Download or read book Agent Paterson SOE written by Ernest van Maurik and published by Pen and Sword. This book was released on 2018-05-30 with total page 316 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ernest Van Maurik, known to all simply as Van, joined the illustrious Artists Rifles regiment in the Territorial Army in 1936, but when war broke out he was commissioned into the Wiltshire Regiment. In the summer of 1940 the regiment was posted at Folkestone to defend the South Coast in the event of an invasion, during which time he undertook a course at Hythe Small Arms School and found himself involved with the SOE, the Special Operations Executive.This led to him to Scotland, first to the Commando Training School at Lochailort and then to Arisaig, where he became responsible for helping organise resistance to the Nazi regime in occupied countries. This involved the training of prospective agents in small arms, demolition and other special forces activities. At this time, he helped train a number of Czech soldiers who went on to participate in Operation Anthropoid, the assassination of SS-Obergruppenfhrer Reinhard Heydrich in Prague.Van was then transferred to the SOEs headquarters in Baker Street, London. There he was to work for notable figures such as Maurice Buckmaster and General Colin Gubbins. He also got to know a number of individuals who were to become famous agents, people such as Peter Churchill, Odette and Yeo-Thomas (The White Rabbit). His main work was to get agents both in and out of Occupied France but then it was his turn to go into the field.Van was initially sent to Malta to help with the dropping of agents into Yugoslavia. His next mission was to Switzerland via Occupied France to assist SOE agents in France and also deal with couriers from F Section SOE who used Switzerland as a channel for communicating with London.After many adventures, Van reached Switzerland where he carried out his task until the end of the war in Europe. He then was involved in assisting the investigation into the fate of the many SOE agents who had been captured by the Germans and were still missing.
Download or read book Undercover Agent written by Mark Seaman and published by Kings Road Publishing. This book was released on 2018-11-01 with total page 330 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Tony Brooks was unique. He was barely out of school when recruited in 1941 by the Special Operations Executive (SOE), the wartime secret service established by Churchill to 'set Europe ablaze'. After extensive training he was parachuted into France in July 1942 - being among the first (and youngest) British agents sent to support the nascent French Resistance. Brook's success was primarily due to his exceptional qualities as a secret agent, although he was aided by large and frequent slices of luck. Among much else, he survived brushes with a British traitor and a notorious double agent; the Gestapo's capture of his wireless operator and subsequent attempts to trap Brooks; brief incarceration in a Spanish concentration camp; injuries resulting from a parachute jump into France; and even capture and interrogation by the Gestapo - although his cover story held and he was released. In an age when we so often take our heroes from the worlds of sport, film, television, music, fashion, or just 'celebrity', it is perhaps salutary to be reminded of a young man who ended the war in command of a disparate force of some 10,000 armed resistance fighters, and decorated with two of this country's highest awards for gallantry, the DSO and MC. At the time, he was just twenty-three years old. This remarkable, detailed and intimate account of a clandestine agent's dangerous wartime career combines the historian's expert eye with the narrative colour of remembered events. As a study in courage, it has few, if any, equals.
Download or read book Agent Most Wanted written by Sonia Purnell and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2022-08-09 with total page 209 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A young readers adaptation of Sonia Purnell's New York Times bestselling book A Woman of No Importance, the story of Virginia Hall; the unassuming American spy who helped the allies win World War II. Virginia Hall was deemed "the most dangerous of all allied spies" by the Gestapo. Armed with her wits and her prosthetic leg, she was deployed behind enemy lines to inspire resistance in France, providing crucial support to fighting the Nazi occupation. In this largely untold story, Sonia Purnell uncovers the truth behind a Baltimore socialite who was essential to allied victory. Adapted for the elementary to middle school audience, Agent Most Wanted is equal parts an inspiring tale of feminism in a time when women weren't taken seriously, an epic spy story, and, of course, a retelling of winning one of the largest global conflicts in modern history.
Download or read book F Section SOE written by Marcel Ruby and published by Pen and Sword. This book was released on 1988-09-26 with total page 230 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The F-Section of the SOE was a department that stood for French Section, whose job it was to carry out Churchill's famous command to 'set Europe alight'. This is the story of F-Section.
