Springcleaning – Book 5 “Ill Met By Moonlight” by W Stanley Moss

In my teenage years I read a lot of WW2 books about daring raids and great escapes – I also had (and still have) a large selection of the Biggles books by Captain WE Johns. Some of this was because these were the books that were readily to hand in my home but some was also that the end of the war wasn’t that long ago when I was growing up and many of this type of book was still being written or was being made into very popular films.

Ill Met By Moonlight by W Stanley Moss is one of this type of book (there is a film but I have never seen it). It was written at the end of the war and published in the 1950s. My copy is a more recent reprint with a new introduction by the author’s daughter. I have no idea where I got it or how it ended up on my to-be-read pile but it is obvious that this is a second hand copy because the spine is cracked and a couple of the pages are loose.

The book tells the story of a WW2 operation in Crete conducted by the author and a number of other British soldiers. The plan was to kidnap the highest ranking German officer on the island and to take him prisoner to unsettle the occupying forces and interrupt their chain of command. It is not clear exactly how successful the raid was in achieving these aims and there were killings of the civilian population undertaken by the Germans as reprisals for the operation, although these sort of killings were, sadly, common at this time and place. It seemed like a good idea at the time and you can see its attraction.

The author and a few others were living in Egypt at the time and regularly travelled to Crete to work with Greek partisans on the island in guerrilla activity. In this case they landed, accepted help from some locals, kidnapped the General and then tried to get off shore and back to Egypt. It was the last task that caused them difficulty and the soldiers, the General, a couple of Russians who had escaped from a forced labour camp, and various local helpers travelled around the island trying to avoid the Germans and arrange their travel away from Crete.

The book was written from diaries which were kept at the time and the author has added a few additional notes. The voice of the young and enthusiastic British officer obviously having the time of his life comes through clearly in the narrative. He is careful to make sure that he credits the people who helped them and he outlines the risk that they all took in this action very clearly.

This is, of course, a book of its time but it’s an interesting insight in to the operation and how these things happened, and what could go wrong. It’s a very male book and although some women partisans are recognised and praised the author doesn’t give us their names and they are usually identified by the relationship they have to some man that is part of the story.

I enjoyed reading this book even though I am not as obsessed as I used to be with this type of writing. I have popped this book onto the shelf which holds the remains of my childhood collection as it fits well with them.