Patrick Leigh Fermor, the noted travel writer, plays a prominent part in this war memoir. His friend W. Stanley “Billy” Moss was a commando in the Special Operations Executive. In 1944 Moss and Fermor implemented an audacious plan to kidnap a German general in charge of a division in occupied Crete and spirit him to British-controlled Cairo.
It’s an exciting story, though Moss is frank about fatigue, bedbugs and lice, and sheer monotony of staying on the move to avoid capture. It should be its own genre, the WWI or WWII memoir by the classically educated and civilized English or Welsh or Irish or Scottish writer.
In the tradition of Robert Graves, Richard Hillary or Laurie Lee, Moss is a keen observer, "Only John Katsias, that suave killer, remained serene and unperturbed, leaning against the boatrail and looking like a very tired aristocrat who has tried and found wanting every physical and emotional stimulus."
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