Download or read book A Schoolmaster s War written by Jonathan Rée and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2020-03-03 with total page 251 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The wartime adventures of the legendary SOE agent Harry Rée, told in his own words A school teacher at the start of the war, Harry Rée renounced his former pacifism with the fall of France in 1940. He was deployed into a secret branch of the British army and parachuted into central France in April 1943. Harry showed a particular talent for winning the confidence of local resisters, and guided them in a series of dramatic sabotage operations, before getting into a hand-to-hand fight with an armed German officer, from which he was lucky to escape. This might seem like a romantic story of heroism and derring-do, but Harry Rée's own war writings, superbly edited and contextualized by his son, the philosopher Jonathan Rée, are far more nuanced, shot through with doubts, regrets, and grief.
Download or read book Target Corinth Canal written by Platon Alexiades and published by Pen and Sword. This book was released on 2015-04-30 with total page 299 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: During the Second World War the Corinth Canal assumed an importance disproportionate to its size. It was the focus of numerous special Allied operations to prevent oil from the Black Sea reaching Italy, to delay the invasion of Crete and severing the vital German supply lines to Rommel's Army in North Africa.??German airborne forces occupied the Canal to cut off the ANZAC retreat and Hitler needed the Canal kept open to maintain control of the Aegean Sea. Were this lost, he feared Turkey entering the War on the Allied side.??Target Corinth Canal unearths a treasure trove of facts on the little known operations by SOE and other special force units. Heroes such as Mike Cumberlege emerge from the pages of this splendid work of military history.
Download or read book SOE Heroines written by Bernard O'Connor and published by Amberley Publishing Limited. This book was released on 2018-03-15 with total page 700 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The amazing stories of 38 female spies who operated in occupied France and Vichy France, many told for the very first time.
Download or read book The Greatest Stories Never Told written by Laurence J. Yadon and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2021-03-01 with total page 211 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In The Greatest Stories Never Told: Covert Ops, attorney and author Larry Yadon has written some of the greatest tales about covert operations, which are military operations that conceal the identity of the sponsor of the operation. These are not twice- or thrice-told tales, but the ones you haven’t heard before. It is an unforgettable collection, and includes stories of legendary operations from early in the history of covert operations up through present-day Afghanistan and Iraq and elsewhere in the world.
Download or read book Inside S O E written by E. H. Cookridge and published by . This book was released on 1966 with total page 686 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Operation Suicide written by Robert Lyman and published by Quercus. This book was released on 2013-11-05 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: During the Second World War, it is hard to imagine a situation where the British High Command could think that one of the only ways they could attack Hitler was to send ten canoeists with limpet mines to paddle one hundred miles up the Gironde estuary, in the middle of winter, in an attempt to sink German blockade ships in Bordeaux harbor. Yet this is precisely what happened in 1942. The man who gave the go-ahead for the audacious commando raid--Lord Louis Mountbatten, head of Combined Operations--fully anticipated that all ten men would die in the attempt. Mountbatten wasn't far wrong--two ripped their collapsible canoes as they were manhandling them out of the submarine; two drowned when their canoes capsized entering the Gironde estuary; and a further six were captured by the Germans and later executed. By complete chance, the two canoeists who managed to escape--Major "Blondie" Hasler and Marine Bill Sparks--stumbled into the arms of the French resistance. Once in their care, Hasler and Sparks made their way across France and into Spain, crossing the Pyrenees in the company (though they did not know it) of a Gestapo agent intent on bringing down the resistance network. Operation Suicide is the first account of this enthralling raid for over fifty years. In utilizing primary source material, including detailed German records captured by the British in 1944 (which remained censored until 1976), Robert Lyman brings to life one of the most courageous and dramatic events to take place in the darkest days of the Second World War.
