Book Recommendation: "Abducting a General"
/If you’ve read enough news about killing a general, you might enjoy Patrick Leigh Fermor’s first-hand account of a very different tactic. During WWII, Leigh Fermor was a British special operations officer on Nazi-occupied Crete. His work with Cretans to resist German occupation included the kidnapping of General Kreipe, the commanding officer of German forces on Crete, whom they smuggled off the island, into a boat and to Egypt. But “Abducting a General” is less of a war memoir and more, like Leigh Fermor’s other works, a travel book. His descriptions of Crete - its people (their culture, language, tenacity etc) and the geography - are spectacular and his range of references/allusions are good fodder for wikipedia deep-dives. Here for instance, is a passage about Crete’s Mount Ida:
It is the island’s crown and the impartial sanctuary of everyone in flight from justice or injustice and its mythological aura is deepened by the Himalayan remoteness and by the awe that hovers over Mount Sinai on Cretan icons. All my sojourns have been strange; none, though, as strange as these, huddling with the General and a volume of Baudelaire or Xenophon between us in the mountain’s heart, while below us in a ring his army prowled like the troops of Midian.
Interesting guy, interesting story. Worth checking out, I think.