![]() ![]() Food was often short and fighters suffered from hiding in cold, dripping caves with deep snow outside. The resistance fighters faced baking Cretan summers and severely cold winters, particularly in the hills. Through a rugged landscape with deep ravines, where he had to run to avoid the Germans, the distance may have been twice as far. The distance along the present main road is 45 km. In comparison, Psychoundakis ran from Kastelli-Kissamou on the northwestern coast of Crete to Paleochora on the southwestern coast in one night. In 490 BC Pheidippides ran 42 km from the battle of Marathon to tell about the victory over the Persians, and died just after delivering his message. The Cretan runners performed exceptional feats and made essential contributions to the British operations in the Mediterranean. A few minutes later we could see his small figure a mile away moving across the next moonlit fold of the foothills of the White Mountains, bound for another fifty-mile journey. He turned round when he was on all fours at the exit, rolled his eyes, raised a forefinger portentously, whispered, "the Intelligence Service", and scuttled through like a rabbit. When the moon rose he got up and threw a last swig of raki down his throat with the words Another drop of petrol for the engine, and loped towards the gap in the bushes with the furtiveness of a stage Mohican or Groucho Marx. Leigh Fermor described the man in his introduction to The Cretan Runner: Psychoundakis acted as Fermor's runner, carrying messages between resistance groups and guiding parties unfamiliar with the territory. He arrived clandestinely by sea in July 1942. By the autumn of 1941, SOE were beginning to organise with British liaison officers on the island, one of whom was Patrick Leigh Fermor. Psychoundakis helped in guiding groups from village to village. From there the British were shipped to Egypt. The Cretans hid many hundreds of British and allied forces left behind, and the resistance organised their movement to the south coast. He took part in an ill-armed resistance to the invasion. ![]() ![]() Wartime service Ĭover of The Cretan Runner, Penguin Books, 1998Īs an airborne Nazi invasion began on, Psychoundakis immediately went to the nearest town (Episkopi, Rethymno) about 15 km away. Numerous insurrections during the long occupation, together with the mountainous terrain, helped maintain an independence of character and willingness to bear and use arms. Crete had a tradition of resistance to rule by outsiders the island had, about 40 years previously in 1898, obtained its independence from the Ottoman Empire. They traveled the goat tracks to carry messages, goods and people. He developed an intimate knowledge of his part of the island.ĭuring the Second World War, people used the caves to live in and to store weapons. After a minimum of tuition in the village school, he became a shepherd, tending his family's few sheep and goats. They lived in a one-roomed home with an earth floor. He was the penultimate son of Nicolas and Angeliké, one of the poorest families in the village. The village was not serviced by a road until the 1950s. George Psychoundakis was born in Asi Gonia ( Greek: Ασή Γωνιά), a village of a few hundred people high in the Mouselas valley in western Crete. He had been a shepherd before the war and after it a charcoal burner and later caretaker of a German military cemetery on Crete. Later he translated key classical Greek texts into the Cretan dialect. While in prison he wrote his wartime memoirs, which were published as The Cretan Runner. During the postwar years he was at first mistakenly imprisoned as a deserter. Following the German invasion, between 19, he served as a despatch runner for the Special Operations Executive (SOE) operations on Crete, as part of the Cretan resistance. George Psychoundakis BEM ( Greek: Γεώργιος Ψυχουντάκης, 3 November 1920 – 29 January 2006) was a member of the Greek Resistance on Crete during the Second World War and after the war an author. George Psychoundakis during the Cretan resistance
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