The name John Pendlebury, is synonymous with Cretan archaeology, wartime
heroics and walks of mind-boggling length and difficulty, but it a name that is very
rarely spoken nowadays. I would like - in a very small way - to redress that situation:
On my first visit to Crete, back in 1977, upon finding out I was British,
the more elderly villagers of Eastern Crete, used to say "Penty Boory" to
me. Or at least that is what I thought they were saying. I had no idea of what or whom
they spake at the time - my knowledge of Greek being even worse then than it is now, - I
just nodded and agreed, but upon discovering the wonderful world of archaeology, a couple
of years later, I came across the name John Devitt Stringfellow Pendlebury. Pendlebury was
to be my inspiration for both archaeological field trips and long walks for the next two
decades. In 1989, I visited Crete for three months, with a view to updating his book 'The
Archaeology of Crete'. The book was to come into "public domain" (copyright
would end), in 1991 as it would have been 50 years since the author died. Two reasons that
this didn't happen. Firstly, they changed the copyright law from 50 to 70 years after the
author's death the following year and secondly - and far more importantly, - I was just
not up to such a monumental task.
Born in October 1904, Pendlebury's love of Greece was triggered by a trip
to Mycenae in the Peloponnese at the age of 19. This amazing, giant of a man, had a charm
and wit which affected everybody he met, he was a high jump champion, no slouch over
hurdles, and a walker of tremendous endurance. According to Patrick Leigh Fermor -PLF- (Anglo-Hellenic Review AHR, Spring 2002 ) his favourite companions (in Crete)
were shepherds and mountain villagers. Egyptology
was Pendlebury's first love, but he later devoted himself to finding Egyptian artefacts in
Greece. After digging in Armant and Tell el-Amarna - the city of Akhenaten - in
Egypt, JDSP succeeded Duncan MacKenzie
(there is an excellent biography of MacKenzie available, written by Nicoletta
Momigliano and published by the British School at Athens) as curator at Knossos from 1929
until 1934. He was not averse to a drink or nine either, PLF
has said of him that he could drink - and walk - the legs of even a Cretan. In The Villa
Ariadne, Dilys Powell mentions the celebrations on the Aghios Ioannis (Saint John) saint's
day, and quotes JDSP: "It was the best we have had up to date. I really felt (like!)
the village father! - Pretty near 1000 people and dancing from 9-3! Total cost of making
the whole village tight £7!" My sort of guy, as you can see! As a
child, JDSP lost an eye, which was replaced
with a glass one. At first glance (!), this may appear to been somewhat careless, but
unlike the AWOL pieces of equipment I lost en-route, his loss was a result of a childhood
accident. Maybe mine was too! According to various sources, he was fond of taking out his
glass eye and leaving it all over the place, much like one would do with a monocle. No
man, surely, could have got closer to the hearts and minds of the Cretans than JDSP. His
hiking adventures and knowledge of the island and its people, were put to use as the Nazis
invaded Crete. Pendlebury became British vice-consul for the island, and used that
position and his close ties with the Cretan people, to gather together groups of brigands,
with a cause. Unfortunately, the 5th Cretan division was still on the mainland, having
distinguished themselves in the Albanian campaign. According to Pendlebury: "With them and 10,000 rifles...the island could be held forever".
(Patrick Leigh Fermor AHR
Spring 2002).
Pendlebury's wartime exploits are the stuff of legend, but his
archaeological expertise and his walks into the Cretan mountains, were equally
awe-inspiring. His seminal work "The Archaeology of Crete" is still the best
field-guide to the archaeology of the island, though it is of course somewhat out of date,
given that it was published in 1939 and he was executed by the Nazis two years later.
Below, are two unabridged appreciations from 'John
Pendlebury in Crete'; a book commissioned by the great man's wife Hilda
(White) and privately published by Cambridge University Press (CUP) in 1948, to send to
close friends of JDSP. I have asked CUP for
permission to reprint the book, but they don't know who owns the copyright - there is no
mention of copyright in the book - so you'll just have to make do with these
extracts. Only 200 of these were printed, though a further 100 needed to be hurriedly
published, in a second edition, such was JDSP's
popularity. In addition to the appreciations, this small book has a prefatory note from
S.C. Roberts and two chapters written by JDSP
himself. Very few of you would have read any of the following three appreciations. In the
case of the first two, this is the first time that they have been reprinted, in any form,
for over half a century - at least, as far as I know. If you ever come across this book -
and, who knows, you may, one day, see it in a second hand shop - grab it! It is
absolutely priceless! The reason that I haven't been more thorough with the writings of
Pendlebury himself, is that there is, supposedly, a biography of the great man - written
by Imogen Grundon and called "The Rash Adventurer" - coming out this year. So
little exists of his writing, and I don't want to step on Ms Grundon's toes in this any,
so I have kept the JDSP quotes down to a
minimum. The third appreciation (alluded to above) is from a talk, given by
Patrick Leigh Fermor in Herakleion, to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the
battle of Crete, which was first published in Paul Watkins' superb 'Anglo-Hellenic
Review (AHR)'
(Spring 2002 issue). For the Cretans to be talking of the man, some 40 years after his
death, is testament to his life.
