Product Description

This is a classic account by one of the officers who took part in one of the great escapades of WWII. In 1943 W. Stanley Moss and Patrick Leigh-Fermor, both serving with Special Forces in the Middle East, decided on a plan to kidnap General Kreipe, Commander of the Sevastopol Division in Crete, and bring him back to Allied occupied Cairo. This is the story of their adventures, working with a fearsome band of partisans, as they daringly capture the General in an ambush and struggle to evade pursuing German troops in the mountainous Cretan landscape to reach their rendezvous for evacuation to safety.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #121405 in Books
• Published on: 1999-12-09
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 200 pages

About the Author
The late W. (Billy) Stanley Moss led an adventurous life as a young man before the War, fought with the 8th Army in the desert and then joined the Special Forces serving in Crete with the partisans.

Customer Reviews

One of the most exciting books about war behind enemy lines.
This book, written by one of the protagonists, concerns the utterly audacious plot by the British to kidnap the German General commanding German forces occupying Crete.

Here is the inside story of one of the greatest adventure stories of the Second World War. Secret landings, contacting the Cretan "andarte", creating a team and researching the movements of their target...It's all here.

Days of "monotony and sweat and thirst and sickening fear...." It's all here. Told with great pace and skill this tells the story of
an exploit that even the Germans admitted to
admiring.

Read it and be reminded of the great buccaneers
of history. But read it because it is not only a great tale it is also told with an edge of humour.

A book that is much better than the film
The well known film of the same name is watchable, infact a good WW2 film. With just a touch of James Bond. But this book is much much better. Well written, a super adventure story. which just happens to be true. I enjoyed every page.

Really great stuff!
This is the tale of the abduction of General Kriep from Crete in 1944. W Stanley Moss was intrumental in this kidnap. Luckily, he kept a diary of events. What an interesting read this makes! The narrative is broken up from time to time with brief explanatory notes. These are needed to help make sense of the events as they unfold. Altogether I liked this book for its lively style, and for the way the author describes the characters involved, most of whom seem a bit larger than life. I also found the symbiotic wartime relationship between the British and the Cretans to be facinating.