W. Stanley Moss

Moss was born in Yokohama, Japan. His mother, Natalie Galitch (born in Nikolayevsk-on-Amur), was a White Russian émigrée, and his father, William Stanley Moss, an English businessman and steel merchant in Japan. They married on 22 September 1916. The family survived the 1923 Great Kantō earthquake. Moss attended Charterhouse in England (1934–39). His uncle, Sir George Sinclair Moss (1882-1959), a British diplomat in China, also served the Special Operations Executive as adviser on Chinese affairs during the Second World War. ==Soldier==

In the autumn of 1939, Moss, aged 18, had just left Charterhouse and was living in a log cabin on the Latvian coast. By the outbreak of war, he reached Stockholm, and succeeded in crossing the North Sea to England in a yacht. After full training at Caterham, he was commissioned as an ensign into the Coldstream Guards in July 1941. He served on King's Guard at the Court of St. James's punctuated by bouts of Churchillian duty at Chequers. Posted to reinforce the 3rd Battalion the Coldstream, after the losses at Tobruk, Moss fought between October 1942 and July 1943 with Montgomery's Eighth Army chasing Rommel across North Africa after Alamein. In the aftermath of Operation Corkscrew, his battalion was then sent to garrison Pantelleria. He returned to Cairo, where he volunteered to join Force 133 of the Special Operations Executive (SOE) on 24 September 1943. Tara, Cairo In 1943 in Cairo, Moss moved into a spacious villa, with a great ballroom with parquet floors, which four or five people might share. Moss chose to live in the villa rather than the SOE hostel, "Hangover Hall". He moved in alone at first, then bought his Alsatian puppy, Pixie. Then, Xan Fielding, who had served in Crete, joined him. Next was Countess Zofia (Sophie) Tarnowska, forced to leave Poland in 1939 by the German invasion, followed by Arnold Breene of SOE HQ. Finally Patrick Leigh Fermor, an SOE officer who had spent the previous nine months in Crete, joined the household. The villa's new inhabitants called it Tara, after the legendary home of the High Kings of Ireland.(Capt W. Stanley Moss MC). Leigh Fermor (Philidem), with Moss (Dimitri) as his second-in-command, led a team of Cretan Andartes, part of the Greek resistance. Moss and Leigh Fermor thought of the Kreipe abduction one evening in the Club Royale de Chasse et de Pêche (Royal Hunting and Fishing Club) and planned it during the winter of 1943. and the General and car seized. With Leigh Fermor impersonating the General, and Moss his driver, and with the General bundled in the back, secured by their Cretan team, Moss drove the General's car for an hour and a half through 22 controlled road blocks in Heraklion. Leigh Fermor took the car on, as Moss walked with the general south into the mountains to Anogeia and up towards Psiloritis. Reunited, the entire abduction team took the general on over the summit of Psiloritis before descending, aiming for the coast. Driven west by German forces cutting off escape to the south, they travelled to Gerakari and on to Patsos. From here, they walked on through Fotinos and Vilandredo before striking south, finally to escape by HMS Motor Launch ML 842 (commanded by Brian Coleman) on 14 May 1944 from Peristeres Beach, west of Rodakino. After the war, a member of Kreipe's staff reported that, on hearing the news of the kidnapping, an uneasy silence in the officers' mess in Heraklion was followed by someone saying, "Well gentlemen, I think this calls for champagne all round." The episode was immortalised in his best-selling book Ill Met by Moonlight (1950). It was adapted into a film of the same name, directed and produced by Michael Powell and released in 1957. It featured Dirk Bogarde as Patrick Leigh Fermor and David Oxley as Moss. The abduction is commemorated near Archanes and at Patsos. Damasta Sabotage, Crete Returning to Crete on 6 July 1944, He left Crete on 18 August 1944. The operation, for which a bar to his Military Cross was recommended, is described in full in Moss's book A War of Shadows and commemorated at Damasta. Moss's exploits in Crete are recorded in the Historical Museum of Crete. Greece Moss served in Greece between September and November 1944 and was promoted to major on 24 October. He was sent to join Major Ken Scott in an operation to blow up the railway bridge over the Aliakmon River in order to disrupt German troop movements in and out of Thessaloniki. Heavy rain burst the river banks preventing Moss from a final attempt to blow up a section of the bridge. He continued to undertake sabotage operations to hinder the German withdrawal. he flew out of Jessore on 22 August by Dakota landing by parachute in a drop zone by a river, south of Bandon in the Bandon Nakon Sri Tamaraj area. The team's orders included establishing communication with HQ (W/T station Gaberdine), liaising with the Thailand 6th Independent Division, identifying all POW camps, finding locations for drop zones and seaplane landings and preparing to demolish the tunnel on the railway from Chong Khao and Ron Phibun, east to Tunsong, as also described in his book A War of Shadows. The Mission arranged the orderly surrender of Japanese forces in their area of operations, before Moss left in November 1945 On 25 January 1946, he joined Operation Python. He was discharged on 21 November 1946. ==Wartime honours==

• Military Cross (MC) Moss was recommended for and received the Immediate Award of the Military Cross following the Kreipe abduction. ==Marriage and family==

