Un pastor y combatiente de la resistencia cretense durante la Segunda Guerra Mundial, sirvió como correo esencial tras las líneas enemigas. Tras la guerra, fue encarcelado erróneamente, una experiencia que le llevó a escribir sus memorias de guerra. Estos poderosos relatos de sus actividades de resistencia alcanzaron más tarde un considerable éxito, ofreciendo una perspectiva única del conflicto.
George Psychoundakis was a young shepherd boy who knew the island of Crete intimately when the Nazis invaded by air in 1941. He immediately joined the resistance and took on the crucial job of war-time runner. This book presents an account of George's activities across mountainous terrain, come blazing summer or freezing winter.
His story of the German Occupation
George Psychoundakis was a twenty-one-year-old shepherd from the village of Asi Gonia when the battle of Crete began: “It was in May 1941 that, all of a sudden, high in the sky, we heard the drone of many aeroplanes growing steadily closer.” The German parachutists soon outnumbered the British troops who were forced first to retreat, then to evacuate, before Crete fell to the Germans. So began the Cretan Resistance and the young shepherd’s career as a wartime runner. In this unique account of the Resistance, Psychoundakis records the daily life of his fellow Cretans, his treacherous journeys on foot from the eastern White Mountains to the western slopes of Mount Ida to transmit messages and transport goods, and his enduring friendships with British officers (like his eventual translator Patrick Leigh Fermor) whose missions he helped to carry out with unflagging courage, energy, and good humor. Includes thirty-two black-and-white photographs and a map.