On the 28th April 1944, the code breakers at Bletchley Park deciphered possibly one of the most surprising stories of the Second World War. It was an intercept of a German signal stating that General Kreipe, commander of the Nazi Garrison in Crete, had been kidnapped.
By Nicholas Mellor
The code breaking huts worked in pairs. The tapes would come in from Hut 6, where Colossus churned away breaking the code. This resulted in a series of five letter groupings of words that would go to Hut 3 from Hut 6 by a connecting chute. Hut 3 was where there was an attempt to put these decoded messages into context where they could be translated, analysed and dispatched. That was where my mother came into the picture. On a watch there were normally 5 or so academics and intelligence experts responsible for reading them, translating them into English and deciding to whom they would be sent – the War Office, or the Air Ministry for example. It was my mother’s role to see they got to the right person as fast as possible. Sometimes she worked at the teleprinter sending them to London or would be asked to ring up the Cabinet office.
Bletchley Park for all its allure today was a shabby place near a railway junction with poor billeting, no clear picture of what they were actually doing or the impact they were having, and full of rather odd people. It was a very lonely time for my mother who had only just left school and found herself doing her shifts in a hut 3 at Bletchley and then trudging back to her billet next to one of the railway sidings. After the war she became a founding member with friends from SOE, or what is now the Special Forces Club. The staircase of the Club has portraits of its members or those who have been eligible if they had survived the war. The latter have ebony frames. The mix of pale pine and ebony is half in half.
One can only begin to imagine the incredulity of decrypting and then interpreting of such a message in the blizzard of messages being received at Bletchley Park, some only partially intercepted or decoded or translated or half understood. Eighty years ago it would have created a frisson in Bletchley in Buckinghamshire, but for the protagonists whether they were going to escape for Crete with both the General and their lives, were still in the balance.
On that very day the message arrived in Bletchley according to Billy Moss’s diary, PLF and the kidnap team had spent the day at Petrodolakkia with Xylouris and his Andartes (members of the Greek resistance), where they took many photos. Tom Dunbabin sent 3 members of his team from the Amari to the hideout, including Reg Everson and a wireless.
Their plan was to send a message to Cairo so that an evacuation date and beach can be identified, but their radio had broken. PLF sent off various messages, including one to Dick Barnes who has a radio station near Rethymno.
The team were joined by Andantes Grigori Chnarakis, Nikos Komis and Andoni Papaleonidas, who had walked up from the kidnap point. They were meant to bring the General’s driver, Alfred Fenske, but he has been killed on the journey.
PLF records the following incident:
‘A curious moment, dawn, streaming in the cave’s mouth, which framed the white crease of Mount Ida. We were all three lying smoking in silence, when the General, half to himself, slowly said:
“Vides ut alta stet nive candidum Soracte”
The opening line and a bit of one of the few odes of Horace I knew by heart. I was in luck. It was one of the few odes of Horace I knew by heart. I went on reciting where he had broken off:
‘… Nec iam sustineant onus
Silvae laboreantes, geluque
Flumina constiterint acuto’
… The General’s blue eyes swivelled away from the mountain-top to mine … after a long silence, he said:
‘Ach so, Herr Major!”
It was very strange.
‘Ja, Herr General.’ As though for a long moment, the war had ceased to exist. We both had drunk at the same fountains long before; and things were different between us for the rest of our time together.”
Paddy Leigh Fermor recounts this story in his book ‘Abducting a General’.
William Stanley Moss recorded in his own book ‘Ill Met by Moonlight’, this mutual love of the Classics of the General and his captor.
‘Paddy discovered that the General is a fair Greek scholar, and much to the amusement of our Cretan colleagues, the two of them entertained each other by exchanging verses from Sophocles.’
The Horatian scholar, Harry Eyres, might argue that the Odes of Horace have been working their magic for the last two thousand years, encouraging a more humble and human view of the world and extolling the virtues of fellowship.
Was it the sunlight on the frozen peak of Mount Ida that had inspired the General to think of that ode in its literal description of a snow-clad summit or was it about the whole Ode.
‘Vides ut alta stet nive candidum Soracte’ can be translated as ‘See how Soracte stands white with deep snow’
This is Harry’s translation.
Do you see the depth of snowfall,
On Soracte standing bright? This frost
Has stopped the rivers in their tracks;
The trees are bowed with their white, heavy pall.In here we’re warm. Keep piling logs, Hugh,
On the blazing fire – and let’s uncork
A mellow four-year-old riserva,
Just the Sabine vino, not a fancy cru.Give up trying to control the weather ; some god
Will calm the raging storm at sea.
The tall fame-cypresses and ancient ash
Won’t always shake and bend and madly nod.
Had the General realised that his best hope of escaping with his life was to set aside the grievances of him and his captors and recognise from now on they would be sharing the same food and drink?
The ode is underpinned by Horace’s Stoicism and Epicureanism. In the ode he is advising his friend Thaliarchus to seize the day (carpe diem) and enjoy the pleasures of the moment rather than worrying about a precarious future, living in the present, enjoying life’s simple pleasures, and remaining unfazed by the uncertainty of tomorrow.
Horace himself had fought against the Triumvirate, had escaped with his life and eventually set aside his own grievances to return to Rome, under the Augustan regime. Horace had sided with the forces of Brutus and Cassius after their assassination of Julius Caesar, but they were defeated by Mark Antony and Octavian (who would later be known as Augustus) at the Battle of Philippi in 42 BCE, he had to set aside his grievances and get on with the very people he had fought against.
General Kreipe might have realised that Horace’s own experience was the best he could hope for and Ode 1.9, the best advice he could have received.
Patrick Leigh Fermor’s ‘fountain’ has often been seen as representative of culture and conviviality, but perhaps the fountain was more specific, and he was thinking of Horace, his insight, his poetry and that Ode in particular.
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Patrick Leigh Fermor 