I Was Trained to Be a Spy: A True Life Story

By Helias Doundoulakis

An American-born boy grew up in a small village on the Greek island of Crete. In his last years in high school, he witnessed the German invasion of Crete, in May of 1941, during the early years of WW II. At the age of eighteen, he joined a resistance group headed by his brother, and supplied crucial information to the SOE, the arm of the English Intelligence Service. This resistance group is uncovered, resulting in their hasty evacuation by the SOE, to Cairo, Egypt.

In Cairo, the author and his brother were asked to join the English Intelligence Service, but rather, pursued the American OSS, or Office of Strategic Services, the newly formed American intelligence counterpart. They were enlisted into the US Army, and attached to the OSS, where the author was trained in the SI, or Secret Intelligence sector, which included parachute jumping, wireless/Morse code training, commando/defense training, locks/safe-cracking techniques, escape methods, and environment assimilation techniques.

After being transformed into a skilled spy, the author was sent back to Greece undercover, and along with a Greek naval intelligence officer, set up a communications cell in Salonica, Greeces second largest city, whereby daily coded messages to OSS Headquarters in Cairo were sent. One such message describes the course of events surrounding the bombing of the main railroad yard in Salonica, and the loss of thousands of German troops, as well as recalling the near-capture encounters with the German Gestapo and the Greek police. The author also recounts his personal experiences of his escape from Crete through the mountains, the evacuations by an English torpedo boat, his OSS training, the return mission to Greece, and his final return to the United States.

For more information, visit http://iwastrainedtobeaspy.com

Review

"...Doundoulakis is able to evoke the suspense and thrilling detail of his many narrow escapes and also convey his youthful sense of excitement and adventure. His intimate rendering of the adversity Greek civilians faced during the war is particularly moving...." "...no matter how exceptional his post-war experience, it shrinks in comparison to tales of avoiding the Gestapo behind enemy lines and practicing the arts of intelligence..." "...Exciting, first-hand account of a World War II spy." - Kirkus Discoveries, A review service from Kirkus Reviews


- Xlibris Podcast Part 1 - http://www.xlibrispodcasts.com/i-was-trained-to-be-a-spy-1/

- Xlibris Podcast Part 2 - http://www.xlibrispodcasts.com/i-was-trained-to-be-a-spy-2/

- Xlibris Podcast Part 3 - http://www.xlibrispodcasts.com/i-was-trained-to-be-a-spy-3/

- Xlibris Podcast Part 4 - http://www.xlibrispodcasts.com/i-was-trained-to-be-a-spy-4/

- Xlibris Podcast Part 5 - http://www.xlibrispodcasts.com/i-was-trained-to-be-a-spy-5/

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Dec 27, 2007
• ISBN: 9781477173541

Helias Doundoulakis

Helias Doundoulakis was only two years old when his family moved from America to the Greek island of Crete. He was twenty-two when the war ended in 1945, during which time he was transformed from resistance fighter to soldier in the American Army. Due in part to his experience with the SOE and fluency in Greek, English and German, he was recruited by the Office of Strategic Services (the OSS). This would be his life-changing moment. After the war, he became a civil engineer and inventor, holding the patent for the world’s largest radio telescope, the “Arecibo Antenna.” Aside from the present narrative, he is the author of two books, published in Greek, and three others: I Was Trained To Be A Spy Books I and II, and My Unique Lifetime Association With Patrick Leigh Fermor. The author lives with his wife of sixty years, Rita, in Freeport, New York. They have four children and ten grandchildren. Gabriella Gafni is an acclaimed ghostwriter and owner of GMG Ghostwriting Services. She holds a B.A. in foreign languages and cultures, and a law degree from the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law in New York. She and her family presently reside in North Carolina.

Book preview

Chapter 1

• Introduction into the group of the OSS training spy school Cairo Egypt, October 1943

It was the first day, a mostly hot day in October 1943. An introduction to this peculiar form of war, spy training, if you will, in the Secret Intelligence and Special Operations section of the OSS outside Cairo, Egypt. A tall white-haired man with strong, piercing eyes walked in and, though we were sitting, commanded our attention.

Good morning, gentlemen. I am Major Vassos, head of the training school for the Secret Intelligence section of the OSS. You are the chosen group, fifteen of you, ready to start training to become spies. And now let me ask any one of you, ahh… let me ask this gentleman in the front… what is your name? And he turned to me, his eyes fixed on mine. I paused, and he continued in a stern monotone, And remember, while you are here, you have no last name and will not use it.

I am Corporal Helias D., sir, I said, rather unsure as to whether the use of the abbreviation was correct, and by his wide stare, I knew it was not.

Tell me, Corporal Helias, is it day or night outside?

