In early August 2016, I got an email with a photograph of a man looking like a bandit standing alongside a younger man waving a gun. 'Was this your father?' was the email's question. Over his left shoulder he has a white wool cloak, and a fag droops from his mouth. The younger man looks decidedly cheerful. Yes I wrote back 'That's dad in Crete during the Second World War'. In fact until January this year I had kept that cloak because my father had so valued it he had slept under it every night from the time of the war until he died in 1971. In January I was able to give the shepherd's cloak back to Crete, in the person of museum curator Costas Mamalakis who is the island's repository of all things connected with WWII. My email correspondent was Chris White, probably the world's expert on the history of the British behind the lines operations (SOE) in German-occupied Crete during WWII, and he was thrilled to have found the photograph of Arthur Reade and George Psychoundakis (author of The Cretan Runner). In September I am planning to go to Crete with Chris, and we will try and find the place where that photograph was taken. Chris already has a shrewd idea that the photograph was one of a series taken against a similar rocky backdrop.