|
Wilbur Frederick Harrisonc Married: 1917 Mary (Molly) Aurelia Creed F/Mc | |||||||||||||||||
| Geoffrey Anthony Gordon-Creed [CFT #12851] Born: 1920 Died: 2002 |
| ||||||||||||||||
| (Formerly Harrison) b Cape Town, South Africa d South Carolina, USA Lt. Col. Geoffrey Gordon-Creed, who has died aged 82, was awarded the DSO for his part in an SOE operation to sabotage the Asopos viaduct in Greece in 1943. After the German invasion of Greece in 1941, British military missions throughout the Balkans were ordered to do everything possible to sabotage the German war effort, making the enemy's lines of communication a prime target. The Asopos viaduct on the railway line between Salonika and Athens, approximately 12 miles south of Lamia, was strongly guarded and most difficult to approach; but its destruction would cut all railway communication to the south of Greece for at least two months. The Asopos river has its source in a glacier on Mount Giona, and cascades several thousand feet to the valley bottom, running east for several miles before plunging into a forminable gorge. The gorge takes the river, an icy torrent, about a mile and a half in a series of waterfalls, sluices and whirlpools; the river then drops a further 1,000 ft before debouching from the mountains into the plains. At the highest and narrowest point of the gorge, the railway line comes out of a tunnel and crosses a long Steel viaduct, before re-entering the tunnel on the other side. From the centre of the main span to the river bed is a drop of about 200 ft. Clustered about the mouth of the tunnel on the north side were the huts of the German guard, comprising 50 men, searchlights and machine gun positions. The approaches were heavily wired and mined. In May, following a report that the Guard on the viaduct was being strengthened and the base of the structure reinforced, GHQ in Cairo ordered its destruction without further delay. Gordon-Creed, then a captain, was selected to establish a military mission in the Greek provinces of Dorice and Parnassus and, in March 1943 parachuted into the area of Mount Giona. After a careful reconnaissance, in which Lt. Stott, a New Zealander, played a leading role, it was decided that the only hope of success was to get down the seemingly impassable gorge at night from a direction which would be least expected; scale the 200 ft cliffs up to the abutments; climb on to the main structure; then set the charges and escape back up the gorge. The operation was codenamed "Washing". On the night of May 31st, an attacking party of three officers and two NCOs under the command of Gordon-Creed set off. After marching through the night, with four mules to help carry their stores and explosives, they made a campsite at the head of the gorge at first light. Every morning, for the next 18 days, the men crawled out of their blankets, brewed up something hot and entered the icy river. They took it in turns to swim ahead with the rope, relayed by the others until it was possible to clamber to a rock further downstream and make fast for the others to follow. Hours of swimming, struggling and climbing, where a slip would have meant almost certain death by drowning or being swept over a waterfall, took them a few yards further down the gorge. On the morning of June 18th, the party sighted their target. The bridge, abutments and spans were covered with scaffolding which, they hoped, would make their task easier. They laid up for two days, and by 8 pm on June 20th they were in the icy river under the bridge carrying their explosives - but armed only with coshes to make climbing easier. Gordon-Creed and Stott led the climb, and would have been in full view of the guards had the searchlights been directed downwards. They had just reached the girders of the bridge when, glancing upwards, Gordon-Craig saw a sentry 30 ft above his head. When the sentry went off duty, he decided to take a stroll in the moonlight before turning in. With discovery imminent, Gordon-Craig hit the man with his cosh, and tipped him silently into the bottom of the gorge some 200 ft below. After setting the charges with a two-hour fuse, the attacking party was three-quarters of the way home, and up to their necks in a deep pool, when a reverberating roar reached them over the noise of the torrent. The viaduct fell into the gorge, and its complete destruction was confirmed by air reconnaissance photographs shortly afterwards. The men returned to base exhausted, with the skin on their arms and legs in ribbons, but jubilant at their success. The Germans, convinced that there had been treachery, shot the guard commander and 10 members of the guard. In Volume V of The Second World War, Sir Winston Churchill wrote that, as a result of the destruction of the vital viaduct at Asopos, two German divisions which might have been used in Sicily had been moved to Greece. Gordon-Creed was awarded an immediate DSO. Daily Telegraph Obituary, 17th December 2002 He had a remarkable war record which included a year fighting in the Western Desert. He was once taken prisoner with his shoes on fire but escaped 48 hours later by faking a prolonged attack of dysentery. He commanded the Advanced HQ of 1st Armoured Division and was later recruited into the SOE. In June 1944, after 15 months of clandestine operations and with a large price on his head, he was relieved and flew back to England to his wife - from whom he had been parted on his wedding day and whom he had not seen for three years. In an article published in 2011 Annabel Venning for Mailonline described Geoffrey as a "Soldier, spy, serial seducer: The war hero who inspired James Bond (and had a bizarre sex pact with Ava Gardner)" |
1: Alison Gordon-Creed | ||||||||||||||||
| 1 Child | |||||||||||||||||
To notify corrections or updates to this page, please contact the Webmaster
or return to the Index2 Index1
Thanks