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Author: Ernest Barker
Publisher: Casemate Publishers
ISBN: 1526779757
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 359
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Book Description
With his special forces training completed, Sergeant Roland Barker was allocated to Operation Arundel as its radio operator. Led by Major Bill Smallwood, he was parachuted into the Dolomites in 1944. The team’s brief was to cause havoc in the area around the Italian border and to infiltrate into Austria. During the mission, Major Smallwood was injured in a fall and was unable to move rapidly. Despite their best efforts, both Smallwood and Barker were subsequently captured by pursuing German troops who they were unable to outpace. Barker provides a vivid account of being ‘interrogated’ by the SS and Gestapo and despite the threats and the terrible conditions, the true nature of their mission was never revealed to the enemy. Having survived these experiences, he was incarcerated in Stalag Luft XVIII in Southern Austria. Ever defiant, Barker escaped by having himself admitted to the camp hospital and made his way into Hungary, from where, as this account of his wartime service reveals, he was eventually repatriated to the UK. After the war Barker opted to remain in the Army, at which point he took a commission. Promoted to Major, Barker became the Officer Commanding 22 SAS in Malaya. He was killed in a helicopter crash in Malaya in 1953, before he could see through his plan to have his memoir published.
Author: Ernest Barker
Publisher: Casemate Publishers
ISBN: 1526779757
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 359
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Book Description
With his special forces training completed, Sergeant Roland Barker was allocated to Operation Arundel as its radio operator. Led by Major Bill Smallwood, he was parachuted into the Dolomites in 1944. The team’s brief was to cause havoc in the area around the Italian border and to infiltrate into Austria. During the mission, Major Smallwood was injured in a fall and was unable to move rapidly. Despite their best efforts, both Smallwood and Barker were subsequently captured by pursuing German troops who they were unable to outpace. Barker provides a vivid account of being ‘interrogated’ by the SS and Gestapo and despite the threats and the terrible conditions, the true nature of their mission was never revealed to the enemy. Having survived these experiences, he was incarcerated in Stalag Luft XVIII in Southern Austria. Ever defiant, Barker escaped by having himself admitted to the camp hospital and made his way into Hungary, from where, as this account of his wartime service reveals, he was eventually repatriated to the UK. After the war Barker opted to remain in the Army, at which point he took a commission. Promoted to Major, Barker became the Officer Commanding 22 SAS in Malaya. He was killed in a helicopter crash in Malaya in 1953, before he could see through his plan to have his memoir published.
Author: Juliette Pattinson
Publisher: Manchester University Press
ISBN: 1526162237
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 268
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Book Description
Behind enemy lines is an examination of gender relations in wartime using the Special Operations Executive as a case study. Drawing on personal testimonies, in particular oral history and autobiography, as well as official records and film, it explores the extraordinary experiences of male and female agents who were recruited and trained by a British organisation and infiltrated into Nazi-Occupied France to encourage sabotage and subversion during the Second World War. With its original interpretation of a wealth of primary sources, it examines how these ordinary, law-abiding civilians were transformed into para-military secret agents, equipped with silent killing techniques and trained in unarmed combat. This fascinating, timely and engaging book is concerned with the ways in which the SOE veterans reconstruct their wartime experiences of recruitment, training, clandestine work and for some, their captivity, focusing specifically upon the significance of gender and their attempts to pass as French civilians. This examination of the agents of an officially-sponsored insurgent organisation makes a major contribution to British socio-cultural history, war studies and gender studies and will appeal to both the general reader, as well as to those in the academic community.
Author: Paul McCue
Publisher: Pen and Sword
ISBN: 1781594643
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 441
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Book Description
Amde Maingard was a young Mauritian studying in London in 1939 who volunteered for the British Army. After a frustrating spell in the infantry, Maingard joining the Special Operations Executive (SOE) and later had a successful career as a leader and peace keeper in France and later Mauritius. Maingard returned to Mauritius and was instrumental in developing the islands tourism and hotel industry. Founder and first Chairman of Air Mauritius, he became one of his countrys most successful postwar businessmen before illness cut short his ambition and he died in 1981 at the age of 62.
