W. Stanley Moss(1921-1965)
- Writer
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.