His SOE years are featured in Ill Met by Moonlight: The Abduction of General Kreipe,[5] (also adapted as a British film released under the main title) and A War of Shadows.

A biography, Billy Moss: Soldier, Writer, Traveller - A Brief Life by Alan Ogden, was published in 2014 as an Afterword to A War of Shadows.

His mother, Natalie Galitch (born in Nikolayevsk-on-Amur), was a White Russian émigrée, and his father, William Stanley Moss, an English businessman and steel merchant in Japan.

His uncle, Sir George Sinclair Moss (1882-1959), a British diplomat in China, also served the Special Operations Executive as adviser on Chinese affairs during the Second World War.

Posted to reinforce the 3rd Battalion the Coldstream, after the losses at Tobruk, Moss fought between October 1942 and July 1943 with Montgomery's Eighth Army chasing Rommel across North Africa after Alamein.

Next was Countess Zofia (Sophie) Tarnowska, forced to leave Poland in 1939 by the German invasion, followed by Arnold Breene of SOE HQ.

She protected her reputation while living in the all-male household by the invention of an entirely fictitious chaperone, "Madame Khayatt", who suffered from "distressingly poor health"[11] and was always indisposed when visitors asked after her.

[11] Tara became the centre of high-spirited entertaining of diplomats, officers, writers, lecturers, war correspondents and Coptic and Levantine party-goers.

The residents adopted nicknames: "Princess Dneiper-Petrovsk" (Countess Sophie Tarnowska), "Sir Eustace Rapier" (Lt-Col. Neil (Billy) McLean), "the Marquis of Whipstock" (Col David Smiley LVO OBE MC), "the Hon, Rupert Sabretache" (Rowland Winn MC), "Lord Hughe Devildrive" (Major Xan Fielding DSO), "Lord Pintpot" (Arnold Breene), "Lord Rakehell" (Lt-Col Patrick Leigh-Fermor DSO) and "Mr Jack Jargon"[13](Capt W. Stanley Moss MC).

[14][15][16] Leigh Fermor (Philidem), with Moss (Dimitri) as his second-in-command, led a team of Cretan Andartes, part of the Greek resistance.

From here, they walked on through Fotinos and Vilandredo before striking south, finally to escape by HMS Motor Launch ML 842 (commanded by Brian Coleman) on 14 May 1944 from Peristeres Beach, west of Rodakino.

After the war, a member of Kreipe's staff reported that, on hearing the news of the kidnapping, an uneasy silence in the officers' mess in Heraklion was followed by someone saying, "Well gentlemen, I think this calls for champagne all round.

"[11] Post-war correspondence explains that Kreipe was disliked by his soldiers because, amongst other things, he objected to the stopping of his own vehicle for checking in compliance with his commands concerning troops' reviewing approved travel orders.

[23][24] Returning to Crete on 6 July 1944,[6] Moss led a resistance group consisting of eight Cretans and six escaped Russian POW soldiers in launching an ambush on German forces, intent on attacking Anogeia, on the main road connecting Rethymno and Heraklion.

After the team destroyed various passing vehicles, among which was a lorry carrying military mail to Chania, the German force intending to target Anogeia finally appeared.

The operation, for which a bar to his Military Cross was recommended, is described in full in Moss's book A War of Shadows and commemorated at Damasta.

He participated in an operation alongside Major Ken Scott, with the objective of sabotaging the railway bridge over the Aliakmon River to disrupt German troop movements in and out of Thessaloniki.

Due to heavy rainfall causing the river to overflow its banks, Moss was unable to execute the final part of the plan to destroy a section of the bridge.

[15] He was then posted to join Force 136 in Thailand (to which Moss referred by its historic name of Siam) arriving from Cairo on 25 June 1945 to stay at the Grand Hotel, in Calcutta.

The team's orders included establishing communication with HQ (W/T station Gaberdine), liaising with the Thailand 6th Independent Division, identifying all POW camps, finding locations for drop zones and seaplane landings and preparing to demolish the tunnel on the railway from Chong Khao and Ron Phibun, east to Tunsong, as also described in his book A War of Shadows.

This officer showed exceptional gallantry in taking part, with Major Leigh Fermor, in the organization and execution of the kidnapping of Major-General Kreipe at Arkhanes, Crete on 26 April 1944.

Between 1952 and 1954, Moss joined up with his friend and former SOE agent, Andrzej Kowerski – who adopted his cover name, Andrew Kennedy, after the war – to investigate a mystery of the final days of the Third Reich.

In April and May 1945, the remaining reserves of the Reichsbank – gold (730 bars), cash (6 large sacks), and precious stones and metals such as platinum (25 sealed boxes) – were dispatched by Walther Funk to be buried on the Klausenhof Mountain at Einsiedl in Bavaria, where the final German resistance was to be concentrated.

[33] Moss arrived in Christchurch, New Zealand on 9 January 1958, at the request of Lord Tedder, chairman of the management council of the 1958 Polar Air Rescue Expedition in London.

Moss was to lead a British expedition in May to the North Pole, to evolve a rescue organization for commercial airlines flying the Polar route.

[34] In the event, there was not enough space on the flight so he flew on 24 January 1958, with 3 other passengers, in a Globemaster aircraft (with one engine cutting out six hours from his destination) to Scott Base at McMurdo Sound, Antarctica to report on the arrival of the first Antarctic crossing achieved by the Commonwealth Trans-Antarctic Expedition in 1957-8 led by Vivian Fuchs and Edmund Hillary.

A simple rock of red and white mottled Jamaican marble was erected over his grave with the inscription In loving memory of William Stanley Moss, A Soldier, A Writer, A Traveller.