Front page of Crete News

Not long after his arrival in Crete, Second Lieutenant Geoffrey Cox, a successful journalist, was ordered to report to Creforce’s commander, Major-General Bernard Freyberg. Freyberg wanted Cox to write a paper to boost morale among the troops and gave him five days to produce it. The first issue of Cox’s ill-fated Crete News paper was published on 16 May 1941. Copies of the fourth and final issue, published on 24 May, were retrieved just moments before a bomb scored a direct hit on the presses at the printer’s shop in Canea.

• Read Geoffrey Cox’s biography here