Download or read book The Shelburne Escape Line written by Réanne Hemingway-Douglass and published by Pen and Sword. This book was released on 2015-04-30 with total page 216 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An account of WWII rescues that “pays tribute to the audacity and heroism of the men and women of the French Resistance and Allied military personnel” (Warship World). The Shelburne was one of the later escape lines that operated within Nazi-occupied Europe. It was established at the end of 1943 by two agents who worked for MI-9, the London-based military intelligence agency responsible for providing assistance to Allied servicemen stranded behind enemy lines. Working with the French Resistance, these agents arranged for groups of Allied airmen to be taken from “safe houses” in Paris to Brittany, where a Royal Navy motor gunboat picked them up from a secluded beach and delivered them back to England. Eight audacious evacuation operations were conducted between January and August, 1944, without the Shelburne Line ever being infiltrated by the Gestapo. Aspects of the Shelburne story have been told previously in memoirs by several of the participants, including the late MP Airey Neave, who was an MI-9 operative. However, Hemingway-Douglass expands the story to include recollections of some of the local Breton people who were involved with the Line. The second half of the book comprises personal stories of airmen and other individuals who were affiliated with the Shelburne Line or were otherwise caught up in the war in France. A lifelong Francophile, Hemingway-Douglass took eight years to research and write the book. She describes it as a labor of love that pays tribute to the heroism and courage of “ordinary” people, while reinforcing the fact that war touches everybody. “Fascinating . . . A must read for military and espionage enthusiasts.” —The Bulletin (Military Historical Society)
Download or read book The Shelburne Escape Line written by Reanne Hemingway-Douglass Hemingway-Douglass and published by Pen and Sword. This book was released on 2015-04-30 with total page 226 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Six decades after the end of World War II, new stories about the conflict continue to emerge. One of these is the subject of this book. Written by an American, Ranne Hemingway-Douglass, and published in the UK by Pen & Sword, it has all the elements of a classic covert adventure tale. ??As the book explains, the Shelburne was one of the later escape lines that operated within Nazi-occupied Europe. It was established at the end of 1943 by two agents who worked for MI-9, the London-based military intelligence agency responsible for providing assistance to Allied servicemen stranded behind enemy lines. Working with the French Resistance, these agents arranged for groups of Allied airmen to be taken from "safe houses" in Paris to Brittany, where a Royal Navy motor gunboat picked them up from a secluded beach and delivered them back to England. Eight audacious evacuation operations were conducted between January and August, 1944, without the Shelburne Line ever being infiltrated by the Gestapo.??Aspects of the Shelburne story have been told previously in memoirs by several of the participants, including the late MP Airey Neave, who was an MI-9 operative. However, Hemingway-Douglass expands the story to include recollections of some of the local Breton people who were involved with the Line. The second half of the book comprises personal stories of airmen and other individuals who were affiliated with the Shelburne Line or were otherwise caught up in the war in France. ??A lifelong Francophile, Hemingway-Douglass took eight years to research and write the book. She describes it as a Òlabor of love that pays tribute to the heroism and courage of 'ordinary' people, while reinforcing the fact that war touches everybody.Ó
Download or read book The Shelburne Escape Line written by Réanne Hemingway-Douglass and published by . This book was released on 2014-01-15 with total page 197 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The only Underground escape line that successfully evaded infiltration by the Gestapo was the Shelburne Line. Allied airmen, rescued after being shot down, were taken to Paris by Resistance members where - after intense interrogation - they received new names, identity cards, clothing, training, and special passes for the forbidden coastal zone in Brittany. They were hidden in "safe house" attics of loyal local farmers, waiting until a moonless night for evacuation to England via the Royal Navy's high-speed Motor Gun Boat 503"--Back cover.
Download or read book Operation Shelburne written by Reanne Hemingway-Douglass and published by . This book was released on 2014-01-15 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Accounts of the most successful rescue line by the French Resistance that was never infiltrated by the Nazis. Interviews of still-living aviators and their rescuers.
Download or read book Air Forces Escape Evasion Society written by Air Forces Escape and Evasion Society and published by Turner Publishing Company. This book was released on 1992 with total page 132 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A history of the brave American men who flew and were shot down in Europe during World War II, but were able to escape imprisonment due to the efforts of those who aided them. A source of information on the European underground resistance groups of World War II. The book contains rare photographs, maps, and war documents.
Download or read book MI9 written by Helen Fry and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2020-10-27 with total page 365 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A thrilling history of MI9—the WWII organization that engineered the escape of Allied forces from behind enemy lines When Allied fighters were trapped behind enemy lines, one branch of military intelligence helped them escape: MI9. The organization set up clandestine routes that zig-zagged across Nazi-occupied Europe, enabling soldiers and airmen to make their way home. Secret agents and resistance fighters risked their lives and those of their families to hide the men. Drawing on declassified files and eye-witness testimonies from across Europe and the United States, Helen Fry provides a significant reassessment of MI9’s wartime role. Central to its success were figures such as Airey Neave, Jimmy Langley, Sam Derry, and Mary Lindell—one of only a few women parachuted into enemy territory for MI9. This astonishing account combines escape and evasion tales with the previously untold stories behind the establishment of MI9—and reveals how the organization saved thousands of lives.