Three great war heroes, of the "great island",
appreciate JDSP in their own words:
(any typos
or mistakes are my own SJ)
Below, unabridged, is
the penultimate chapter from 'John Pendlebury in Crete', written by Nicholas Hammond, and entitled 'JOHN PENDLEBURY '
Meetings with John
Pendlebury were always memorable. My first during the war was in a dingy, dark and
depressing basement room in the War Office, when the retreat towards Dunkirk was at its
height. We had been summoned for special duties, he from his cavalry regiment and I from
teaching in Cambridge. The mists of unreality, which had enveloped me after my first
experience of Red Tabs and the hocus-pocus of ‘special service’, were dispelled
by the sight of John poring over the latest maps of Crete. He had already a firm grasp of
the situation. In his mind’s eye he was planning the organization of Crete for
resistance with a clarity of purpose and a care of detail which were fully fledged. He
hated that vague hovering around the fringe of the subject which is not uncommon in staff
officers far removed from the scene of action and which is infinitely discouraging to
volunteers for ‘special service’; and so he had swooped on to the practical
details of planning with unbounded energy and enthusiasm. He talked to me of swordsticks,
daggers, pistols, maps; of Cretan klephts from Lasithi and Sphakia; of hide-outs in the
mountains and of coves and caves on the south coast; of the power of personal contacts
formed by years of travel, of the geography of Crete, its mules and caiques, and of the
vulnerable points in its roads. Sometimes we talked in the War Office, sometimes in his
club, sometimes by ‘phone, when John used the ‘tch-kappa’ of the Cretan
dialect and I replied in the broad vowels of the Epirote dialect; for secrecy was the salt
of success, as he saw from the start. His enthusiasm fired me to collect my notes on
Albania, list my contacts and map my roads, although the chances of war never carried me
farther than within sight of the Albanian frontier in 1943. During our few days in London
we were learning the tricks of the trade. But the rising confusion of the retreat in
France cut short every course of instruction on which we were sent or were about to be
sent. Apart from firing a few detonators in a conference room at the War Office and
contracting gelignite headaches by blowing up some mud and angle-irons in a suburban
gravel-pit, we learnt very little; but we were inspired by an R.E. officer, who had seen
service in Norway, and by the sight of troop trains bringing survivors from Dunkirk. On
the 3rd of June we were sent off from London by a staff officer in full dress Guards’
uniform, a spectacle which even in those days struck us as incongruous. Of the party of
experts who set off on a fine June morning for the Middle East, none was more optimistic
than John and none knew his terrain more thoroughly; for Crete was in his blood and he
knew its mountains, as the Greeks say, stone by stone. It was inspiring to feel that our
special knowledge and experience would be put to effect in one form or another. The entry
of Italy into the war was expected in a matter of days—hence our route by Corsica,
Bizerta, Malta, Corfu, Athens—and the Italian bases in Albania
threatened the Balkans.
John was eager to learn all that the experts
among us knew of Albania, which looked like being the first scene of any subversive
operations—and he certainly intended to be in the first line. He questioned me
thoroughly about the harbour 1939, and about the Albanian attitude towards Italy, the
minority in North Epirus, the mountain-routes and the vulnerable points in the roads
leading from Greece into Albania. Before leaving England he had studied the recent Italian
maps which showed the construction of new roads in South Albania, and he consulted me and
the others about their significance. His firm grasp of practical detail and his insight
into the character of Balkan peoples made his conversation inspiring and his proposals
sensible. He tackled the others in the same manner and was distressed to find sometimes
that their knowledge did not extend beyond the 1920’s and fell below the high
standard of accuracy which he himself demanded. On landing at Corfu we gazed across the
trait to the barren mountains of South Albania and discussed the harbours of Santa
Quaranta and Butrinto and the wild interior called the Kurvelesh, lying between the
Acroceraunian range and the birthplace of Ali Pasha at Tepeleni, which was to prove the
limit of the Greek advance in the coming winter. If John had been sent to Albania, he
would have got off to a flying start. As it turned out, the Greek authorities at Athens
viewed our party with not unjustifiable suspicion; John and some others were allowed to
land and the rest of us were sent on to Egypt. We next met in early May 1941 when Albania
and the Greek mainland had been lost. The intervening months had taught us a great deal
about the difficulties of our job. The department for which we worked had not at that time
acquired the full recognition of the regular branches of the services. It was necessary
for the man on the spot to win the personal confidence of the local naval and military
officers, who at first regarded his nose as false and his schemes as harebrained. John had
succeeded to a remarkable degree in winning this confidence; his unique knowledge of
Crete, his personal charm, his tenacity and determination, and his aggressive views had
overcome most opposition. During the winter, when I had been arranging to send caiques to
the Dodecanese, Naval Intelligence officers at Alexandria had spoken with enthusiasm of
John as a man they trusted. And I found the same respect for him at Souda and Herakleion,
when I landed from Greece. The next difficulty was one of supply, which was short in the
Middle East. During the winter all available arms for guerrilla warfare had gone to
Abyssinia, and in the spring they were sent to the Greek forces in Albania and to arm the
forces in Jugoslavia which later emerged under Mihailovitch. John had been pressing for
priority to arm his Cretans but so far with little success. The greatest difficulty was to
maintain secrecy. One normally worked under some cover either as a civilian or as a
soldier, a technique which was more easy in a big city such as Athens or in a cosmopolitan
country like Palestine. In preparing Future guerrilla bands it was necessary to choose the
key personnel with the greatest care and to ensure that their activity did not become
known; for before the time for action they had to be trained in weapons, explosives and
organization.
