HARLING• 233Two further attempts were abandoned because of bad weather and
eventually, some six weeks later, the last contingent landed in the
Karpenisi Valley, miles away from the rest of the group and on the
outskirts on a town under Italian occupation. The garrison opened
fire and the SOE parachutists had fled, abandoning their containers
to the Italians.
Despite the fact that plans of their target had been packed in one
of the containers and must have fallen into enemy hands, the opera-
tion went ahead, but without the expected support of dozens of local
guerrillas, who simply failed to materialize. Clearlyprometheus ii
had exaggerated the number of pro-Allied guerrillas in the area, and
SOE Cairo had been unable to double-check his information. Once
Myers assembled his party and established contact with a band of
local guerrillas known asandartes, he led an assault on the Italian
garrison guarding the bridge and engaged the enemy for an hour
while Tom Barnes, ‘‘a delightfully bluff and direct New Zealander,’’
and John Cook laid their demolition charges. When the raiders even-
tually withdrew, having suffered only four wounded, several of the
bridge’s steel spans had been dropped into the gorge 40 feet below.
The operation had taken place about a month late, long after the
big armored push at El Alamein but, saysMonty Woodhouse, ‘‘It
showed for the first time in occupied Europe that guerrillas, with the
support of allied officers, could carry out a major tactical operation
coordinated with allied strategic plans.’’
Despite the apparent belated success ofharling, which cut the
vital rail link to Germany for a crucial six weeks, the rest of the oper-
ation was not to go well. No submarine turned up to collect Myers at
the appointed time, and Cairo sent a signal explaining that, owing to
the loss of another submarine in the vicinity, it was too risky to col-
lect his team—which, because of the appearance of a pair of escaped
Cypriot PoWs, had grown to more than a dozen. While this did not
matter to Woodhouse and his two wireless operators, Sergeants Len
Wilmott and Doug Phillips, who had always intended to remain in
Greece as liaison officers with the local guerrillas, Myers had not
bargained for this extended undertaking. Nor, for that matter, had he
been briefed for it. Even from what Myers had witnessed during the
three months he had spent involuntarily in the mountains, ‘‘it was
apparent that the authorities in the Middle East knew little about the