CASSON, Stanley. Greece against the Axis. Washington D.C.: American Council of Public Affairs. [1943].
8vo. Original publisher's cloth, lettered and ornamented in black; pp. [iv], 150; only light bumping and spotting to binding, small indenture to front cover, internally very good.
First US edition, with a new preface by president Roosevelt (two years after the first British edition), presentation copy to one Patricia, signed and inscribed by the author and dated December 20, 1943.
Stanley Casson, an Grecist and archaeologist had been stationed during WWI on the Macedonian front and was posted to Greece as the chief intelligence officer of No. 27 Military Mission in 1940, recruiting Patrick Leigh Fermor, with whom he conversed exclusively in Greek. Casson was almost captured during the Battle of Crete in May 1941. As the SOE's liaison officer in Greece he was killed in an air crash on a mission to Brindisi in 1944. This rare book is part memoir of the author's experience in wartime Greece (as far as the Official Secrets Act would permit), the dire situation of the Greek people under occupation and the possible future of the country.
SKU: 2123941