The selection of hide-ups for dumps of stores,
the reconnaissance of roads and of coves, and the choosing of targets had all to be done
with the maximum of security. In preparing for the planting of agents with suitable cover
in cities, where they could maintain wireless communication, collect intelligence and
undertake sabotage under eventual enemy occupation, nothing was more vital than secrecy.
In Crete this was a peculiarly difficult problem. John was universally known, with that
complete familiarity which is almost unparalleled outside Greece, and every Cretan would
speculate about the activities of so public a figure. As he had come to Greece when she
was a neutral country there could be no doubt that the Germans had had their eye on him.
To secure secrecy in his key personnel and in his agents must have been a harassing task,
for the Greek is not by nature either secretive or cautious or modest. Later, when I
served with the Allied Military Mission in Greece, we relied not so much upon the secrecy
of the guerrillas as their garrulity; for they spread so many rumours that the German
Intelligence rarely penetrated the barrage. Our meeting in May was at Herakleion, where
John had his headquarters. A few days before, I had joined the company of H.M.S. Dolphin,
a Haifa-built variation of the armed caique, which had shot down several planes in Greece
during the evacuation. Her skipper was Mike Cumberlege, a natural buccaneer of superlative
courage, whose single earring was as famous as John’s swordstick; his cousin Cle
Cumberlege, a regular Major in the Royal Artillery, had escaped from a distasteful
staffjob to take charge of the two-pounder and machine-guns on the caique. The mascot of
the crew and my particular buddy was able-bodied seaman Saunders, possessing the
efficiency and humour engendered by seventeen years of service on the lower deck; we had
met before when he sat on a magnetic mine and I drove the truck carrying it through the
middle of Athens during an air-raid. At Herakleion we exchanged the last member of our
crew, a Jewish engineer, for a South African private of the Black Watch, Jumbo Steele, an
independent youngster who had run away from home as a boy and was still eager for
adventure. Jumbo was a first-class shot with any weapon; a few weeks later this saved some
of us, for he winged the Messerschmitt 109 which had already killed Cle and Saunders and
wounded Mike and was coming in to give us the coup de grace. But
when the Dolphin put in to the little Venetian harbour at Herakleion all was as
quiet and as sunlit as in the early summer days of peace. After the frequent raids in
Greece and at Souda we liked Herakleion and decided to stay for several days and overhaul
our engines. And in the evening I walked up through the narrow streets above the harbour
to see John in his small rooms up a single flight of stairs.
He had a much clearer sense of impending crisis
than we whose nerves had relaxed after experiencing the evacuation from Greece. He thought
a German attack on Crete would not be long delayed and he realized how ill-prepared we
were to face it. The loss of the entire Cretan division in Epirus, as a result of the
Greek armistice, was particularly galling and he spoke of it with the same warmth as the
Cretan people, who had approved the assassination near Canea of the divisional commander
for escaping without his men. If only the older generation of Cretans could be armed, they
would give a good account of themselves; but the arms were not available, and even his own
men, who were organized for guerrilla warfare in the event of Crete being overrun, were
far from adequately armed. He told me something of his own organization, for he was
probably turning over in his mind the offer he made to me later of staying with him in
Crete if the worst should happen. John Pendlebury’s thugs, as they were named in more
orthodox circles, were all personal acquaintances from the time of his travels and they
owed him a deep personal devotion; they had been selected with an insight which none other
than John could have brought to bear, and they covered the majority of mountain and
coastal villages.
Next morning John came down to the Dolphin.
He and Mike Cumberlege took to one another at once. Both were men of vigorous speech and
independent ideas, with great force of character and abundant humour; and both possessed
that clear-headed audacity which undertakes the apparently more dangerous course after a
detached study of the advantages and disadvantages. They possessed too a simplicity of
motive in facing or inviting danger, something much more spontaneous and automatic than
the ordinary man’s sense of duty, a rare quality which I only met once again during
the war. This virtue, this "areth",
made them incomparable leaders of limited numbers of men such as subversive operations
envisage. It was typical of their confidence in one another that they had soon planned a
joint operation, a raid on Kasos. The Dolphin was to carry over John and a party
of his Cretans, leaving soon after dark; they would carry an Italian post by assault and
bring back prisoners who might divulge any preparations for an attack on Crete. John had
previously made a reconnaissance raid on this part of Kasos, and this time he was eager to
baptize his Cretans with the offensive spirit. There were of course a number of
incalculable factors, which made the operation less simple than it looked. The Dolphin
could only carry a small number, some fifteen men apart from ourselves, and the post in
question might have been strongly reinforced, if an attack was pending. The Dolphin
was also slow and we calculated that with a favourable wind and sea we should still be out
in the Kasos channel when dawn broke on our return; and that meant the probability of
attack from the air, to which we could reply with our four machine-guns on anti-aircraft
mountings. But it was clearly a worthwhile operation; and the naval and military
authorities were agreeable to our attempting it.
