No Battle Without Him

As the English warship slipped through the night from southern Crete toward Tobruk, Lieutenant Colonel Charalampos Seiradakis stood on deck, deep in thought. What awaited him in the Middle East, where he had been sent to help rebuild the Greek army in exile and support the Allied cause against the Axis? It was May 1943, two years after the fierce Battle of Crete in which he had fought German paratroopers-and just another chapter in a lifetime spent at war. Seiradakis had first taken up a rifle at the age of eleven, during the Cretan uprising against Ottoman rule. His youthful zeal carried him into the Balkan Wars in northern Greece, then to the battlefields of French Lorraine and Gallipoli during the First World War. Now, in the deserts of North Africa, the veteran officer once again faced the perils of a world at war. Charalampos Seiradakis epitomises the Greek soldier of the turbulent twentieth century: loyal to the liberal vision of Eleftherios Venizelos, forged in decades of struggle, and shaped by the wars that defined modern Greece. His story is both compelling and emblematic-a vivid chronicle of courage, endurance, and the making of a nation. "This is a carefully written narrative based on many sources ... making an important addition to the body of history ... It is obvious that this book is a labour of love". Sir Michael Llewellyn-Smith