Lieutenant-Colonel Geoffrey Gordon-Creed, DSO, MC, (1920-2002)
Michael Rhodes
Geoffrey Gordon-Creed survived more than a year's tank fighting in the
Western Desert and 15 months as a guerrilla leader in Greece.
He was born Geoffrey Anthony Harrison in Cape Town in 1920 and, having
taken the name of his stepfather, Eckstein, he attended Downside from
1933 to 1938. He then changed his name by deed poll to Gordon-Creed,
to prevent the dying out of a family name.
He could see that a world war was coming and tried to join the
Territorial Army before it broke out, but had trouble finding a
vacancy. Chance brought him into the 5th Battalion, Scots Guards, a
unit of volunteer skiers who trained in Switzerland; they had been
intended to support the Finns during the Winter War with the Soviet
Union in 1939-40, but Finland was overwhelmed before they could be
sent there.
Chance, again, led Gordon-Creed to a commission in The Royal
Gloucestershire Hussars, with whom he went out round the Cape to
Egypt, and so "up the blue" in a light tank. His regiment's experience
indicated that the Germans against whom they fought always seemed to
have heavier guns and better armour than themselves; Gordon-Creed lost
too many friends, but managed to stay alive.
Courage he did not lack; he was awarded a Military Cross as a captain
for gallantry in the face of the enemy. But his confidence in the high
command dwindled. He confessed his unease to a well-placed friend
while on leave in Cairo, and was introduced to Sandy Scratchley,
well-known before the war as a steeplechase rider; who arranged for
him to take part in the SAS raid on Benghazi. Thereafter he was
recruited by the SOE, who trained him in Palestine as a parachutist
and saboteur, promoted him to major, and had him dropped from an RAF
Halifax into occupied Greece.
There he led one mission of strategic import — the attack on the
Asopos viaduct that carried the only railway line running northwest
out of Athens. The line had been broken by an SOE party, with Greek
help, in November 1942, where it crossed the Gorgopotamos River, not
far from the Asopos, but had been repaired.
Next time round, the rival Greek bands who had assisted had
quarrelled; there was no Greek help. A small force of four officers —
Gordon-Creed was the senior — and two NCOs of mixed nationality,
British, New Zealand, Indian and Palestinian, clambered down the river
gorge that the viaduct crossed (the gorge was supposedly impassable),
and blew it up on the night of June 20-21, 1943; the line was closed
for several months. The demolition party worked under the noses of
Italian sentries, one of whom Gordon-Creed had to silence hand to
hand, and in the glare of occasional searchlights; they did their job
all the same.
The destruction of the viaduct led the Germans to move to Greece two
divisions that might have been used in Italy. Gordon-Creed and his
friend Don Stott, who was with him, each won a DSO.
He stayed on in Greece long enough after this coup to be thoroughly
sickened by the political infighting among the Greek resisters; he
observed the duplicity of the Communists among them, but was in no
strong position to check it. He continued to lead from the front, as
he had been brought up to do. He damaged the main railway line yet
again — though this time only for a week — and was delighted when
ordered to withdraw by caïque.
At the end of the war he served as head of counter-intelligence in
Germany north of the Kiel Canal, finding and arresting members of the
German hierarchy who were still at large. Having served from June 1945
as Services attaché in Beirut and Damascus, in 1947 he was promoted to
lieutenant-colonel.
Gordon-Creed then moved to Kenya, where he had a wine business, took
up fish farming and founded the Travellers Club in Nairobi. He moved
to Jamaica, but left in the early 1960s for South Africa, where he
worked for Firestone. In 1976 he moved to South Carolina, where he
became involved in the local community and re-established the local
hunt. He had a longstanding interest in fishing, shooting and polo.
In 1996 the New York publisher Sharing Memories put out his A Fool
Rushed In, in which he gave a light-hearted account of his war,
including several tales of mayhem, interspersed with adventures with
nubile young women in the intervals between combat.
He is survived by his fourth wife, two sons and two daughters.
Lieutenant-Colonel Geoffrey Gordon-Creed, DSO, MC, wartime SOE
officer, was born in Cape Town on January 29, 1920. He died in Camden,
South Carolina, on November 26, 2002, aged 82.