But we had first to overhaul the Dolphin
and complete a reconnaissance of the beaches on the south coast for the Navy, which we had
already begun from Souda. We had then gone by truck along the uncompleted narrow road
which peters out like so many Greek roads above the torrent-bed on the east side of
Sphakia—the torrent-bed where thousands were to take cover a few weeks later in the
final stages of the evacuation. In the tiny cove of Sphakia we had met the first of
John’s men, who took us by a diminutive caique across the azure swell to the Larger
bay of Loutro; a good sailor and neither inquisitive nor talkative, he was the right type,
and he knew the dangerous south coast well. He gave us information too about the small
islets south of Crete. Mike was interested in these, for he was already looking for secret
harbours which would make possible a return to Crete in small craft if it fell into the
hands of the enemy. At the moment we were more concerned with landing beaches and coves on
the south coast, where troops and supplies could be landed for the defence of Crete and
avoid the heavily bombed harbours of the north coast. John gave us a number of suggestions
for suitable points and accompanied our truck from Herakleion as far as the top of the
pass leading to the plain of Messara. He wanted to consult me about his plans for
demolishing some bends in the road; he had already driven some bore-holes for camouflet
charges, and he had trained men in the neighbouring villages. Not many days later this
strategic point was held by the Germans and was forced with some difficulty by a battalion
of Argyll and Sutherland High-landers, who had landed on the beaches at Kokkinos Pyrgos
and come north to relieve Herakleion. John had given us an introduction to one of his
leading men in a village east of the plain, a bald-headed giant with a ferocious moustache
and a large family of sons; he breathed blood and slaughter and garlic in the best Cretan
style and marched us off at a fast pace to the inlet of Matala. The cliffsides of the
inlet are riddled with caves, and the colours and style of the approach are reminiscent of
smugglers’ coves in Cornwall, a picturesque place but too obviously suitable for use
as a secret base. From Matala our guide took us on to the shelving beach of Kokkinos
Pyrgos, suitable for beaching light craft, and to Ayia Galene where the water was so clear
that we dived to gauge its depth; for it seemed possible that ships of moderate draught
could be brought close inshore.
"On our return to Herakleion we received
orders to go round to lerapetra and investigate the possibility of salvaging the cargo of
a ship sunk offshore. A vessel of some 12,000 tons, she had sailed from Alexandria with a
cargo of ammunition, light anti-aircraft guns, machine-guns and small arms—a cargo
that might have turned the scales in the defence of Crete. But the Germans knew of her
departure. Torpedoed in the open sea she limped into the roadstead of lerapetra, only to
be sunk by German bombers, but she lay in fairly shallow waters. This meant delaying our
raid on Kasos, which we fixed provisionally for the night of the 20th; we were to pick up
John and his men on the evening of the 19th at Herakleion. Before leaving for lerapetra
John gave us a dinner at the Officers’ Club overlooking the harbour; he insisted on
Saunders coming, who as a regular seaman was somewhat abashed but greatly delighted at
dining in an Officers’ mess. John was in tremendous spirits, keyed up by the
increasing tempo of the German raids on Herakleion aerodrome and harbour during the last
few days. They came over at dawn and at dusk, usually thirty strong, and had shot down the
three gallant Lysanders which went up to engage them whatever the odds. John had come down
to the Dolphin to take a machine-gun for the evening, when the German planes flew
low over the town machine-gunning the harbour and we replied from our mooring close under
the quayside. Souda, too, was being heavily bombed and salvage operations on H.M.S.
York had been abandoned; we hoped to get the divers from there to help at
lerapetra. The cruisers Fiji and Gloucester had also called at Herakleion a night or two
before and sailed off to the north. The feeling that action would not be long delayed gave
a spice to our dinner of fresh fish collected by the fishermen when bombs had concussed
them. And Herakleion in May had plenty of fresh lamb and cheese and wine, which had made
our stay unusually delightful. John had become an honorary member of the Dolphin’s
crew as we had of his headquarters with the picturesque Kronis in full Cretan dress as
guard. The Greek policeman who directed traffic under a large umbrella in the centre of
the town always came down from his platform to share a morning drink with us. And the
Greek commander of the town, when he knew we were friends ofJohn, allowed us to take on a
sponge-diver from Kalymnos, called Kyriakos, who had fought as an infantryman in the
Dodecanesian battalion in North Greece and had escaped by devious routes to Crete.
After dinner John and Mike made the final
arrangements for the raid on Kasos for which John’s party was already prepared. He
also discussed the possibility of my joining him after this raid, although Mike was loth
to lose a Greek-speaking officer. John was confident that if Crete was lost his Cretans
could be depended upon to carry on guerrilla warfare in the hills. He had received a
considerable supply of stores and ammunition since our arrival at Herakleion and there was
a large dump on one of the islands at Souda Bay which could be moved to suitable hide-ups.
