I Was Trained to Be a Spy

An American-born boy grew up in a small village on the Greek island of Crete. In his last year in high school, he witnessed the German invasion of the island in May of 1941 during the early days of WWII. At the age of 18, he joined a resistance group headed by his brother and supplied crucial information to the SOE, an 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 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 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. The author recounts his personal experiences with the Cretan Resistance, his escape from Crete through the mountains, the evacuation by an English torpedo boat, his OSS training, the return mission to Greece, as well as recalling the near-capture encounters with the Gestapo and Greek police, and his final return to the United States.