The Ariadne objective : the underground war to rescue Crete from the Nazis / Wes Davis.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Davis, Wes.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

World War, 1939-1945--Underground movements--Greece--Crete.

World War, 1939-1945.

Crete (Greece)--History--Occupation, 1941-1945.

Crete (Greece).

World War, 1939-1945--Secret service--Great Britain.

Great Britain. Special Operations Executive--History.

Great Britain.

Great Britain. Special Operations Executive.

History.

Physical Description:

xx, 329 pages : illustrations, maps ; 25 cm

Edition:

First edition.

Place of Publication:

New York : Crown, [2013]

Summary:

In the bleakest years of World War II, when it appeared that nothing could slow the German army, Hitler set his sights on the Mediterranean island of Crete, the ideal staging ground for German domination of the Middle East. But German command had not counted on the eccentric band of British intelligence officers who would stand in their way, conducting audacious sabotage operations in the very shadow of the Nazi occupation force. The Ariadne Objective tells the remarkable story of the secret war on Crete from the perspective of these amateur soldiers--scholars, archaeologists, writers--who found themselves serving as spies in Crete because, as one of them put it, they had made "the obsolete choice of Greek at school": Patrick Leigh Fermor, a Byronic figure and future travel-writing luminary who as a teenager had walked across Europe in the midst of Hitler's rise to power; John Pendlebury, a swashbuckling archaeologist with a glass eye and a swordstick, who had been legendary archeologist Arthur Evans's assistant at Knossos before the war; Xan Fielding, a writer who would later produce the English translations of books like Bridge over the River Kwai and Planet of the Apes ; and Sandy Rendel, a future Times of London reporter, who prided himself on a disguise that left him looking more ragged and fierce than the Cretan mountaineers he fought alongside. Infiltrated into occupied Crete, these British gentleman spies teamed with Cretan partisans to carry out a cunning plan to disrupt Nazi maneuvers, culminating in a daring, high-risk plot to abduct the island's German commander.

Contents:

Part I Deposited on the Limestone

1 Shanks's Mare 3

2 Sword Stick 35

3 Oak Apple Day 71

4 The Fishpond 93

5 Spaghetti and Ravioli 105

Part II In the Minotaur's Lair

6 Fleshpots 147

7 Tara 167

8 Moonstruck 193

9 The Intersection 223

10 Bricklayer 253.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Local Notes:

Athenaeum copy: Miller Fund bookplate.

ISBN:

9780307460134

0307460134

OCLC:

819641568