“THEY DEVOURED FANNY”
Colonel David Smiley lived a full ninety-two years. He passed away on Thursday 9 January, 2009. During the War he served behind enemy lines in Albania and for the remainder of his life he nurtured a typical English affection for a country, in the mountains of which he hid and camped for two years on end. I describe it as “typical English affection,” because in his volumes of memoirs he emerges as cold and calculated as only a representative of the British Lion can be. He witnessed a great deal in these mountains. He witnessed partisans and Germans, fighters of the Balli Kombetar, of the Legaliteti Organization and non-committed fighters; he saw courageous fighters and cowards, he saw battles, acts of heroism and criminals, he witnessed a little of everything, and he wrote memoirs mentioning what he remembered from his time in this distant land of the Albanians. But above all, there was one particular fleeting event which he remembered all his life, but which we, the people of these highlands, probably would not have even noticed.
Colonel Smiley writes in his memoirs that back in the autumn of 1943, he had a fine-looking and healthy mule which he rode through the mountains together with the Albanian fighters. He had named the mule Fanny, after Mrs. Fanny Hasluck, anthropologist, Albanologist and a great admirer of the Albanians, who had spoken to Smiley with so much passion about the customs of our people. The day came when Smiley had to leave Albania for some time to report back to his superiors at the Allied Staff in Greece and it was with tears in his eyes that he parted with Fanny, pleading with his Albanian friends to look after Fanny until he came back. Two months later Smiley returned. His first question was for Fanny.
“How is Fanny?” he asked. Imagine his reaction when the reply was shot back – “We ate Fanny.” For those of you who can’t imagine Smiley’s reaction, I assure you that in the next sixty years of his life, the first thing he recalled when asked about Albania was how the Albanians ate his mule. Ani Tare was the last to tell me this story. He had met Smiley two years ago.
Rest in Peace Colonel Smiley wherever you lie in far away Britain.