Download or read book She Landed By Moonlight written by Carole Seymour-Jones and published by Hodder & Stoughton. This book was released on 2013-07-04 with total page 451 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: On the night of the 22 September 1943 Pearl Witherington, a twenty-nine-year-old British secretary and agent of the Special Operations Executive (SOE), was parachuted from a Halifax bomber into Occupied France. Like Sebastian Faulks' heroine, Charlotte Gray, Pearl had a dual mission: to fight for her beloved, broken France and to find her lost love. Pearl's lover was a Parisian parfumier turned soldier, Henri Cornioley, who had been taken prisoner while serving in the French Logistics Corps and subsequently escaped from his German POW camp. Agent Pearl Witherington's wartime record is unique and heroic. As the only woman agent in the history of SOEs in France to have run a network, she became a fearless and legendary guerrilla leader organising, arming and training 3,800 Resistance fighters. Probably the greatest female organiser of armed maquisards in France, the woman whom her young troops called 'Ma Mère', Pearl lit the fires of Resistance in Central France so that Churchill's famous order to 'set Europe ablaze', which had brought SOE into being, finally came to pass. Pearl's story takes us from her harsh, impoverished childhood in Paris, to the lonely forests and farmhouses of the Loir-et-Cher where she would become a true 'warrior queen'. Shortly before Pearl's death in 2008, the Queen presented her with a CBE in Paris. While male agents and Special Force Jedburghs received the DSO or Military Cross, an ungrateful country had forgotten Pearl. She had been offered a civilian decoration in 1945 which she refused, saying 'There was nothing civil about what I did.' But what pleased her most was to receive her Parachute Wings, for which she had waited over 60 years. Two RAF officers travelled to her old people's home and she was finally able to pin the coveted wings on her lapel. Pearl died in February 2008 aged 93.
Download or read book Operation Colossus written by Lawrence Paterson and published by Greenhill Books. This book was released on 2020-06-24 with total page 278 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Lawrence Paterson’s groundbreaking new book is a detailed account of the now legendary Operation Colossus, the first British airborne raid of the Second World War, which took place in Basilicata, Italy on 10 February 1941. Britain was one of the last major powers of the Second World War to establish an airborne arm of service. Formed by a collection of free-thinking army and air force officers, the fledgling British paratrooper unit, known as the ‘SAS’, deployed trial and error in terms of tactics and equipment, costing the lives of several volunteers before an elite few were selected to make the first British parachute raid of the war. Alongside the paratroopers were two veterans of the First World War: an Italian SOE agent, formerly a banqueting manager in London hotels, and an RAF reserve officer who held the Military Cross for bravery. Collectively known as ‘X-Troop’, these men were parachuted by specially selected bomber crews into the heart of enemy territory, where they successfully destroyed their target, the Tragino Aqueduct, before becoming the object of an exhaustive manhunt by Italian troops and civilians. Captured, they were variously interrogated, imprisoned, and the Italian SOE agent placed on trial for treason and executed. Given the distances that had to be covered, the logistical complications and the lack of any precedent, the raid was a remarkable feat. Its success or failure depended on a group of men using methods and equipment thus far untried by the British Army. They were truly ‘guinea pigs’ for those that would follow in their footsteps. Often overlooked in British military history, Paterson brings this extraordinary episode to light, drawing on verbatim testimony and interrogating the truth of previous accounts. From the formation of the unit and the build up to its first deployment, through Operation Colossus and its aftermath, to its ongoing legacy today, this is the fascinating story of the modern day British Parachute Regiment.
Download or read book Voices of the Codebreakers written by Michael Paterson and published by Greenhill Books. This book was released on 2018-07-30 with total page 355 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Alongside the open conflict of World War II there were other, hidden wars - the wars of communication, in which success depended on a flow of concealed and closely guarded information.Smuggled written messages, secretly transmitted wireless signals, or months of eavesdropping on radio traffic meant operatives could discover in advance what the enemy intended to do. This information was passed on to those who commanded the armies, the fleets and the bomber formations, as well as to the other secret agents throughout the world who were desperately trying to infiltrate enemy lines. Vital information that turned the tide of battle in North African desert and on the Pacific Ocean proved to have been obtained by the time-consuming and unglamorous work of cryptanalysts who deciphered the enemy's coded messages, and coded those for the Allies.From the stuffy huts of Bletchley Park to the battles in the Mediterranean, the French and Dutch Resistance movements and the unkempt radio operatives in Burma, the rarely-seen, outstanding stories collected here reveal the true extent of the 'secret war'.The ongoing need for secrecy for decades after the war meant that the outstanding achievements of wartime cryptanalysts could not be properly recognised.With vivid first-hand accounts and illuminating historical research, VOICES OF THE CODEBREAKERS reveals and finally celebrates the extraordinary accomplishments of these ordinary men and women.
