPPLIES TO ALLIED SOLDIERS OR MEMBERS OF
THE RESISTANCE MOVEMENT, YOU WILL BE
PUNISHED SEVERELY. IF YOU ARE FOUND GUILTY,
RETRIBUTION WILL BE HARSH AND SWIFT FOR
YOUR ENTIRE VILLAGE.
The paper continued to drift down, creating a carpet of white that swirled around their feet before being lifted into the sea and merging into the foamy surf. The children stood quietly.
‘We must take some of these back to our parents,’ suggested one, gathering a handful before they blew away. ‘We need to warn them.’ They trudged on, their pockets full of propaganda and their hearts pounding with fear.
Other villages had been similarly targeted with this warning, but the effect was not the one the Germans had hoped for.
‘You’re crazy,’ said Anna, as her father read the leaflet and shrugged his shoulders. ‘How can you dismiss it like that? These andarte are putting all our lives at risk. Just for the sake of their own little adventures!’
Maria cowered in the corner of the room. She could sense an impending explosion. Giorgis took a deep breath. He was struggling to control his temper, resisting the urge to tear his daughter to shreds in his anger.
‘Do you really think they are doing it for themselves? Freezing to death in caves and living off grass like animals! How dare you?’
Anna shrank. She loved to provoke these scenes but had rarely seen her father vent such fury.
‘You haven’t heard their stories,’ he continued. ‘You haven’t seen them when they stagger into the bar at dead of night, almost dying of hunger, the soles of their shoes worn down as thin as onion skin and their bones almost piercing their cheeks! They’re doing it for you, Anna, and me and Maria.’
‘And for our mother,’ said Maria quietly from the corner.
Everything Giorgis said was true. In the winter, when the mountains were capped with snow and the wind moaned round the twisted ilexes, the men of the resistance nearly froze to death; cowering in the network of caves high above the villages in the mountains, where the only drink was the moisture from the dripping stalactites, some reached the limits of their endurance. In the summer, when the weather was the very opposite, they experienced the full blaze of the island’s heat and a thirst which was unquenchable when the streams lay dry.
Such leaflets only reinforced the Cretan determination to resist. There was no question of surrender and they would carry the risks that went with it. With increasing regularity, the Germans appeared in Plaka, searching houses for signs of the resistance, such as radio equipment, and interrogating Vangelis Lidaki since, as the owner of the bar, he was generally the only male in the village during daylight hours. Other working men were in the hills or on the sea. The Germans did not come at night and this was a certainty that the Cretans came to value; the foreigners were too fearful to go anywhere after dusk, suspicious of the island’s rocky and difficult terrain and aware of their vulnerability to attack in the dark.
One night in September, Giorgis and Pavlos were at their usual corner table in the bar when three strangers walked in. The two elderly men looked up briefly but soon resumed their conversation and the rhythmic clicking of their worry beads. Before the occupation and the development of the resistance it had been rare to see any outsiders in the village, but now it was commonplace. One of the strangers walked over to them.
‘Father,’ he said quietly.
Pavlos looked up, open-mouthed with amazement. It was Antonis, almost unrecognisable from the boyish youth who had joined up so idealistically the previous year. His clothes hung off him and his belt was wrapped twice around his waist to keep his trousers in place.
Pavlos’s face was still damp with tears when Savina, Fotini and Angelos arrived. Lidaki’s son had been hastily dispatched to bring them to the bar, and it was just as a reunion should be between people who loved each other and who had not, until then, been separated for even a day in their lives. There was not just pleasure, there was pain too when they saw Antonis, who looked starved, drawn and not just one year but a whole decade older than when they had last seen him.
Antonis was accompanied by two Englishmen. There was nothing, however, in their appearance to betray their true nationality. Swarthy-skinned and with extravagant moustaches that they had trained to curl in the local style, they now had enough grasp of Greek to be able to converse with their hosts, and they told tales of encountering enemy soldiers and, in the guise of shepherds, fooling them into believing that they were Cretan. They had travelled across the island several times in the past year, and one of their tasks was to observe Italian troop movements. The Italian headquarters was in Neapoli, the largest town in their own region of Lasithi, and the troops there seemed to do little but eat, drink and be merry, particularly with the local prostitutes. Other troops, however, were stationed around the west of the island, and their manoeuvres were more arduous to monitor.
With their shrunken stomachs now bloated with lamb stew and their heads whirling with tsikoudia, the three men told stories long into the night.
‘Your son is an excellent cook now,’ one of the Englishmen told Savina. ‘Nobody can make acorn bread like his.??
?
‘Or snail and thyme stew!’ joked the other.
‘No wonder you’re all so thin,’ answered Savina. ‘Antonis hadn’t cooked much more than a potato before all this began.’
‘Antonis, tell them about the time we fooled the krauts into thinking we were brothers,’ said one, and so the evening continued, with their moments of fear and anxiety turned into humorous anecdotes for everyone’s entertainment. Then the lyres were brought out from behind the bar and the singing began. Mantinades were sung and the Englishmen struggled to learn the lines which told of love and death, struggle and freedom, their hearts and voices now blending almost completely with those of their Cretan hosts who owed them so much.
Antonis spent one night with his family, and the two Englishmen were garrisoned with other families willing to take the risk. It was the first time any of them had slept on anything but hard ground in nearly a year. Since they had to leave before dawn, the luxury of their straw-filled mattresses was a short-lived one, and as soon as they had pulled on their long boots and put their fringed black turbans back on their heads, they walked out of the village. Not even a local would have questioned whether these were true natives of Crete. There was nothing to give them away. Nothing, that is, except someone who might succumb to a bribe.