Download or read book A Dangerous Enterprise written by Tim Spicer and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2021-09-07 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Between 1942 and 1944 a very small, very secret, very successful clandestine unit of the Royal Navy, operated between Dartmouth in Devon, and the Brittany Coast in France. It was a crossing of about 100 miles, every yard of it dangerous. The unit was called the 15th Motor Gunboat Flotilla- crewed by 125 officers and men, it became the most highly decorated Royal Naval unit of the Second World War. The 15th MGBF was an extraordinary group of men thrown together in the most secret of adventures. Very few were regular Royal Naval officers- instead the unit was made up of mostly Royal Naval Volunteer Officers and 'duration only' sailors. Their home was a converted paddle steamer and luxury yacht, but their work could not have been more serious. Their mission was to ferry agents of SIS and SOE to pinpoint landing sites on the Brittany coast in Occupied France. Once they had landed their agents, together with stores for the Resistance, they picked up evaders, escaped POWs who had had the good fortune to be collected by escape lines run by M19, as well as returning SIS and SOE agents. It is a story that is inextricably entwined with that of the many agents they were responsible for - Pierre Hentic, Yves Le Tac, Virginia Hall, Albert Hue, Jeannie Rousseau, Suzanne Warengham, Fran ois Mitterrand and Mathilde Carre, as well as many others. Without the Flotilla, such intelligence gathering networks as Jade Fitzroy and Alliance would never have developed, and SOE's VAR Line and MI9's Shelburne Escape Line would never have been realised. Drawing on a huge amount of research on both sides of the Channel, including private archives of many of the families involved, A Dangerous Enterprise brings the story of this most clandestine of operations brilliantly to life.
Download or read book The Tartan Pimpernel written by Donald C Caskie and published by Hassell Street Press. This book was released on 2021-09-09 with total page 292 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. To ensure a quality reading experience, this work has been proofread and republished using a format that seamlessly blends the original graphical elements with text in an easy-to-read typeface. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.
Download or read book Saturday at M I 9 written by Airey Neave and published by Pen and Sword. This book was released on 2010-04-30 with total page 444 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The author of Flames of Calais details life in the top-secret department of Britain’s War Office during World War II in this military memoir. Airey Neave, who in the last two years of the war was the chief organizer at M.I.9, gives his inside story of the underground escape lines in occupied North-West Europe, which returned over 4,000 Allied servicemen to Britain during the Second World War. He describes how the escape lines began in the first dark days of German occupation and how, until the end of the war, thousands of ordinary men and women made their own contribution to the Allied victory by hiding and feeding men and guiding them to safety. Neave was the first British POW to make a “home run” from Colditz Castle. On his return, he joined M.I.9 adopting the code name “Saturday.” He also served with the Nuremburg War Crimes Tribunal. Tragically Airey Neave’s life was cut short by the IRA who assassinated him in 1979 when he was one of Margaret Thatcher’s closest political allies. Praise for Saturday at M.I.9 “There isn’t a page in the book which isn’t exciting in incident, wise in judgment, and absorbing through its human involvement.” —The Times Literary Supplement (UK)
Download or read book Secret Flotillas written by Brooks Richards and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2004-08-02 with total page 412 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With the fall of France, almost the entire coastline of Western Europe was in German hands. Clandestine sea transport operations provided lines of vital intelligence for wartime Britain. These 'secret flotillas' landed and picked up agents in and from France, and ferried Allied evaders and escapees. This activity was crucial to the SIS (Secret Intelligence Service) and the SOE (Special Operations Executive). This authoritative publication by the official historian, the late Sir Brooks Richards, vividly describes and analyses the clandestine naval operations that took place during World War Two.