His main shortage was in small arms, but he had sufficient with which to start operations;
and from his discussions with Mike he knew that communications could probably be kept open
by sea from the south coast to Africa. It had always been his intention to stay in Crete
and lead the resistance, and he never talked as if any other course was possible. Yet on
the Greek mainland, where plans for forming nuclei for guerrilla warfare were too late to
be effective, it was not intended that British personnel should remain behind; nor, so far
as I know, was this either contemplated or done in Jugoslavia. John’s plan was
therefore original and daring, and given his personal qualities as a leader in a limited
area with a more or less homogeneous population the plan was full of promise. It required
more resolution in an Englishman to stay behind voluntarily and be submerged by the German
tide than to return later as many did when the ebb was likely to set in. But for John the
choice did not exist; he felt himself a Cretan and in Crete he would stay until victory
was won. In this singleness of purpose he was happy. And we felt his happiness that
evening, which proved to be the last time we saw him. At lerapetra the water was clear
enough for one to see the wreck lying on her side, and Kyriakos, who swam like a fish
under water, explored the entries. It would require equipment from Souda to raise much of
the cargo, and German reconnaissance planes were keeping an alert eye on lerapetra. While
awaiting a reply to a signal, we slipped down the coast in the Dolphin to Sudsuro
in order to explore a small cove which John had commended to us; tiny and well-hidden with
a sandy beach, it had no houses within sight and its nearest neighbour was a small
monastery of which the solitary and soft-headed monk pursued us to the shore in his desire
to join the Navy. We thought this a compliment to Saunders, but he was unwilling to
acknowledge it. Months later, when Saunders and Cle were dead, Mike and Jumbo brought
their first ship into this cove in occupied Crete. On the way back from the cove the Dolphin
put me off at Sudsuro to deliver a note from John to his agent there, a particularly
charming villager with whom I sat in the evening light, looking out across the calm water
of the bay. I got through by ‘phone to John and told him we had to await a reply from
Souda and might be two days late on our rendezvous; part of his conversation was in Cretan
dialect and part of mine in Epirote, just as it had been in London long ago.
"We were not delayed at lerapetra and on our
way up the Kasos Strait we put in to the little desert island of Elasa which Mike wished
to explore for future reference. While we were there he decided to cross that night to
Kasos in order to pick up his bearings and test out the time factor without including the
assault. Cle and I thought this a good idea, being perhaps more orthodox in our outlook on
raids than John or Mike. We meant to sail an hour before dark. Then the engine failed to
start. While Jumbo toiled at it, a patrol of four seaplanes passed down the strait and
came back again, flying low but not spotting the Dolphin moored in a small cove
with one bulwark touching the rock. Shortly after they passed over us, darkness fell and
then we heard bombing and gunfire in the Kasos Strait which lasted for some time. We
blessed our luck that we were not out in it that evening on our rehearsal; as a matter of
fact it was the evening of the 20th, the original date for the raid. When our engine did
start we put in at Sitia on a bright calm dawn with a dazzling sea; I wanted to give John
a time for our arrival that evening at Herakleion, but I was told that the ‘phone was
out of order and it had also been impossible to make contact through other stations with
Herakleion. It seemed odd, but then Greek telephones are odd. As we coasted along towards
Herakleion, we were several times fired upon from the shore and cursed the zeal of the
Cretan coastguards and the slackness of the Navy in not giving them warning. It was only
when we were fired on by machine-guns in approaching Herakleion that we felt something
must be seriously wrong. So Mike fetched up at the extreme end of the mole, and Cle and I
walked along the mole with a Mauser apiece. As we approached the Venetian fort which
guards the entry into the inner harbour, we saw that machine-guns were covering us from
the embrasures. To our right we could see nothing, being bounded by a high sea-wall; and
then we saw the Nazi swastika flying on the electric power station not far off. In the
inner harbour there were a number of British dead and in the street ends which abutted on
the harbour we could see Greek soldiers firing from cover. The occupants of the Venetian
fort were Greeks tending some wounded; they told us of the dropping of the parachutists
and the departure that evening of the British troops to hold the aerodrome outside
Herakleion. Greek troops and civilians were holding the west side of the town in desperate
street-fighting, but they were unlikely to save the harbour. As it was already dusk, we
put out to sea pursued by angry bullets.
