John Devitt Stringfellow Pendlebury (12 October 1904 – 22 May 1941) was a British archaeologist who worked for British intelligence during World War II. He was captured and summarily executed by German troops during the Battle of Crete. Early life John Pendlebury was born in London, the eldest son of Herbert Stringfellow Pendlebury, a London surgeon, and Lilian Dorothea ( Devitt), a daughter of Sir Thomas Lane Devitt, 1st Baronet, part owner of Devitt and Moore, a shipping company. At the age of about two, he lost an eye while in the care of a friend of his parents. Conflicting reports of the accident were given. He used a glass eye, which, it has been said by people who knew him, was generally mistaken for a real one. Throughout his life, he remained determined to out-perform persons with two eyes. As a child, he was taken to see Wallis Budge at the British Museum. During the conversation, he apparently resolved to become an Egyptian archaeologist. Budge told him to study Classics before making up his mind. His mother died when he was 17, leaving him a legacy from his grandfather that made him financially independent. His father remarried but had no further children. Pendlebury got along well with his stepmother, Mabel Webb Pendlebury, and her son, Robin. He remained the centre of his father's affections, whom he called "daddy" in letters. He was educated at Winchester (1918-1923), before winning scholarships at Pembroke College, Cambridge. At the University of Cambridge he was awarded a Second in Part I and a First in Part II of the Classical Tripos, "with distinction in archaeology". He also shone as a sportsman, with an athletics blue and competing internationally as a high jumper. He was painted by Sir William Nicholson as "A Cambridge Blue, John D. S. Pendlebury". The archaeologist During the Easter holidays of 1923, Pendlebury and a master from Winchester had travelled to Greece, Pendlebury for the first time; visiting the excavations at Mycenae, they conversed with Alan Wace, then Director of the British School at Athens. Wace remembered him as a boy who wished "to see things for himself". The visit solidified his determination to become an archaeologist. Student at the British School On leaving university in 1927 Pendlebury won the Cambridge University Studentship to the British School at Athens. Unable to decide between Egyptian and Greek archaeology, he decided to do