Author: Damien Lewis
Publisher: Citadel Press
ISBN: 0806540761
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 424
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Book Description
From award-winning war reporter Damien Lewis, the untold story of the heroic hellraisers who stormed a Nazi fortress—in one of the most daring raids of World War II . . . Winter, 1944. Allied forces have liberated most of Axis-occupied Italy—with one crucial exception: the Nazi headquarters north of the Gothic Line. Heavily guarded and surrounded by rugged terrain, the mountain fortress is nearly impenetrable. But British Prime Minister Winston Churchill is determined to drive a dagger into the “soft underbelly of Europe.” The Allied’s plan: drop two paratroopers into the mountains—and take the fortress by storm . . . The two brave men knew the risks involved, so they recruited an equally fearless team: Italian resistance fighters, escaped POWs, downed US airmen, even a bagpipe-playing Scotsman known as “The Mad Piper.” Some had little military training, but all were willing to fight to the death to defeat the Nazi enemy. Ultimately, the mission that began in broad daylight, in the enemy’s line of fire, would end one of the darkest chapters in history—through the courage and conviction of the unsung heroes who dared the impossible . . . “One of the most dangerous and effective attacks ever undertaken by this Regiment against the enemy.” —Lt Col Robert Walker‐Brown, MBE DSO, senior SAS commander “Action-packed . . . Battleground history buffs will be entertained.” —Publishers Weekly
Author: Richard Bath
Publisher: Random House
ISBN: 1907195386
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 243
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Book Description
With three Military Crosses, three Croix de guerre, a Légion d'honneur and a papal knighthood for his heroics during the Second World War, Sir Tommy Macpherson is the most decorated living soldier of the British Army. Yet for 65 years the Highlander's story has remained untold. Few know how, aged 21, he persuaded 23,000 SS soldiers of the feared Das Reich tank column to surrender, or how Tommy almost single-handedly stopped Tito's Yugoslavia annexing the whole of north-east Italy. Twice captured, he escaped both times, marching through hundreds of miles of German-held territory to get home. Still a schoolboy when war broke out, Tommy quickly matured into a legendary commando, and his remarkable story features a dizzyingly diverse cast of characters, including Winston Churchill, Field Marshal Montgomery and Charles de Gaulle.
Author: Marthe Cohn
Publisher: Crown
ISBN: 0307419886
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 314
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Book Description
"[T]he amazing story of a woman who lived through one of the worst times in human history, losing family members to the Nazis but surviving with her spirit and integrity intact.” —Publishers Weekly Marthe Cohn was a young Jewish woman living just across the German border in France when Hitler rose to power. Her family sheltered Jews fleeing the Nazis, including Jewish children sent away by their terrified parents. But soon her homeland was also under Nazi rule. As the Nazi occupation escalated, Marthe’s sister was arrested and sent to Auschwitz and the rest of her family was forced to flee to the south of France. Always a fighter, Marthe joined the French Army and became a member of the intelligence service of the French First Army. Marthe, using her perfect German accent and blond hair to pose as a young German nurse who was desperately trying to obtain word of a fictional fiancé, would slip behind enemy lines to retrieve inside information about Nazi troop movements. By traveling throughout the countryside and approaching troops sympathetic to her plight--risking death every time she did so--she learned where they were going next and was able to alert Allied commanders. When, at the age of eighty, Marthe Cohn was awarded France’s highest military honor, the Médaille Militaire, not even her children knew to what extent this modest woman had helped defeat the Nazi empire. At its heart, this remarkable memoir is the tale of an ordinary human being who, under extraordinary circumstances, became the hero her country needed her to be.
