American Airman in the Belgian Resistance

American Airman in the Belgian Resistance PDF Author: Jerome W. Sheridan
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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American Airman in the Belgian Resistance

American Airman in the Belgian Resistance PDF Author: Jerome W. Sheridan
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description


American Airman in the Belgian Resistance

American Airman in the Belgian Resistance PDF Author: Jerome W. Sheridan
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 0786494972
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 259

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Book Description
In May of 1944, American airman Gerald E. Sorensen was shot down over Nazi occupied Belgium. The Belgian Resistance recovered Sorensen and sheltered him in the home of the Abeels family. Friendship between Sorensen and the Abeels blossomed and they came to consider each other as family. The Abeels were active in the Resistance and Sorensen ultimately volunteered to join his Belgian brother Roger Abeels in the Secret Army. Just moments before the British Army arrived to liberate the village of Marcq-lez-Enghien, Sorensen and Abeels were killed in combat with the Nazis, fighting side-by-side. This book tells Sorensen's story: his upbringing, education, marriage and military service; his evasion of capture and kinship with the Abeels; his experience in the Resistance; his final combat and his impact on those he left behind. But this book is more than a biography. It recounts the courageous struggle of the Belgians who risked everything to save Allied airmen and explains why Sorensen and Abeels are extraordinary symbols of the enduring values at the heart of today's transatlantic alliance.

Silent Heroes

Silent Heroes PDF Author: Sherri Greene Ottis
Publisher: University Press of Kentucky
ISBN: 0813147980
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 248

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Book Description
In the early years of World War II, it was an amazing feat for an Allied airman shot down over occupied Europe to make it back to England. By 1943, however, pilots and crewmembers, supplied with "escape kits," knew they had a 50 percent chance of evading capture and returning home. An estimated 12,000 French civilians helped make this possible. More than 5,000 airmen, many of them American, successfully traveled along escape lines organized much like those of the U.S. Underground Railroad, using secret codes and stopping in safe houses. If caught, they risked internment in a POW camp. But the French, Belgian, and Dutch civilians who aided them risked torture and even death. Sherri Ottis writes candidly about the pilots and crewmen who walked out of occupied Europe, as well as the British intelligence agency in charge of Escape and Evasion. But her main focus is on the helpers, those patriots who have been all but ignored in English-language books and journals. To research their stories, Ottis hiked the Pyrenees and interviewed many of the survivors. She tells of the extreme difficulty they had in avoiding Nazi infiltration by double agents; of their creativity in hiding evaders in their homes, sometimes in the midst of unexpected searches; of their generosity in sharing their meager food supplies during wartime; and of their unflagging spirit and courage in the face of a war fought on a very personal level.

Downed Allied Airmen and Evasion of Capture

Downed Allied Airmen and Evasion of Capture PDF Author: Herman Bodson
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 0786422165
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 225

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Book Description
This volume deals specifically with escape and evasion in the Netherlands, Belgium and France, an operation in which the author himself was directly involved, and discusses the role which these lines of escape played in the lives of airmen who were forced to bail out over enemy territory. He describes the ever-present risks the often nameless patriots faced, such as the danger of exposure and the threat of traitorous infiltration. Specific lines are traced geographically and their main participants discussed. Special emphasis is placed on the role of women in this resistance operation. Throughout the book, the reader benefits not only from the author's own personal recollections but also from his later on-location research. The final chapter concludes with statistical information directly related to this little known aspect of World War II. Appendices include lists of the airmen helped by the resistance movement.

The Quest for Freedom

The Quest for Freedom PDF Author: Yvonne de Ridder Files
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Belgium
Languages : en
Pages : 184

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Escape from Hitler's Europe

Escape from Hitler's Europe PDF Author: George Watt
Publisher: University Press of Kentucky
ISBN: 0813144124
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 192

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Book Description
"A hell of an adventure story."—Ring Lardner Jr. "A story of what is best in human beings triumphing over what is worst."—John Sayles November 1943: American flyer George Watt parachutes out of his burning warplane and lands in rural Nazi-occupied Belgium. Escape from Hitler's Europe is the incredible story of his getaway—how brave villagers spirited him to Brussels to connect with the Comet Line, a rescue arm of the Belgian resistance. This was a gravely dangerous mission, especially for a Jewish soldier who had fought against Franco in the Spanish Civil War. Watt recounts dodging the Gestapo, entering Paris via the underground, and finally, crossing the treacherous Pyrenees into Spain. In 1985, he returned to Belgium and discovered an astonishing postscript to his wartime experiences.

Escape from Hitler's Europe

Escape from Hitler's Europe PDF Author: George Watt
Publisher: University Press of Kentucky
ISBN: 9780813131498
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 256

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Resistance

Resistance PDF Author: Anita Shreve
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Americans
Languages : en
Pages : 222

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Book Description
In World War II, an American flier is shot down over Belgium. He is rescued by a farmer and his wife who are in the resistance. The wife cares for the airman's wounds and while the husband is away they have a doomed affair which ends in betrayal.

Air Force Combat Units of World War II

Air Force Combat Units of World War II PDF Author: Maurer Maurer
Publisher: DIANE Publishing
ISBN: 1428915850
Category : United States
Languages : en
Pages : 520

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The Blister Club

The Blister Club PDF Author: Michael Lee Lanning
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780811739740
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 368

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Book Description
Michael Lee Lanning tells the story of the courageous airmen who evaded capture and escaped to safety after being shot from the skies during World War II. Lanning covers the hows and whys of escape-and-evasion and aerial combat in the European theater, but also vividly captures the stories of the airmen who did the escaping and evading.