"We did not see John again, for in the afternoon of that
same day he was wounded and captured. During the rest of our days in Crete he lived in our
minds, and he lives still in mine, for the others too are gone. What I have written of him
does not describe what he did in Crete, for I never knew the detail of his work, but what
he was to some of us in Crete. And this is perhaps more important; for the Cretans
themselves and Englishmen who followed in his steps in Crete and in Greece saw in him the
symbol of honour which knows no defeat and the spirit of undying resistance. (NH 1948)
In the confusion which attended our
withdrawal from Crete, it was not known for certain what had happened to John. Many wild
tales circulated at the time and later, and the story of his last days has inevitably been
worked, in Cretan belief, into something like saga. It is only recently that full,
eyewitness accounts of his last days and his death have been recovered, so that the truth
stands out from this picturesque embroidery. In the afternoon of the second day of the
German parachutists’ attack (21 May) he left his office, seized a rifle and made for
the Canea Gate with a few Cretan followers. Here he took his leave of Captain Satanas,
leader of his guerrillas in Krousonas, one of the largest hill-villages on the side of
Psiloriti, and made an appointment to meet him in Krousonas. He set out by car, unattended
except for his driver, but had to leave it when he fell in with the first parachutists,
less than a mile outside the Gate. From this time he was alone, except for a reservist
soldier of the Greek forces at Kaminia, already in process of being withdrawn, who was in
charge of a machine-gun at a point close to the car-road. John encountered him when he
left his car and climbed the low hill north of the road; together they continued to fire
at the parachutists as they descended; four dropped close to them and a hand-to-hand
battle took place in which John killed three and Polybios one. It was in company
with this soldier that John made his attempt to break through and reach Krousonas. It
seems that he had no thought of turning back but tried to make his way past the small and
as yet ill-established force of parachutists. At Kaminia he was wounded in the body and
was taken prisoner with his companion, who was taken to a prison camp; John was carried
into a little house on the south side of the road, the house as it happened of one of his
agents. The Germans who carried him in laid him on a bed and Aristea Drosoulakis and her
sister tended him; later a German doctor came and attended to his wound and late at night
a second German doctor gave him further treatment. It was arranged that next morning he
should be moved to a hospital. In the meanwhile the Germans were forced to withdraw from
the immediate neighbourhood of the town.
On the next day they were reinforced and some men
of the new unit are said to have searched the house in which he lay in bed; they took his
identity disc and according to one narrator knew him by his glass eye. There is no doubt
that his mission in Crete, which had begun while Greece and Germany were still at peace,
was well known to German agents. Mrs Drosoulakis and her sister were driven out; another
witness has told of his execution outside the house and of his proud bearing at this last
scene. This was on the morning of 22 May 1941. He
was buried first near the main road from Herakleion to the west, and was afterwards moved
by the Germans, for the grave near the road became too well known and was
a source of inspiration to the men of the hill-villages who came in and out of the Canea
Gate. His body later rested for a time in the British part of the Herakleion cemetery and
now lies in the British Military Cemetery at Suda. Such is the story as it has been
recovered since the liberation of Crete. Those who left Herakleion in the evacuation of
27—28 May1941 did not know it, and many of them believed that John had remained
behind on Mount Ida, to carry on the war by the side of those whom he bad armed and
trained. And in a sense he did. His friends were the first to take to the hills in the
traditional Cretan manner, the first rallying-point of the people who were still stunned
with the speed and success of the new form of war which the Germans had carried out in
Crete. The Cretans gave a good account of themselves during the occupation. They preserve
the simple patriotism and old-fashioned qualities implanted in them by their long
struggles against Venetian and Turk.
They had leaders, like John’s friend
Satanas, who had fought against the Turk, and the younger men had the same spirit. The
development of operations did not call for large-scale guerrilla action in Crete, but
there were before the end many thousand men in the hills, and every Cretan looked forward
with relish to the day of reckoning. If John had indeed remained among them to organize
them immediately, to tell them what to do, to keep in touch with Egypt by wireless and by
small boat as he had planned with Mike Cumberlege, they might have given the Germans even
more trouble than they did. For one of their weaknesses was that they had no single
leader, and few of them were known outside their own area of a few villages. John was
known from one end of Crete to the other, could talk to each man in his own dialect and
ask after his family and gossips. The Cretans would have accepted him as one of
themselves. Most of the men who rose to command the little guerrilla bands were the men he
had chosen, and with them he could have used the first precious months, when the Germans
had not yet clamped their hold on every corner of the Cretan coastline, to organize a
strong and united force. As it was, he made the task of those British officers who took up
the fragments of his work immeasurably easier. It was enough for any Cretan seeking to
introduce himself to one of them to say: ‘I am a friend of Pendlebury. He stayed in
my house. Here I have this paper from him.’ The unshaken loyalty which those officers
found in the Cretans, not only in their close associates but in the great mass of the
population, which could conceive no other than a British friendship, is the best tribute
to his memory. (TJD 1948)
...The last few days have taught us a lot
about the Battle. We are all of us familiar with the heavy bombing which was followed at
last by the drone of hundreds of planes coming in over the sea in a dark cloud; and the
procession of troop-carriers flying so low over the ground they seemed almost at eye
level, suddenly shedding a many-coloured stream of parachutes. The roar of guns broke out,
the invaders were caught in olive branches, or many of them were killed as they fell,
others dropped so close to headquarters that they were picked off at once. Heraklion is a
great walled Venetian city. The enemy forced an entry and after fierce fighting they were
driven out again with very heavy loss by the British and Greek troops. This was the first
astonishing appearance of Cretan civilians, only armed with odds and ends, until they
could get hold of more modern devices — old men long
retired and boys below military age, even women here and there, all suddenly fighting by
our sides all over the island. In Heraklion, the swastika flag, which had been briefly run
up over the harbour, was torn down. The Wall was manned by Greek and British riflemen and
many counter-attacks were launched, and apart from this break-in, the town and the
aerodrome remained firmly in the hands of our troops until the end. This is the moment to
slip in a word about Nick Hammond, the brilliant scholar
and archaeologist turned soldier, a very old friend of Pendlebury’s, whose
involvement in the run in to the battle and whose adventures in the caique ‘Dolphin’
deserve an entire saga. It is he who should be making this talk about his old friend, not
me. But he was 94 this year, and he died, lucid to the end, three weeks ago, saying in a
letter ‘I’m sure you’ll do him proud’, so I must do my best. After
leaving the Brigadier, Pendlebury and Satanas left for the Kapetanios’ village of
Krousonas by different routes. They hoped to launch a flank attack on the steadily growing
throng of dropped parachutists west of the city. He got out of the car he had set out in
with a Cretan comrade, Miron Samaritis, and climbed a spur to look down on the German
position. They were closer than he thought and opened fire. Pendlebury and Samaritis fired
back. Here the fog of battle begins to cloud things. He was still firing back with another
friend called Marketakis, and a Greek platoon when a new wave of Stukas came over, and
Pendlebury was shot in the chest. He was lifted into a cottage, which belonged to one of
his followers, George Drossoulakis, who was fighting somewhere else and was killed the
same day. But his wife Aristeia took him in and he was laid on a bed. One of the Germans
who came into the house was a doctor and he cleaned and bandaged the wound, which was not
fatal. Another doctor came in later and gave him an injection. He was chivalrously
treated.
