![]() Two years later, he was living in Nazi-occupied Crete. He returned only when war broke out in 1939 and joined the Army, and, once his adventuring in Europe and the facility with languages he had developed abroad came to light, was invited to transfer from the Guards to the Intelligence Corps. For the next six years, he was on the road, sleeping in farmyards, inns, monasteries and grand houses, mixing with vagabonds, gypsies and aristocrats. Still a teenager, he set off to walk across Europe, from the Channel to Istanbul (or Constantinople, as he preferred to call it), carrying a rucksack containing a few spare clothes and a volume of Horace’s Odes. A rebellious, free-spirited sort, he was described by a teacher at his school as ‘a dangerous mixture of sophistication and recklessness’. It attracts – and values – mavericks, which is why Paddy Leigh Fermor was a natural recruit to its ranks. They operate in the shadows, the men and women of the British Army’s most secretive section, the Intelligence Corps.įor more than a century, they have brought their very distinctive type of courage, judgment, skill and resourcefulness to pull off exceptional feats all over the world on their country’s behalf – yet, because of the clandestine nature of their work, doing so often without the recognition they deserve. ![]() ![]() In an abridged extract from In The Shadows, author and historian LORD ASHCROFT chronicles the British Army’s most secretive section. Serialisation in The Mail On Sunday on 06 November 2022.
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