I quickly responded, hoping to correct my error, It must be day, sir, six o’clock in the afternoon, and it will be dark soon.

He again looked at me disapprovingly. "Gentlemen, as you can see, the corporal is not really sure if it is day or night! Well, after you finish training, I can assure you that you will convince anyone, even me that it is nighttime even though the sun is still shining! Your minds will be capable of fabricating imaginary realities or arguments that will convince anyone that whatever you are saying is true, friend or foe. Your training will last five months and will depend mostly on your ability to absorb what we will be teaching you and your ability to demonstrate to the teaching staff that you will be ready to undertake that important and dangerous mission. Not anyone can become a spy, but since you are here, it has been proved that you would be capable of undertaking dangerous missions."

He continued, The instructions will be given by either OSS teaching staff or by members of English Intelligence Service. They’ve been around longer, so much the better for us. And their organization possesses more experience in certain things, which I’m not at liberty to discuss right now with you men.

Major Vassos, as I found out, was named John; and though he was tough, I liked him from the start. He had that impressive look as if he was, sometime in the past, a spy himself.

He said the training would be divided into eight classifications and enumerated for us the following:

1. Parachute jumping from various heights

2. Morse code and wireless instruction and operation

3. Commando training (defensive type)

4. Environment assimilation

5. Techniques in opening locks and safes for the purpose of photographing or stealing documents

6. Story fabrication and lying

7. Methods of escaping if captured

8. Elimination (how to kill in order to escape, if captured)

Afterward, Major Vassos introduced his group of instructors, all of whom were officers, and described the specialty of each instructor.

Besides the officers and instructors, there were many other soldiers in the compound, all with at least a sergeant’s rank assigned in various other tasks. In addition, there were over twenty more helpers, cooks, cleaning personnel, and others.

While the major spoke, I stood as if I was hypnotized and asked myself, was it really me they were calling? Had I really been chosen to be part of this, a young man with a simple background, who had just come only a short time ago from a little village of Crete? And to find myself now a corporal in the U.S. army and a member of the OSS and ready to be trained to become a spy?

What I wasn’t thinking about was that I was carefully chosen by the OSS, not randomly taken, considering my past two years in the Cretan resistance under the English Intelligence Service; the fact that I spoke English, Greek, and a little German; and the fact that I was born in the USA and was also an American citizen. I was to become an agent of the OSS, a spy, and an integral part of the American spy network in Greece. While the major dismissed us, I sat, finally grasping the reality.

For the reader to be able to follow step-by-step my advancement from being a small-town boy to becoming a prospective spy, I will have to go back to the time when I was in high school in Heraklion, Crete, in 1941.

Chapter 2

• Battle of Crete

• Joining Cretan resistance

• Escape From Crete to Egypt on a British torpedo boat

To show how the writer was chosen to qualify as a prospective spy, the writer is going back to a time when he and his brother, George, were members of the English spy network in Crete, from 1941 to 1943. There will be a description of the escape of a group of fifteen people to the south shores of the island of Crete as they tried to avoid capture by the German Gestapo. And the evacuation by an English torpedo boat from Crete to North Africa and eventually the trip to Cairo, Egypt, in June 1943, will follow.

By April 1941, German troops had occupied most of Greece. Some of the Greek isles were not under Nazi control. One of these islands of strategic importance was Crete, the largest of the Greek islands and situated between mainland Europe and Libya. Hitler eyed Crete because it would provide the necessary airfields to support their war effort in North Africa. The Germans would later bomb Crete, targeting vital areas of infrastructure, mostly airports and harbors. Rumors spread of a German invasion, and it was not a question of if, but when and, more importantly, how and where.

One day, my father and I were working in our vineyards, spraying the fields. It was May 20, 1941. We had harnessed our spraying equipment to our backs and were walking up and down spraying the vines. Across from us, about two miles away, there was a hill; and behind the hill was the airport of Heraklion, the biggest city in Crete.

