Free Crete: The Battle and the Resistance by Antony Beevor

Greece, Wing Commander Lord Forbes, accompanied by David Hunt, waited at the aerodrome in the early hours of the morning. He had been asked by the Greeks to fly one of their Avro Ansons on to Crete. Forbes waited his turn to take off at dawn, but an unusually early Luftwaffe strike forced them to throw themselves into a slit trench, from where they watched the destruction of their aircraft.
    Forbes and Hunt returned to Athens, killed time at Forbes's apartment, then drove down that evening to the Piraeus through streets in which people stood around uncertainly. At the quayside, they joined the Kalanthe, a steam yacht originally requisitioned by the Greek navy from its English owner, and now assigned to the British Legation. The Naval Attache acted as captain, and the passengers also numbered Harold and Nancy Caccia, their children, dogs and Chinese amah; Colonel Jasper Blunt's wife, Doreen; various members of the Military Mission including Charles Mott-Radclyffe; and a number of prominent Greeks. The most surprising passenger was the Communist leader, Miltiades Porphyroyennis, whom Harold Caccia allowed to accompany them to save him from the Germans.
    Caccia, who dubbed this Communist with the curious name 'old Born-in-the-purple', encountered him again across a negotiating table during the Greek civil war.
    Peter Fleming's Yak Mission, having loaded their remaining weapons and explosives, were to defend the Kalanthe in the event of air attack, with an officer and his soldier servant operating each of the four Lewis guns. Several very dubious allegations were made against Fleming at this time. According to one story, Colonel Blunt and Fleming had a row the day before the Kalanthe sailed, with Blunt insisting that since Yak Mission had come to Greece as a stay-behind force, Fleming would be a deserter if he left. Another claimed that Fleming fastened a bandage unnecessarily to his head on arrival in Egypt and tried to wangle himself a DSO. Fleming, it must be remembered, had stirred up a considerable measure of righteous jealousy with his string-pulling in London and Cairo, so these accounts should be treated with corresponding caution.
    There was no doubt about the dispute in which General Heywood, the head of the Military Mission, became involved. Having received urgent orders from Cairo to destroy the RAF's fuel tanks containing over 30,000 tons of petrol and aviation spirit, a valuable prize for the Luftwaffe, Heywood took a party of sappers down to carry out the task at night, but found the site guarded by Greek troops posted there to prevent just such an attempt. Since they were prepared to open fire, Heywood withdrew, not wanting to precipitate a battle between allies. This decision was later severely condemned by GHQ Middle East, and Heywood's career suffered. The possibility that this was a way of punishing him for his earlier failures, without embarrassment, cannot be discounted. Heywood died in an air crash in India two years later.
    Nick Hammond, leading a team of four sappers, had also been engaged on scorched-earth missions during the retreat. While Fleming's band enjoyed themselves blowing up rolling stock and ramming locomotives into one another, he had concentrated on industries useful to the German war effort. On his last day, he destroyed the stockpiles of cotton at Haliartus, then returned to Athens, where he rejoined Ian Pirie and Nicki Demertzi. They prepared their escape, having destroyed the last traces of MI(R) and Section D activity, and packed up any useful material. Pirie and Barbrook left behind two radio sets — one with a Venizelist group, whose activities soon petered out, and one with a radical republican, Colonel (later General) Bakirdzis who, under the code-name of 'Prometheus', became SOE Cairo's first contact in Greece.
    Before his departure, the King had requested General Wilson to look after Prince Peter; Admiral Sakellariou, the Minister of Marine; and Maniadakis, the Minister of