The Cretan Runner: His Story of the German Occupation (ISBN 0-7195-3475-5; John Murray, 1955 —
republished ISBN 0-1402-7322-0; Penguin Books, 1998) is a book written by George Psychoundakis

George Psychoundakis

George Psychoundakis was a Greek Resistance fighter on Crete during the Second World War. He was a shepherd, a war hero and an author. He served as dispatch runner between Petro Petrakas and Papadakis behind the German lines for the Cretan resistance Movement and later, from 1941 to 1945, for the...

that describes the resistance

Cretan resistance

The Cretan resistance was a resistance movement against Nazi Germany by the residents of the Greek island of Crete during World War II. Part of the larger Greek Resistance, it lasted from May 20, 1941, when the German Wehrmacht invaded the island in the Battle of Crete, until the fall of 1945 when...

 against the Nazi Germany

Nazi Germany

Nazi Germany , also known as the Third Reich , but officially called German Reich from 1933 to 1943 and Greater German Reich from 26 June 1943 onward, is the name commonly used to refer to the state of Germany from 1933 to 1945, when it was a totalitarian dictatorship ruled by...

 occupation of
Crete

Crete

Crete is the largest and most populous of the Greek islands, the fifth largest island in the Mediterranean Sea, and one of the thirteen administrative regions of Greece. It forms a significant part of the economy and cultural heritage of Greece while retaining its own local cultural traits...

. The book refers to the period following the German invasion

Battle of Crete

The Battle of Crete was a battle during World War II on the Greek island of Crete. It began on the morning of 20 May 1941, when Nazi Germany launched an airborne invasion of Crete under the code-name Unternehmen Merkur...

in 1941 to the liberation of the island. A young shepherd

Shepherd

A shepherd is a person who tends, feeds or guards flocks of sheep.- Origins :Shepherding is one of the oldest occupations, beginning some 6,000 years ago in Asia Minor. Sheep were kept for their milk, meat and especially their wool...

, Psychoundakis was one
of the most active Cretan participants in resistance operations, serving as a dispatch
runner carrying messages among resistance guerrilla groups. Psychoundakis' book,
which provides a rare indigenous point of view of that time, was translated and published
in English by Sir Patrick Leigh Fermor

Patrick Leigh Fermor

Sir Patrick "Paddy" Michael Leigh Fermor, DSO, OBE was a British author, scholar and soldier, who played a prominent role behind the lines in the Cretan resistance during World War II. He was widely regarded as "Britain's greatest living travel writer", with books including his classic A Time of...

, Psychoundakis' commander during the war.