Ivan William Stanley Moss MC (15 June 1921 – 9 August 1965), commonly known as W. Stanley Moss or Billy Moss, was a British army officer in World War II, and later a successful writer, broadcaster, journalist, and traveller. He served with the Coldstream Guards and the Special Operations Executive (SOE) and is best known for the Kidnap of General Kreipe. He was a best-selling author in the 1950s, based on his novels and books about his wartime service. His SOE years are featured in Ill Met by Moonlight: The Abduction of General Kreipe, (also adapted as a British film released under the main title) and A War of Shadows. Moss travelled around the world, including Antarctica to meet the Commonwealth Trans-Antarctic Expedition.
A biography, Billy Moss: Soldier, Writer, Traveller - A Brief Life by Alan Ogden, was published in 2014 as an Afterword to A War of Shadows. An abbreviated text was published in the Coldstream Gazette 2018.
Early life and education 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.Moncreiffe, Sir Iain, Ill Met by Moonlight, PrologueCooper, Artemis, Cairo in the War 1939–1945, Hamish Hamilton, 1989
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.Moss, W. Stanley, Diary, 1944 The villa's new inhabitants called it Tara, after the legendary home of the High Kings of Ireland.
Sophie Tarnowska and two other women had been asked to share the house with the SOE agents, but only she went through with it, after the men pleaded with her not to let them down. Estranged from her husband, she moved in with her few possessions (a bathing costume, an evening gown, a uniform and two pet mongooses). She protected her reputation while living in the all-male household by the invention of an entirely fictitious chaperone, "Madame Khayatt", who suffered from "distressingly poor health" and was always indisposed when visitors asked after her. The group were later joined by SOE agents Billy McLean, David Smiley returning from Albania, and Rowland Winn (later Lord St. Oswald), also active in Albania.
Tara became the centre of high-spirited entertaining of diplomats, officers, writers, lecturers, war correspondents and Coptic and Levantine party-goers. The residents adopted nicknames: "Princess Dnieper-Petrovsk" (Countess Sophie Tarnowska), "Sir Eustace Rapier" (Lt-Col. Neil (Billy) McLean), "the Marquis of Whipstock" (Col David Smiley LVO OBE MC), "the Hon, Rupert Sabretache" (Rowland Winn MC), "Lord Hughe Devildrive" (Major Xan Fielding DSO), "Lord Pintpot" (Arnold Breene), "Lord Rakehell" (Lt-Col Patrick Leigh-Fermor DSO) and "Mr Jack Jargon"Lord Byron, Don Juan, Canto The Thirteenth, LXXXVIII, "There was Jack Jargon, the gigantic guardsman"(Capt W. Stanley Moss MC). By the winter of 1944, the Tara household had to leave their battered villa and move into a flat. Their landlord secured their eviction on the grounds that the villa had not been let to "Princess Dnieper-Petrovsk" et al., as stated on the villa's name plate.
Abduction of General Kreipe, Crete
Moss is best remembered for Operation 'BRICKLAYER', the capture of General Heinrich Kreipe on Crete and abduction of him to Egypt, in April and May 1944.Byford-Jones, W., The Greek Trilogy, Hutchinson 1945Ogden, Alan, Sons of Odysseus, SOE Heroes in Greece, Bene Factum Publishing Ltd, London, 2012, . 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. On the last evening before Moss and Leigh Fermor set off, Smiley presented Moss with the Oxford Book of English Verse – his companion from Albania – for good luck. McLean gave him a complete Shakespeare dedicated, "To Bill, with best of luck for Guernsey, Bill".
Promoted to the rank of captain, at age 22 Moss set off with Leigh Fermor, age 29, to Crete in 1944. Leigh Fermor landed by parachute. Moss, unable to jump due to cloud cover, followed several weeks later, landing on 4 April 1944 by boat on the south coast where he joined Leigh Fermor, Andartes and other support (using the cover name of 'Dimitrios'). Walking north, they passed through Skinias, Kastamonitsa and Haraso. Just south of Skalani, they prepared for the abduction. Throughout the operation, as they travelled across Crete, they were hidden and supported by the Resistance and the local population.
Moss and Leigh Fermor, disguised as German soldiers, stopped the General's car. With the help of their team, the driver was knocked out by Moss with his coshMacintyre, Ben, The Times, 11 June 2011, pp. 18–19Moss's cosh held by Imperial War Museum London, Catalogue ref WEA 4182 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."
Post-war correspondence explains that Kreipe was disliked by his soldiers because, amongst other things, he objected to the stopping of his own vehicle for checking in compliance with his commands concerning troops' reviewing approved travel orders. This tension between the General and his troops, in part, explains the reluctance of sentries to stop the General's car as Moss drove it through Heraklion.Beutin, Dr Ludwig, Letter to W. Stanley Moss, 27 September 1950
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, Moss led a resistance group consisting of eight Cretans and six escaped Russian POW soldiers in launching an ambush on German forces, intent on attacking Anogeia, on the main road connecting Rethymno and Heraklion. He chose an ambush site by a bridge in the Damastos location, one kilometre west of the village of Damasta. After the team destroyed various passing vehicles, among which was a lorry carrying military mail to Chania, the German force intending to target Anogeia finally appeared. It consisted of a truck of infantrymen backed up by an armoured car. Moss and his group attacked the troops. He destroyed the armoured car by crawling up behind it and dropping a grenade into the hatch. In total, 40 to 50 German and Axis troops were killed in the clash that followed as well as 1 Russian partisan. 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, during which time he was promoted to the rank of major on 24 October. He participated in an operation alongside Major Ken Scott, with the objective of sabotaging the railway bridge over the Aliakmon River to disrupt German troop movements in and out of Thessaloniki. Due to heavy rainfall causing the river to overflow its banks, Moss was unable to execute the final part of the plan to destroy a section of the bridge. He continued to engage in sabotage activities aimed at impeding the German withdrawal.
Subsequently, Moss returned to Britain for reassignment on 30 January 1945. Despite being assigned regimental duties, he sought to rejoin special operations. Taking a 28-day leave in Cairo from 6 March 1945, he chose this time to marry.
Thailand He was then posted to join Force 136 in Thailand (to which Moss referred by its historic name of Siam) arriving from Cairo on 25 June 1945 to stay at the Grand Hotel, in Calcutta. Joining Major Ken Scott as Jedburgh team leader and Capt. John Hibberdine (W/T) for Operation Sungod,National Archives, Kew. File HS1/58 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 1945Ogden, Alan, Tigers Burning Bright, SOE Heroes in the Far East, Bene Factum Publishing Ltd, London, 2013, .
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