Author:
Publisher: Dundurn
ISBN: 1550025058
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 434
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Book Description
During World War II, training in the black arts of covert operation was vital preparation for the 'ungentlemanly warfare' waged by the Special Operations Executive (SOE) against Hitler's Germany and Tojo's Japan. Reproduced here is the most comprehensive training syllabus used at SOE's Special Training Schools (STSs) showing how agents learnt to wreak maximum destruction in occupied Europe and beyond. The training took place in country houses and other secluded locations ranging from the Highlands of Scotland to Singapore and Canada. An array of unconventional skills are covered - from burglary, close combat and silent killing through to propaganda, surveillance and disguise - giving insight into the workings of one of World War II's most intriguing organizations. Denis Rigden's introduction sets the documents in its historical context and includes stories of how these lessons were put into practice on actual wartime missions.
Author: Special Operations Executive
Publisher: HarperCollins UK
ISBN: 0008103623
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 202
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Book Description
The actual course given to all secret agents in SOE before working behind enemy lines. It includes everything you needed to know to go undercover – from documents, cover stories and how to live off the land to how to get through an interrogation.
Author: Sarah Rose
Publisher: Crown
ISBN: 0451495098
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 418
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Book Description
NATIONAL BESTSELLER • The dramatic, untold history of the heroic women recruited by Britain’s elite spy agency to help pave the way for Allied victory in World War II “Gripping. Spies, romance, Gestapo thugs, blown-up trains, courage, and treachery (lots of treachery)—and all of it true.”—Erik Larson, author of The Devil in the White City and Dead Wake In 1942, the Allies were losing, Germany seemed unstoppable, and every able man in England was on the front lines. To “set Europe ablaze,” in the words of Winston Churchill, the Special Operations Executive (SOE), whose spies were trained in everything from demolition to sharpshooting, was forced to do something unprecedented: recruit women. Thirty-nine answered the call, leaving their lives and families to become saboteurs in France. In D-Day Girls, Sarah Rose draws on recently declassified files, diaries, and oral histories to tell the thrilling story of three of these remarkable women. There’s Andrée Borrel, a scrappy and streetwise Parisian who blew up power lines with the Gestapo hot on her heels; Odette Sansom, an unhappily married suburban mother who saw the SOE as her ticket out of domestic life and into a meaningful adventure; and Lise de Baissac, a fiercely independent member of French colonial high society and the SOE’s unflappable “queen.” Together, they destroyed train lines, ambushed Nazis, plotted prison breaks, and gathered crucial intelligence—laying the groundwork for the D-Day invasion that proved to be the turning point in the war. Rigorously researched and written with razor-sharp wit, D-Day Girls is an inspiring story for our own moment of resistance: a reminder of what courage—and the energy of politically animated women—can accomplish when the stakes seem incalculably high. Praise for D-Day Girls “Rigorously researched . . . [a] thriller in the form of a non-fiction book.”—Refinery29 “Equal parts espionage-romance thriller and historical narrative, D-Day Girls traces the lives and secret activities of the 39 women who answered the call to infiltrate France. . . . While chronicling the James Bond-worthy missions and love affairs of these women, Rose vividly captures the broken landscape of war.”—The Washington Post “Gripping history . . . thoroughly researched and written as smoothly as a good thriller, this is a mesmerizing story of creativity, perseverance, and astonishing heroism.”—Publishers Weekly (starred review)
Author: Richard Duckett
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1786722720
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 391
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Book Description
In the mountains and jungles of occupied Burma during World War II, British special forces launched a series of secret operations, assisted by parts of the Burmese population. The men of the SOE, trained in sabotage and guerrilla warfare, worked in the jungle, deep behind enemy lines, to frustrate the puppet Burmese government of Ba Maw and continue the fight against Hirohito's Japan in a theatre starved of resources. Here, Richard Duckett uses newly declassified documents from the National Archives to reveal for the first time the extent of British special forces' involvement - from the 1941 operations until beyond Burma's independence from the British Empire in 1948. Duckett argues convincingly that `Operation Character' and `Operation Billet' - large SOE missions launched in support of General Slim's XIV Army offensive to liberate Burma - rank among the most militarily significant of the SOE's secret missions. Featuring a wealth of photographs and accompanying material never before published, including direct testimony recorded by veterans of the campaign and maps from the SOE files, The SOE in Burma tells a compelling story of courage and struggle in during World War II