We observed two German planes, flying very low, almost touching the tops of the trees; they were coming toward us. We probably looked like soldiers with backpacks, and they flew closer and started to fire at us. The shots were so loud they sounded like a thousand balloons bursting at the same time as the bullets were hitting the leaves and the ground. Fortunately for us, their first strafing was not accurate, missing my father and me while we ran for cover. Shaken and thankful that we were all right, we were surprised to see that the planes had turned around to try another attack, heading straight for us. I quickly yelled to my father to remove the spraying equipment and take cover in a nearby ditch. By the time they started the second strafing, I had just barely made it into the ditch, and I could feel the bullets striking the ground by my shoes as loud machine gun fire came closer and closer to us. Fortunately, we survived the attack. We suspected that something big was going to happen next, and as we were gathering our equipment to return to our village, we witnessed hundreds of multicolored parachutes falling in the vicinity of the Heraklion airport, which was just outside the island’s largest city and behind the hill in front of us. Since the Germans were landing only a few miles from us, we started to rush to our village, Archanes, which was in the opposite direction. Not too far from our vineyards was the ancient palace at Knossos, seat of the Minoan civilization and at which Sir Arthur Evans, the famous British archaeologist, had been excavating recently. All the villagers in our hometown were listening to the reports of an invasion on the radio, and the reports were that German paratroopers were landing all over the island. Most of us knew that there were no considerable Greek forces on Crete since they had been fighting in northern Greece and they were still there. There were reports of fierce resistance to the German invasion, and by the end of their initial attack, the Germans had lost about 1,500 paratroopers. By the third day, however, Hitler’s elite paratroopers, the Fallschirmjager, had lost over half of the 8,000 sent in to capture Crete. How could this tiny island resist so defiantly? The German high command, not to be thwarted, responded by bombing the major cities on the island in preparation for another invasion. The Cretan resistance, along with Australian and New Zealand troops, nearly fought this one off; but the German’s were able to secure Maleme airport on the far side of the island, allowing the German’s to fly in reinforcements. The Cretan men, women, and children who fought bravely, along with the British troops, held out for approximately ten days.

The Germans, who were quite upset about their losses, naturally wanted to avenge their brothers-in-arms. This they did visciously against the civilian population that participated in the invasion. Their revenge was carried out in barbaric fashion as the Germans would kill civilians and burn villages suspected of complicity. In response to the German brutality, the Greek civilians formed resistance groups, which were aligned with the English Secret Intelligence Service, the SOE. The English were dedicated to resisting the Germans as much as the Greeks were, and after the fall of the island, a few of these SOE operatives stayed behind, so-called sleeper cells, to help organize resistance in the cities and in the mountainous regions where it would be more difficult for the Gestapo to find them.

My brother George and I had not forgotten that we were Americans, emigrating to Crete at an early age. We especially enjoyed speaking to the English soldiers, billeted not too far from us, prior to the invasion of Crete. My brother, George, kept continuous contact with high-ranking English officers who requested George to organize an underground resistance organization and report to them. George then enlisted many friends and previous classmates, as well as me, into an organization that he headed, and he worked directly under the SOE. Later on he had befriended a member of the SOE, Captain Patrick Leigh Fermor and became a trusted associate. George was chief representative on the civilian side under Captain Fermor. Since George was so well known, it was expected soon that someone would say something to the Germans.

Two years had passed since the Germans had invaded Crete in 1941, and by 1943, we were informed that the Gestapo had learned about the connection between my brother’s organization and the SOE. A message, using a wireless, was sent to Cairo with a request to evacuate us from Crete before it was too late. The danger was obvious to all that resistance members would be tortured and killed, as well as their families. My brother, George, notified me and a few others that we should leave Heraklion; I received the notification while I was in my hometown, Archanes, and I told my parents that they had to be brave and accept the necessary departure of both of us, from the island of Crete. It was not easy for my parents to accept that the Gestapo wanted their sons, and both of them would have to leave the island of Crete to avoid capture. My parents started to cry at the possibility they may not see their children for a long time or maybe never again.

It was only a matter of time before the German police would come and ask my parents about their sons, especially my brother whose reputation as a leader of a big organization, was given over to the Gestapo by a traitor. This traitor had offered not to disclose the identity of my brother for a million drachmas.

I told my parents to say that we both wanted to go to Athens to college and went there only a few days. Later my father had a gun put to his head by a Gestapo officer asking him to tell the whereabouts of his son George. My father replied. Sir, . . . you are an officer of the Gestapo, do you really believe that a twenty-one years old boy could ever be a leader of such a thing, as you say? On the island of Crete we have hundreds of high ranking military officers and you believe a boy leads such an organization? It must be a false accusation by someone who does not like my son!

The Gestapo officer listened carefully to what my father said, thought for a while and told my father to go.

As I was having my last lunch with my father in our house, my mother sewed our birth certificates inside the lining of our jackets. She said it might be useful in Egypt to prove our American citizenship to the Americans. On the other hand, if we were stopped and searched for any reason by the Germans, and they found the birth certificates in the lining of our clothing that would be enough evidence for our execution.

image%2023.jpg

George Doundoulakis with Captain Patrick Lee Fermor, 1942, of the SOE, before our evacuation to Egypt.

