Ill Met By Moonlight

As a result of getting stuck into a book of correspondence between Debo, the Duchess of Devonshire, and Paddy Leigh Fermor I am now engaged with The Abduction Of A General by Sir Paddy. He was head of SOE in Crete during WW11 and master-minded and executed the abduction of General Kreipe in 1943. Kreipe was in charge of German forces on Crete. It was an extremely dangerous operation and it was commemorated with a film Ill Met BY Moonlight starring Dirk Bogarde as Sir Paddy.

On being taken prisoner of the British and eventually held in Cairo Kreipe offered a couple of lines in Greek to which Sir Paddy added no less than six stanzas. About thirty years later Sir Paddy and General Kreipe met up. It must have been quite a meeting.