Life
At the outbreak of World War II, Paterakis was a young gendarme on the island of Crete. [3] [4] After the Battle of Crete he evacuated to the Middle East, where he trained with the British Commandos in sabotage. [5] He was returned to Crete, along with Georgios Tyrakis, as the permanent partners of Patrick Leigh Fermor and W. Stanley Moss on a mission to capture German general Heinrich Kreipe. [6] They arrested the general and drove him to the mountains, continuing south to a bay codenamed "X75" near Rodakino, from which Kreipe was embarked on a British motor launch destined for Cairo.
As the war continued, the Germans murdered Paterakis's father and his two brothers. [7] After the war, he found himself without work. Considerably later on, the Germans, ignorant of the part which he had played in taking Kreipe prisoner, employed him as a guard at the Maleme German military cemetery.