Word: crete
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1940-1949
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...walks like a spraddled duck. His khaki shorts are too big for him, flapping in the mountain winds, and his khaki shirt emerges at several places from his pants. He is nobody's ideal of a hero. In fact, before the Germans invaded Crete, Batouvas was a quiet, easygoing merchant in a Cretan town...
...Mountains. When he could not stand Nazi domination any longer, Batouvas joined other Greeks in Crete's mountain fastness and turned from a mild, slightly paunchy Greek into a hardbitten, tough guerrilla warrior. He grew lean, learned to live on one solid meal daily; he began to develop a consummate hatred for Germans and Italians. At first he was just a guerrilla among many hundreds. Then his head for business asserted itself. Today Manolis Batouvas is one of the three main guerrilla leaders on the island. Of course Batouvas is not his real name, just as George Petrakis...
Cretans are a patient lot. Since 1941 they have bided their time. They have suffered hardships, intenser than the hardships suffered on the Greek mainland because Crete never was self-sufficient. The Gemans have been constantly robbing the people of their porridge, bread and olives. After taking their "official tithe," they come roving around in small bands, forcing villagers and townsmen to give up more at pistol point. The stuff they steal or wangle from the Cretans is not enough, so that on occasion you get German soldiers, and even officers, entering homes and begging for scraps of food...
...ranks as young men and old slipped away to join the guerrillas. There are many thousands in the hills now. Not all of them are armed, because arms are hard to come by. There are some women among them-the famed Amazons who fought so valiantly during the Crete battle. They are not fighting-yet. The guerrillas maintain steady communication with the Greek mainland and with the Mideast by couriers who slip...
George the Courier. One such courier is my friend George, a Greek boy, who told me Crete's story. I will not even try to describe him for fear of giving him away to the Nazis. Intelligent and educated, George carried good news, orders, communiqués and bulletins from XXX to ZZZ. "We need arms," George tells me in his jerky, nervous way. "We need much more now if we are going to be useful in sabotage." George speaks solemnly of the great number of Cretans who were shot out-of-hand as hostages. "The Germans always pick...