Loading my clothes on my bicycle and while saying goodbye with tears, the front door opened and a retired Colonel, Antonios Betinakis, who belonged to my brother’s organization appeared. At least twice a week, he was giving me information or instructions to take to Heraklion for my brother, who would then pass this information on to the English. As soon as he saw me he was happy to have caught me in time. Please, Helias, he said, take this letter to your brother; it contains very important plans and be very careful with it since it contains names of new associates. I put the letter inside the hollow end of the right-sided handle bar leaving about a half an inch outside for easy access and I covered the end with the rubber grip. He must have approved my transportation method and told me: Bravo Helias, very smart idea, nobody would ever suspect that inside the handle bar of the bicycle there are secret documents. You are a top-notch messenger Helias, that is why you are trusted with important and secret documents. And then he turned and with a passionate and sincere expression told my parents that they should be proud of their two sons fighting for the cause of freedom.

My mother, with tears in her eyes, replied; Colonel Betinakis, I hope God is watching my sons because the freedom you are talking about might come with a high price.

I did not want to tell the Colonel that my brother and I were planning to leave the island of Crete but I knew my brother had left somebody else in charge and the Colonel’s letter would identify him.

As I biked along, a German soldier whom I had spoken to in German often, was sitting with another group of soldiers by the high school, and yelled out Helias, Halt. I had no intentions of stopping, so as I pedaled faster, he ran faster yet, and grabbed the bicycle so that the grip came off, and while the German was holding the rubber grip, the colonel’s letter protruded from the handle. I immediately saw that he was sorry for what he did, and he tried to put the grip on himself, but I calmly took it from his hands and place it on the handle myself. I then sped toward Androulakis’ house with the apologetic German behind me. Androulakis’ house was our headquarters.

I stared into the fireplace at Androulakis’ house wondering how it might have turned out if the German discovered the letter. He just wanted me to slow down, and it seemed like I could have exposed the entire organization. Helias my brother said, make sure there is nothing left in the house. Androulakis and Michael Kokkinos had to bury the explosives we hid in the fireplace at the Knossos Excavation Site.

Again we looked around the house, in case we had forgotten anything suspicious and after we were sure the house was clean we said good-bye to Androulakis’ mother, and left. We were very lucky, though, since we had left in the nick of time just before the Germans had arrived. We hardly had gone a few blocks from the house when the Gestapo came and raided that house, turning everything upside down to look for us or any evidence of the organization’s existence. The German Police put a gun to the head of Androulakis’s mother, demanding the whereabouts of her son John, and George, my brother. She never broke. Thank God.

Having learned of the Gestapo’s raid on the Androulakis house, we knew that we had to leave the island.

We walked for half a day before we reached a town called Saint Miron. I was told to stay in the mayor’s house for about a week or ten days. At the end of the first week some curious neighbors thought I was the son of a famous partisan leader named Petrakogiorgis. Fearing for his family and his village, the mayor told me to leave before the Germans found out whom they were protecting in their house. Though I was not the son of that partisan leader and I told them so, I understood their concern, since his family would be killed and the house burned. Though I was not whom they thought I was, I was wanted by the German Police, anyway. The mayor, whose name was Dramatinos, telephoned someone he knew, and after a day and a half, a man came to escort me through the mountains of Crete. The guide and I left the village on foot, traveling through the Cretan mountains for about a day. We reached the town of Anogia, famous for their brave men, and stayed in the mayor’s house for a few days. We were told that the mayor was the richest in that town, the owner of extensive tracts of land and sheep and employed many shepherds to take care of them. He sheltered and fed the partisans, besides our group and also SOE members, very often. At least one lamb was killed every day to feed his visitors. There, in the mayor’s house I met with Patrick Leigh Fermor, the SOE representative and with five others from our organization. To repay part of the mayor’s hospitality we took his brother to Egypt, by order of Patrick Leigh Fermor.

From Anogia, me, John Androulakis, and a guide, travelled to a cave on the lower hills of Mount Ida, the highest mountain on Crete (called Psiloritis by the Greeks). We stayed in that cave for at least ten days with very little food and water until we were informed that a torpedo boat was scheduled to pick up our group in two and half days. A guide took us and went to another cave nearby where we met with more people of our organization, and after counting, I realized we were sixteen people all together. There we were introduced to a new guide, who was a tall young man with a black scarf on his head and dressed in traditional Cretan baggy trousers and high black boots, and had a long knife tucked into his sash. With a very impressive expression, large black eyes, and bushy eyebrows, he explained to us that he alone knew the area we were going to go through. He was a large man with an equally large handlebar mustache in typical Cretan style. He said the travel was not going to be an easy one, and we would have to travel forty kilometers to the south shore of the island by foot. He then looked at each of us carefully and sternly warned us about the Germans, who were looking for us, and told us that the journey would be over the mountains in the dark. He told us that traveling by night would be our only hope of escaping. He warned us that in order to cover the twenty kilometers per night in the mountains, we would have to move fast, and sometimes run. The guide, who was a shepherd and was familiar with traveling through the mountains, wondered if we could possibly follow