Ill Met by Moonlight

Ill Met by Moonlight: The Abduction of General Kreipe is a non-fiction partly-autobiographical book[1][2] written by W. Stanley Moss,[3] a British soldier, writer and traveller.

The story was made into a 1957 film with the same title starring Dirk Bogarde by the British writer-director-producer team of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger.

The book recounts Moss's service, alongside Patrick Leigh Fermor, as an agent of Special Operations Executive (SOE), including their kidnapping of Heinrich Kreipe, commander of 22.

It was first published in 1950, when it was selected by W. Somerset Maugham as one of the best three books of that year: "more thrilling than any detective story I can remember, and written in a modest and most engaging manner".

Moss's second book, A War of Shadows,[10] describes the aftermath of Ill Met by Moonlight, a subsequent raid on Crete and operations in mainland Greece and Thailand (against Japanese forces).

The Special Operations Executive (SOE) inserted agents on Crete in order to work with the local resistance in harrying German occupying forces.

On 4 February 1944, Major Patrick Leigh Fermor and Captain William Stanley Moss and two Cretan SOE agents left Egypt by plane for Crete.

The plan was for the two British officers, dressed as corporals in the Feldgendarmerie (German military police), to stop the general's car on his way home at what was supposed to be a routine check point.

Hunted by German patrols, the group moved across the mountains to reach the southern side of the island, where a British motor launch (ML 842 commanded by Brian Coleman) was to pick them up.