In Cairo, on 26 April 1945, Moss married Countess Zofia Tarnowska, his former housemate. She was the granddaughter of Count Stanislaw Tarnowski (1837–1917) and a direct descendant of Catherine the Great of Russia. Their witnesses were Prince Peter of Greece and Major the Hon Peter Pleydell-Bouverie KRRC. The reception was held at the house of Princess Emina Toussoun. They had three children: Christine Isabelle Mercedes, named after their mutual friend and former SOE agent Krystyna Skarbek (Christine Granville), Sebastian (who died in infancy) and Gabriella. Initially living in London, they moved to Riverstown House, County Cork in Ireland. They later returned to London. They separated in 1957. ==Writer and traveller==

Moss achieved success as an author with three novels, as well as his two books based on his wartime adventures. In addition, he travelled to Germany and wrote an investigation of post-war Germany, studying what happened to gold accumulated by the Nazis: Gold Is Where You Hide It: What Happened to the Reichsbank Treasure? (1956). Disappearance of Reichsbank and Abwehr reserves Between 1952 and 1954, Moss joined up with his friend and former SOE agent, Andrzej Kowerski – who adopted his cover name, Andrew Kennedy, after the war – to investigate a mystery of the final days of the Third Reich. In April and May 1945, the remaining reserves of the Reichsbank – gold (730 bars), cash (6 large sacks), and precious stones and metals such as platinum (25 sealed boxes) – were dispatched by Walther Funk to be buried on the Klausenhof Mountain at Einsiedl in Bavaria, where the final German resistance was to be concentrated. Similarly the Abwehr cash reserves were hidden nearby in Garmisch-Partenkirchen. Shortly after the American forces overran the area, the reserves and money disappeared. Moss and Kennedy travelled back and forth across Germany and into Switzerland and corresponded with fugitives in Argentina, to research what had happened. They talked to many witnesses before finally establishing what had become of the treasure. In the event, there was not enough space on the flight so he flew on 24 January 1958, with 3 other passengers, in a Globemaster aircraft (with one engine cutting out six hours from his destination) to Scott Base at McMurdo Sound, Antarctica to report on the arrival of the first Antarctic crossing achieved by the Commonwealth Trans-Antarctic Expedition in 1957-8 led by Vivian Fuchs and Edmund Hillary. By mid-February with melting ice and the loss of the ice landing strip floating out to sea, air access ceased. The expedition arrived at Scott Base on 2 March 1958, and Moss's report was published in the Sunday Pictorial the following day. On 4 March, Moss attended the celebratory dinner with Fuchs, Hillary, David Stratton, George Lowe, Geoffrey Pratt, Harold Lister, George Marsh, George Lowe, Hannes La Grange, Jon Stephenson, Allan Rogers, Joseph "Bob" Miller, John Lewis, Ralph Lenton and 2 others. He left in mid-March 1958 returning to New Zealand on the American armour plated icebreaker, USS Glacier. Sailing the Pacific Taking to sea from New Zealand again, he sailed with Bill Endean, Rex Hill, Warwick Davies (aged 19), John Ewing (aged 19) in Endeans's 47 ft Alden-rigged Malabar ketch, the Crusader, through the islands of the Pacific to Tahiti. Here the crew split up and Moss joined the crew of the 50-ft motorsailer Manawanui from Tahiti to Nassau, Bahamas. Tig Lowe was skipper, Howard "Bones" Kanter was navigator, and other crew members were two New Zealanders. They stopped at Mangareva, where Moss and Lowe put on a boxing exhibition - much to the delight of the islanders. They sailed on to the Pitcairn Islands, Easter Island, the Galapagos Islands and Panama, eventually landing at Nassau in December 1959. Jamaica Moss moved on to Kingston, Jamaica, where he settled. He died there of stomach cancer on 9 August 1965, aged 44. He was buried at the Garrison Church in Kingston on Friday 13 August. Two buglers from the 1st Battalion The Jamaica Regiment sounded Last Post and Reveille over his coffin which was draped in the Union Jack. A simple rock of red and white mottled Jamaican marble was erected over his grave with the inscription In loving memory of William Stanley Moss, A Soldier, A Writer, A Traveller. ==Works==

Books • • • • • • Short stories • "The Zombie of Alto Parana" London Mystery Magazine #6 (1950) • "I Hate Violence" London Mystery Magazine #10 (1951) • "Body in the Wine" London Mystery Magazine #13 (1952) • "The High Toby" (Part I) London Mystery Magazine #14 (1952) • "Carriage for One" London Mystery Magazine #15 (1952) • "The High Toby" (Part II) London Mystery Magazine #16 (1952) • "The High Toby" (Part III) London Mystery Magazine #18 (1953) • "The Man with Flat Feet" Lilliput Magazine (June 1957) Teleplays • Assignment Foreign Legion - The Thin Line - broadcast on 19 October 1956 in the UK and on 3 December 1957 in the USA Translations • ==The William Stanley Moss Prizes==

The Prizes are awarded annually by the Faculty of Philosophy of the University of Crete to students in the Department of Philology and Department of History and Archaeology. The prizes were created to honour the Cretans, in Moss's name, and as an expression of gratitude and debt to the Cretan people. The prizes were founded by his daughter, Gabriella, in 2014, the 70th anniversary of Moss's wartime missions to Crete, and were first awarded in July 2015. ==See also==