Next morning Pendlebury told the women of the
cottage to go and leave him. They refused, but were eventually led off as prisoners.
During all this Pendlebury’s identity discs seem to have disappeared. A field gun was
set up just outside as a fresh party of parachutists was soon in the house. Here was an
English soldier in a Greek shirt he had been changed into, and with no identification. A
neighbour’s wife saw them take him out and prop him against a wall. Three times they
shouted a question at him, which she couldn’t understand. Three times he answered
‘No’. They ordered him to stand to attention and then opened fire, and he fell
dead, shot through the head and the body. The battle raged on. Heraklion stood firm and we
had similar good news from the Australians and the Greeks defending Retimo. When the lines
of communication were cut, we had not a glimmer of the turn things had taken at Maleme. It
was a shattering story. In Heraklion we thought we had won the campaign. The news became
more bitter still later on when we learnt that the enemy casualties had been so high that
it looked as if abandoning the campaign was their only solution. It was only much later
that we learnt what happened to Pendlebury’s remains. At first they were buried near
the spot where he fell. Later, the Germans moved him about half a mile outside the Canea
Gate beside the Rethymnon road (I remember bicycling past it, dressed as a cattle dealer,
next year). It was marked by a wood cross with his name on it, followed by ‘Britischer
Hauptinann’, British major. There was a bunch of flowers under it and a fresh one
was put there every day until the enemy shifted it somewhere less central. He now lies in
the British War Cemetery at Souda Bay. Meanwhile, legends were springing up. For the
Cretans, it was the loss of an ally and a friend, with a status dose to that of Ares or
Apollo. For the enemy he was a baleful and sinister figure, a darker T. E. Lawrence,
perhaps still lurking in the dreaded mountains. Many bodies were exhumed until one skull
with a glass eye in it was dug up and sent up to Berlin, or so they said. According to
island gossip Hitler had not been able to sleep at night for fear of this terrible
incubus. To the British officers who were sent to Crete later on to help the resistance,
he was an inspiration. In the words of Tom Dunbabin, the
memory of Pendlebury turned all his old friends into immediate allies of the officers
infiltrated into the island. We were among friends at once. Perentevvy —Penterby
— Pentebury — however it was
distorted, the word meant resistance, revolt and victory. It was partly their influence,
one posthumous, the other active, that helped the island to avoid too much of the trouble
and discord that afflicted the post-war world elsewhere..." (PLF May 19 2001)
For me, however, JDSP is
best remebered for his archaeological work and for his monumental walks. The man was
absolutely tireless. Upon reading 'The Villa Ariadne' by Dylis Powell, in the late '70s, I
bought (or rather, liberated from The
Hellenic Bookservice, if truth be told, but I did work there at the time, and as
punishment I am now the webmaster for their site!) his 'Archaeology of Crete'
(Methuen 1939), and his 'Palace of Minos' (Hutchinson 1933). I fell in love with this man;
his enthusiasm, his knowledge, his boundless energy. He was only 36 when he died. Had he
lived another 12 years, he would have witnessed the decipherment of 'Linear B', and had he
not been murdered by the Nazis, he would have been just 61 years old when Nicholas Platon
unearthed the unplundered 'palace' at Zakros. I could go on, as you know only too well,
but I shall resist that temptation and allow John Pendlebury to type for himself. In the
first of these three extracts taken from 'Travelling hints' in 'John Pendlebury in Crete',
concerns "hullo boys"; Cretan lads that had spent a while away in the USA. The
second and third extracts concern JDSP's
hints on hiring a mule driver and the dangers of being driven around by a Cretan. Remember that Pendlebury loved the Cretans with
all his heart, and had a great sense of humour, which he liked to share with the Cretans
who at times were the at the receiving end of this humour.