Download or read book A Woman of No Importance written by Sonia Purnell and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2020-03-24 with total page 385 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER Chosen as a BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR by NPR, the New York Public Library, Amazon, the Seattle Times, the Washington Independent Review of Books, PopSugar, the Minneapolis Star Tribune, BookBrowse, the Spectator, and the Times of London Winner of the Plutarch Award for Best Biography “Excellent…This book is as riveting as any thriller, and as hard to put down.” -- The New York Times Book Review "A compelling biography of a masterful spy, and a reminder of what can be done with a few brave people -- and a little resistance." - NPR "A meticiulous history that reads like a thriller." - Ben Macintyre A never-before-told story of Virginia Hall, the American spy who changed the course of World War II, from the author of Clementine. In 1942, the Gestapo sent out an urgent transmission: "She is the most dangerous of all Allied spies. We must find and destroy her." The target in their sights was Virginia Hall, a Baltimore socialite who talked her way into Special Operations Executive, the spy organization dubbed Winston Churchill's "Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare." She became the first Allied woman deployed behind enemy lines and--despite her prosthetic leg--helped to light the flame of the French Resistance, revolutionizing secret warfare as we know it. Virginia established vast spy networks throughout France, called weapons and explosives down from the skies, and became a linchpin for the Resistance. Even as her face covered wanted posters and a bounty was placed on her head, Virginia refused order after order to evacuate. She finally escaped through a death-defying hike over the Pyrenees into Spain, her cover blown. But she plunged back in, adamant that she had more lives to save, and led a victorious guerilla campaign, liberating swathes of France from the Nazis after D-Day. Based on new and extensive research, Sonia Purnell has for the first time uncovered the full secret life of Virginia Hall--an astounding and inspiring story of heroism, spycraft, resistance, and personal triumph over shocking adversity. A Woman of No Importance is the breathtaking story of how one woman's fierce persistence helped win the war.
Download or read book Cloak of Enemies written by Tom Keene and published by The History Press. This book was released on 2012-02-29 with total page 265 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: SOE was born from Churchill’s vision to set ‘Europe ablaze’. However, Tom Keene’s book reveals for the first time how close it came to never existing at all. Many saw SOE as a threat to the existence of MI5 and other intelligence agencies, and some in the armed forces refused to work with the new agency, fearing its broad remit and lack of experienced operatives. SOE, in turn, became ever more secretive, hiding details of their operations from anyone outside the agency. This backstabbing climate of rivalry, confusion and secrecy, not only nearly destroyed SOE, but also had tragic repercussions for the daring Commandos who took part in the legendary ‘Cockleshell Raid’.Cloak of Enemies exposes the secret war within Whitehall and its far-reaching consequences.
Download or read book Among the Italian Partisans written by Malcolm Edward Tudor and published by Fonthill Media. This book was released on 2017-03-13 with total page 255 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Here is the remarkable story of the Allied servicemen who took part in the guerrilla war against Nazis and Fascists in Second World War Italy. The partisans included Britons, Australians, Canadians, New Zealanders, South Africans, Americans, Russians, Poles and Yugoslavs. Most were escaped prisoners of war who fled their camps after the Italian armistice and surrender in September 1943. The British Special Operations Executive (SOE) and the American Office of Strategic Services (OSS) sent personnel into enemy territory to carry out sabotage and to support and encourage the partisans. Allied air forces provided the planes and crews to transport agents, deliver weapons and supplies, evacuate personnel, and drop propaganda leaflets. Among the Italian Partisans provides the uplifting story of the Allied contribution to the Italian Resistance, which became one of the greatest insurgent movements in Western Europe. This is a testimonial to the brave servicemen of many nations who cooperated in the armed struggle so that Italy would be free.
Download or read book SOE in France written by M.R.D. Foot and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2004-04-22 with total page 667 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: SOE in France was first published in 1966, followed by a second impression with amendments in 1968. Since these editions were published, other material on SOE has become available. It was, therefore, agreed in 2000 that Professor Foot should produce a revised version. In so doing, in addition to the material in the first edition, the author has had