Download or read book Trouble written by Larry Smith and published by Page Publishing Inc. This book was released on 2018-03-06 with total page 207 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A TRUE story about a miraculous journey filled with antics of young men in the USAAF as well as many deadly encounters and near misses. The B-24 Liberator nicknamed Trouble was one of five bombers that were shot down over NAZI-occupied France on January 7, 1944. Sergeant Robert Sweatt, a waist gunner, was wounded in several places, including a nick to his jugular vein, but survived the initial attack AND the plane's explosion in midair, which knocked him unconscious. Bob regained his senses as he fell and was able to open his parachute. There are many more details of this story that are almost unbelievable. Read and enjoy. Sergeant Robert Sweatt explains his thoughts as he wakes while falling. "No matter how much I try, I don't believe that I will be able to accurately convey my feelings when I regained consciousness. In fact, at first I didn't believe that I WAS conscious. My first thought was ... so this is what it feels like to be dead. It was very peaceful and I don't think I have ever been calmer in my life. I was comfortable, not too hot, not too cold, no pain, it was very quiet. I was slowly assessing myself. All in all, I was happy with most of my condition ... except that I couldn't see. I blinked my eyes ... yes, they moved, I could feel them move but it was still dark. Wait a minute! MY EYELIDS MOVED? That isn't supposed to happen if I'm dead." Please click HERE to view a video trailer for "Trouble"
Download or read book The Freedom Line written by Peter Eisner and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2005-05-31 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Compared to Casablanca by the Washington Post, this a page–turning story of a group of resistance workers who secreted downed Allied fighter pilots through France and into safety in Spain during World War II. As war raged against Hitler's Germany, an increasing number of Allied fliers were shot down on missions against Nazi targets in occupied Europe. Many fliers parachuted safely behind enemy lines only to find themselves stranded and hunted down by the Gestapo. The Freedom Line traces the thrilling and true story of Robert Grimes, a 20–year–old American B–17 pilot whose plane was shot down over Belgium on Oct. 20, 1943. Wounded, disoriented, and scared, he was rescued by operatives of the Comet Line, a group of tenacious young women and men from Belgium, France, and Spain who joined forces to rescue the Allied aircrews and take them to safety. And on Christmas Eve 1943, he and a group of fellow Americans faced unexpected sudden danger and tragedy on the border between France and Spain. The road to safety was a treacherous journey by train, by bicycle, and on foot that stretched hundreds of miles across occupied France to the Pyrenees Mountains at the Spanish border. Armed with guile and spirit, the selfless civilian fighters of the Comet Line had risked their lives to create this underground railroad, and by this time in the war, they had saved hundreds of Americans, British, Australians, and other Allied airmen. Based on interviews with the survivors and in–depth archival research, The Freedom Line is the story of a group of friends who chose to act on their own out of a deep respect for liberty and human dignity. Theirs was a courage that presumed to take on a fearfully powerful foe with few defences.
Download or read book Lindell s List written by Peter Hore and published by The History Press. This book was released on 2016-09-05 with total page 345 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Already a decorated heroine of the First World War, British-born Mary Lindell, Comtesse de Milleville, was one of the most colourful and courageous agents of the Second World War, yet her story has almost been forgotten. Evoking the spirit of Edith Cavell, and taking the German occupation of Paris in 1940 as a personal affront, she led an escape line for patriotic Frenchmen and British soldiers. After imprisonment, escape to England, a secret return to France and another arrest, she began to witness the horrors of German-run prisons and concentration camps. In April 1945, a score of British and American women emerged from the Women's Hell – Ravensbrück concentration camp – who had been kept alive by the willpower and the strength of one woman, Mary Lindell. She combined a passion for adventure with blunt speech and persistently displayed the greatest personal bravery in the face of great adversity. To counter German claims that they had no British or American prisoners, Mary smuggled out a plea for rescue and produced her list from her pinafore pocket, compiled in secret from the camp records. This vital list contained the names of captured women, many of whom were agents of British Military Intelligence, the Special Operations Executive or the French Resistance. Poignantly supported by first-hand testimony, Lindell's List tells the moving story of Mary Lindell's heroic leadership and the endurance of a group of women who defied the Nazis in the Second World War.
Download or read book Secret Flotillas Clandestine sea operations to Brittany 1940 1944 written by Brooks Richards and published by Psychology Press. This book was released on 2004 with total page 424 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Focusing upon Allied clandestine operations by sea to Brittany from 1940 to 1944 this second edition effectively splits the original book on 'Secret Flotillas' into two volumes. Had the book remained as one volume it would have become unwieldy with the weight of new information that has come to light in the interim. Previous ed.: published as 1 vol.
Download or read book Silent Heroes written by Sherri Greene Ottis and published by University Press of Kentucky. This book was released on 2021-12-14 with total page 331 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book Canada from Afar written by David Twiston-Davies and published by Dundurn. This book was released on 1996-07-25 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Canada From Afar is the fruit of the remarkable flowering of obituary writing in the London Daily Telegraph during the past ten years. These lively portraits of Canadians are informed, witty, sometimes quirky, occasionally iconoclastic.They include royal courtiers, politicians, businessmen, soldiers, sailors, airmen, scientists, explorers, novelists, artists, and even journalists. Among the prominent Canadians viewed from afar are persons such as Margaret Laurence, Joey Smallwood, K.C. Irving, Raymond Burr and A.J. Casson.
Download or read book MI9 written by Helen Fry and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2020-09-04 with total page 365 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A thrilling history of MI9—the WWII organization that engineered the escape of Allied forces from behind enemy lines When Allied fighters were trapped behind enemy lines, one branch of military intelligence helped them escape: MI9. The organization set up clandestine routes that zig-zagged across Nazi-occupied Europe, enabling soldiers and airmen to make their way home. Secret agents and resistance fighters risked their lives and those of their families to hide the men. Drawing on declassified files and eye-witness testimonies from across Europe and the United States, Helen Fry provides a significant reassessment of MI9’s wartime role. Central to its success were figures such as Airey Neave, Jimmy Langley, Sam Derry, and Mary Lindell—one of only a few women parachuted into enemy territory for MI9. This astonishing account combines escape and evasion tales with the previously untold stories behind the establishment of MI9—and reveals how the organization saved thousands of lives.
