He is perhaps most celebrated for the events surrounding the
abduction of a senior German officer, General Kreipe, in Crete in the Second
World War – a daring raid by a mixed team of SOE and Cretan partisans.
For several days they marched with their captive across the
mountains and then paused… This is how he describes the situation:
We woke up amongst the rocks,
just as a brilliant dawn was breaking over the crest of [the snow-covered peak
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…’
I was in luck. It is the opening
line of one of the few odes of Horace I know by heart (Ad Thaliarchum, I.ix). I
went on reciting where he had broken off: ‘…Nec iam sustineant onus / Silvae
laborantes, geluque / Flumina constiterint acuto’* and so on, through the
remaining five stanzas to the end.
The General’s blue eyes swivelled
away from the mountain-top to mine – and when I’d finished, 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 had
both drunk at the same fountains long before; and things were different between
us for the rest of our time together.
*See, how it stands, one pile of snow / Soracte! ’neath the pressure yield
/ Its groaning woods; the torrents’ flow / With clear sharp ice is all
congeal’d.
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