W. Stanley Moss(1921-1965)

At the outbreak of WWII W. Stanley Moss had recently left Charterhouse school and was living in a Latvian log cabin. He had earlier survived the 1923 Japanese earthquake as a baby and had travelled to the four corners of the globe. He made his way to Stokholm & thence to England where he joined the Coldstream Guards as an Ensign. After basic training and spells of guard duty at Buckingham Palace and Chequers (home of Prime Minister Winston Churchill). He was sent with the replacement troops to North Africa after the battle of Tobruk and he helped chase Erwin Rommel across the desert. This led him to Cairo where he met up with the group of semi-legal brigands based at Tara. This was a group of like minded individualists and adventurers who took advantage of the wartime conditions to perform many special missions. The group included Patrick Leigh-Fermor. They were the sort of people who, if it hadn't been for the war would have been (or would have liked to have been) smugglers and pirates. Because he spoke no German and little Greek (and Paddy Leigh-Fermor spoke even less) Billy Stanley Moss was the obvious (by the lights of the British Military Intelligence Corps) choice for a mission to Crete and the Nazi occupied Greek islands.