Xan Fielding

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Xan Fielding DSO (* 26. November 1918 in Ootacamund , British India ; † 19th August 1991 in Paris ) was a British writer, translator, journalist and traveler who during the Second World War as an agent of Special Operations Executive in Crete , in France and the Far East served. He was also awarded the Croix de guerre and the Commemorative Medal of National Resistance in Greece .

biography

Early life

Alexander Wallace Fielding was born in Ootacamund, British India, where his father, Percival Wallace Fielding in the Indian Army , served as a major in the 50th Sikhs. Fielding's mother died shortly after his birth, which is why his grandparents raised him mainly in Nice . He went to the Charterhouse School and then briefly studied at the Universities of Bonn, Munich and Freiburg. In the late 1930s Fielding moved to Cyprus , where he worked as editor of The Cyprus Times and ran a bar.

Crete

After France's defeat in World War II, Fielding joined the army and was assigned to the Cyprus Regiment as a second lieutenant on September 1, 1940. Following the Battle of Crete in May 1941, he joined the Special Operations Executive and was finally sent to Crete, armed with weapons and explosives, and brought ashore from the submarine HMS Torbay under Commander Anthony Miers . Fielding teamed up with Patrick Leigh Fermor and set up an espionage network that provided detailed information on the troop, ship and air force movements of the Axis powers. He organized the evacuation to Egypt of hundreds of allied soldiers who had been left behind on Crete and who were hiding among Cretans. Six months later Fielding returned to Cairo, where he was awarded the Distinguished Service Order on October 15, 1942 .

Fielding eventually returned to Crete in late 1942. In November 1943, he managed the rival groups of andartes so partisan to move to a pact, the Communist-led ELAS and the national-conservative EOK . He was then replaced by Dennis Ciclitira . In Cairo he became a member of the then famous Tara household, a villa in which several British agents lived and which was the city's cultural attraction, founded by Bill Stanley Moss .

France

In early 1944, Fielding volunteered at the SOE department responsible for France. He parachuted off in southern France in mid-1944, where the two other SOE agents met him; Francis Cammaerts (code name "Roger") and Christine Granville (code name "Pauline") of the " Jockey " network. Fielding, Cammaerts, and French agent Christian Sorensen were stopped at a roadblock near Digne on August 13, 1944. An irregularity in Fielding's papers, as well as the large amount of money he and Cammaerts carried, aroused suspicion. You have been arrested. Soon Granville came to Digne Prison posing as Cammaert's wife. By paying bribes and threatening them, she obtained their release. When the two men were led out of prison, they expected to be executed and were amazed when Granville drove them to collect them.

Post war career

Shortly before the end of the war in Europe, Fielding went to Crete again. He was one of the first allied officers to enter liberated Athens. He served in the Far East for a few more months until the end of the war and visited Tibet . He spent half a year in Germany, where he worked for the Special Intelligence Service , a department of the FBI, before going to the Balkans as an observer for the United Nations in 1946 .

In 1948 he met Daphne Thynne , wife of Henry Thynne, 6th Marquess of Bath . After divorcing him, the two married in 1953 and from then on lived in Cornwall , Morocco , Portugal and Uzès .

Michael Powell hired him in 1956 as a technical advisor for the film adaptation of Bill Stanley Moss 'book Ill Met by Moonlight - the story of Leigh Fermors and Moss' kidnapping of General Kreipe , the German commander in Crete.

Fielding authored several works; u. a. The Stronghold , a depiction of the SOE operations in Crete, and a memory of his wartime Hide and Seek (which he dedicated to Christine Granville). He also translated some works by French authors into English, including a. by the novelist Pierre Boulle , including his world successes The Bridge on the Kwai and The Planet of the Apes . He has also translated works by Jean Lartéguy as well as Gabriel Chevallier , Pierre Schoendoerffer and Jean Hougron . Fielding worked with Patrick Leigh Fermor on the translation of The Cretan Runner from the Greek by the author Georgios Psychoundakis .

His marriage to Daphne divorced in 1987. He then married Agnes "Magouche" Phillips, the daughter of Admiral US Navy, John H. Magruder.

Fielding died in Paris in 1991.

Works

  • The Stronghold: An account of the four seasons in the White Mountains of Crete (1953)
  • Hide and Seek: The Story of a War-time Agent (1954)
  • Corsair Country: The diary of a journey along the Barbary Coast (1958)
  • The Money Spinner: Monte Carlo and Its Fabled Casino (1977)
  • One Man in His Time, The Life of Lieutenant-Colonel NLD ("Billy") McLean DSO (1990)
  • Images of Spain (1991)
  • Aeolus Displayed (1992 ;?); German The Book of Winds , from the English by Eike Schönfeld . Delphi near Greno, Nördlingen 1988, ISBN 3-89190-618-8 .
  • A Hideous Disguise (1994)

See also

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e f g h i j k l Obituary: Xan Fielding . In: The Daily Telegraph , August 20, 1991. 
  2. ↑ Major Alexander Wallace Fielding on thepeerage.com , accessed September 14, 2016.
  3. ↑ Alexander Wallace (Xan) Fielding . In: Special Forces Roll Of Honor . 2012. Retrieved April 4, 2012.
  4. ↑ London Gazette (supplement), January 3, 1941
  5. ↑ a b c d Obituary: Xan Fielding . In: The Times , August 21, 1991. 
  6. ^ Bill Rudd: ANZAC POW: Free Men in Europe . In: aifpow.com . 2011. Archived from the original on March 24, 2012. Retrieved on April 4, 2012.
  7. ^ London Gazette (supplement), October 13, 1942
  8. ↑ Major Dennis Ciclitira . In: The Daily Telegraph , June 16, 2000. Retrieved April 4, 2012. 
  9. ^ A b Hugo Vickers: Obituary: Daphne Fielding . In: The Independent , December 17, 1997. Retrieved April 4, 2012. 

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Fielding, Xan
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Fielding, Alexander Wallace
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British writer and special operations executive agent
DATE OF BIRTH November 26, 1918
PLACE OF BIRTH Ootacamund , British India
DATE OF DEATH August 19, 1991
Place of death Paris