BRITISH AGENT

New Zealand Listener, Volume 29, Issue 752, 11 December 1953, Page 13

BRITISH AGENT

APPOINTMENT IN CRETE, by A. M. Rendel; Allan Wingate, New Zealand price 15/-. \ N Oxford classics scholar who had "read ancient Greek" and could speak German, Major Rendel wangled his way into Crete as a British agent largely on the strength of his language qualifications. At first the Greeks exasperated him. They were unreliable and kept neither secrets nor promises; time meant nothing to them-there was always tomorrow to do the job or the day after; they were theatrical and full of their own importance. The difficulties and disappointments of the first months left him irritable and depressed. Later his mood changes. He admits honestly his failures and limitations; he shows himself to be a sharp and human observer with a whimsical sense of humour; he finds the Cretans a hospitaable, friendly and courageous people. Life in the mountains in the glorious Cretan climate makes him hardy and fit. He is chased by German patrols and has some narrow escapes. Disguised as a tagged and rather dirty shepherd, he leads a commando party which blows up a German petrol dump. He organises an intelligence service which reports German dispositions and moves to Cairo by wireless, and finally he slips into Heraklion,, bribes German engineers not toblow. up the harbour, and reports the | enemy’s evacuation plans on a hidden transmitter. He tells us all this in a dispassionate and scholarly way, but succeeds in conveying the suspense of the party’s first air drop and the feeling of living from moment to moment in some nafrow squeaks with German patrols.

W.A.

G.