Patrick Leigh Fermor, DSO, OBE: A Hero For Our Time And All Time

I only discovered Patrick Leigh Fermor in 2006 when I read paperback editions of his two travel books, A Time of Gifts and Between the Woods and the Water, published by John Murray in 2004. I was intrigued to see that he was still alive at the time of publication and some quick research on Google and Wikipedia revealed not only that he was still with us in 2006, aged 91, but was still living an active life and still writing. The more I read about PLF the more I admired and liked him and eventually came to consider him as my hero, or ideal type of Englishman.

Up until 2006, if you’d asked who my hero was, I would probably have said that it was Lord Nelson, or looking further afield, I’d’ve drunk to Michel de Montaigne. But here, suddenly, was a man born early in twentieth century, and still active in the twenty first century, who had seen, done and read so much worth seeing and doing and reading, and had evidently done so with charm, courage, élan and personal modesty; someone of our own time, as well as of earlier times, a hero for all time with something of the bravery and initiative of a Nelson, and the culture and erudition of a Montaigne; a man worthy of admiration and emulation.

When PLF began walking across Europe in 1933 he packed a copy of the Oxford Book of English Verse “(to be lost within a month and neither missed nor replaced)” [A Time of Gifts, p. 14] and volume 1 of the Loeb Horace. He also carried a well trained memory, well stocked with English and Latin poetry thanks to a school where “some learning by heart was compulsory, though not irksome” and also thanks to an “automatically absorbed” and much larger “private anthology” of poems. He would recite poetry to himself “when songs ran short” while walking along “straight stretches of road where the scenery changed slowly” [A Time for Gifts, p. 71].

Patrick Leigh Fermor had taught himself some of the Odes of Horace and that was to serve him well during his most famous and most heroic exploit on the island of Crete in World War II:

The hazards of war landed me among the crags of occupied Crete with a band of Cretan guerillas and a captive German general whom we had waylaid and carried off into the mountains three days before. The German garrison of the island were in hot, but luckily temporarily misdirected, chase. It was a time of anxiety and danger; and for our captive, of hardship and distress. During a lull in the pursuit, we woke up among the rocks just as a brilliant dawn was breaking over the crest of Mount Ida. We had been toiling over it, through snow and then rain, for the last two days. Looking across the valley at this flashing mountain-crest, the general murmured to himself:

Vides ut alta stet nive candidum
Soracte . . .

It was one of the ones I knew! I continued from where he had broken off:

. . . nec jam sustineant onus
Silvae laborantes, geluque
Flumina constiterint acuto,

and so on, thought the remaining five stanzas to the end. The general’s blue eyes had 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. We had both drunk at the fountains long before; and things were different between us for the rest of our time together. [A Time of Gifts, p. 74]

PLF continues with his discussion of poetry and mentions that The Oxford Book of Latin Verse “was about the only prize I carried away from school.” A copy of the 1944 reprint of that book now sits (rather neglected, I confess, in spite of my intentions) on my bookshelf.

In January of this year I read William Blacker‘s fine account of life among the Romanians of Transylvania in the early 1990s, Along the Enchanted Way (John Murray, 2009). William Blacker travelled across Europe by car, but he had something of the spirit of Patrick Leigh Fermor about him, as well as the same publisher and a Fermoresque book title, so it was really no surprise when I read in the acknowledgements at the back of the book that,

Patrick Leigh Fermor, who understood from the first moment why an Englishman should choose to live in Romania, has given an abundance of much-appreciated encouragement. His unflagging enthusiasm is infectious and hearing him recite the Mioriţa recently has prompted me, at last, to learn it by heart myself. [p. 303]

Then, a couple of months ago, I read the Folio Society‘s edition of The Cretan Runner by George Psychoundakis, translated by PLF. George Psychoundakis was a 21-year-old Cretan ‘mountain boy’ when the Germans invaded Crete. George Psychoundakis became a partisan and a “runner” who delivered messages, smuggled arms and guided Allied soldiers across the mountains of Crete to the coast for evacuation. PLF’s translation of The Cretan Runner was published by John Murray in 1955.

Here is George Psychoundakis‘ account of the abduction of General Kreipe:

Mr Michali [i.e. PLF] and Mr Moss, in their Gestapo uniforms, with their pistols and all the rest of it ready, stood in the middle of the road. The car arrived in front of them. they gave a signal for it to stop. One went to one side of the motor-car, the other to the other. Mr Michali asked for their identity papers in German, having saluted smartly. ‘General Kreipe,’ the general said, and at that very moment one of Mr Michali’s hands grasped him by the bosom and the other thrust his Colt .45 pistol against his heart…

…without wasting time, Paterakis, Tyrakis and Saviolakis and the two officers got into the car. They bound the general’s eyes with a cloth and the stilettos of the three boys were against his chest, ready, at the slightest motion, to pierce his heart. The two Englishmen sat in the front and the car continued along the road with the captain at the wheel. It was evening when they passed through Herakleion, and the Germans, all coming out of the cinema, practically blocked up the streets. When they saw the general’s distinguishing marks on the car, they saluted without stopping, and the car passed through the whole town and took the uphill road towards the nome of Retimo. During this drive through the town they met twenty-two check-posts, and only at the last one, by Konoupedes, did they receive the signal to stop.
George Psychoundakis, The Cretan Runner, p. 164

Last week, after hearing the news of PLF’s passing, I ordered a copy of the DVD version of the film, Ill Met By Moonlight (with Dirk Bogarde as PLF), which is based on the account of the abduction of General Kreipe by William Stanley Moss, the other British SEO officer to take part, and whose book, Ill Met By Moonlight, is on my “must read” list.

Further Reading