Pendlebury on "Hullo-Boys"
"Among the trials of
the road, may be mentioned the 'hullo-boy' or English-speaking (?) Greek. The first sign of
his presence is usually a loud nasal voice. "Hello, boy! Where you come from? How you
like this country?". Now I have nothing in theory against this breed, It is a very
fine thing that making quite good money in America they should return to their village. It
is natural that they should want to show off their command of American. They are very
hospitable, but in practice they often make one foam at the mouth. The vulgarity they
learned on their travels, their clothes, their scorn of their own country are terrible.
Almost always they only want to be helpful, for like every Greek who can talk two
languages they are ashamed of their own and can not conceive any foreigner knowing it
(here we have a footnote which attempts to explain that these chaps actually believe that
Greek is too difficult for a foreigner to learn). Some methods of dealing with them are as
follows: (Here JDSP has the
"hullo boy mostly speaking English, and the traveller ocassionally responding in (katharevousa)
Greek, which I have transliterated and translated (in brackets) ).
a)
Hullo-Boy. You spik English
Traveller. Den katalamvano (I do
not understand)
Hullo-Boy. Where you come from?
Traveller. Eimai Germanos (I am
German)
Hullo-Boy. pou pygaines; (Where are
you going)
Traveller. Non Parlo Italiano (Non
Parlo Italiano)
b)
Hullo-Boy. Hullo, Boy!
Traveller. Haven't I seen you in
New York?
Hullo-Boy. Very likely. When were
you there?
Traveller. Oh, I was never there; I
nearly went there once.
Pendlebury on hiring a mule:
"...A
guide without a mule, gets about 70 drachmas a day; with one mule, anything up to 150 dr.
and with two mules, anything up to 225 dr.This includes the man and the animal's food,
though if you do not explicitly state as much in the agreement, they will 'try it on'. In
Crete, for some reason, guides and mules are more expensive than on the mainland. Always
bargain; remember if you pay the man what he asks he worries himself nearly sick imagining
how much more he might have got. Cast aside all feelings of delicacy. In Greece, unlike
Turkey and Egypt, there are few of the courtesies of the bazaar. Cultivate beforehand an
automatic look of horror, whatever price is mentioned and ask the man whether he thought
you wanted to buy the animal. Luckily the Greeks have a great sense of humour and a few
jokes do wonders, even when they are at their expense. On the other hand, if no bargain
has been made, you are at the mercy of the man. Greeks will stick to a bargain once made,
but have no compunction in making extortionate demands otherwise. I have it on good
authority that expostulation is the most effective remonstrance and that if you want to
get angry, you must work yourself up into such a rage as to be nearly ill in front of
them. They are the most reasonable people; too reasonable sometimes..."
Pendlebury on Cretan drivers:
"...The
average life of a Greek car is about two years. This is partially due to the art which has
been displayed in allowing the roads to go artistically to ruin and partly owing to the
cunning of the driver. To him, petrol is money, therefore petrol must be saved. To do this
he switches off his engine at the slightest suspicion of a downward slope. Never say you
have looked death in the face until you have been down a steep winding road with a
precipice on one side and only a probably inactive brake between you and the rocks below.
The bends are taken at the greatest possible speed, braking being left until the last
moment and only employed to avert certain death. To switch on your engine prematurely is
worse than lunacy, to lose one yard of free-wheeling more bitter than death..."
I shall leave this box with more mirth and merriment from the second part
of 'John Pendlebury in Crete', entitled 'First trip to Eastern Crete'. Just a couple of
shorties, these, but again they show JDPS's wicked sense of humour:
" Up forgotten little tracks we climbed, past amazed goats and
scared sheep, draughty stone cots and wondering children who had never seen our like.
Twice we received the grave greetings of tall priests. Before we had gone far our friend
with the fresh horse caught us up, and the usual conversation began:
‘Where are you from?’
‘England.’
‘Where are you going?’
‘Sitia.’
‘Why?’
‘To see the place.’
‘What are you?’
‘Archaeologists.’
‘Which of the ladies is your wife?’
‘Neither: they are also archaeologists.’
‘How much does it cost you to travel like this?’
‘Who knows?’
‘Have you vines in England?’
‘No: beer.’ Then, taking the war into the enemy’s camp: ‘Do you
love Venizelos?’ All the answer was a hand to the heart.
‘Where are you from?’
‘Muliana.’
‘Where are you going?’
‘Sitia.’
‘How did you make enough
money to buy a horse like that?’ Victory! He spurred his horse and was gone... "
Later...
"...The rain came on again that night, and we splashed through pools of
mud to the Venizelos restaurant where we had a reasonable meal served by a magnificent
brigand (judging purely from appearances). And so to bed. Morning came with the discovery
that there was no normal method of opening my bedroom door from the inside. This delicate
operation having been performed with a tin-opener and the skill of a master criminal we
proceeded on our way, turning with such swing and violence as nearly to disappear down a
steep bank.."
As I say, absolutely priceless! Stelios Jackson 27/4/04
Further reading:
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