Download or read book Messages in Handlebars written by Kendrick Kirk and published by . This book was released on 2011-11 with total page 322 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: During World War II, the French Resistance played a vital role in the Allied victory. Supported by Brittain's Special Operations Executive in London, Resistance networks were formed, led and equipped by SOE agents. The Auduc family provided essential support to the network formed around Le Mans, France, by an American OSS agent and a French SOE agent. The Auduc's oldest son, Jean-Jacques, became the youngest Resistance fighter to be awarded the Croix de Guerre. He was also awarded the U. S. Medal of Freedom and the French Legion of Honor for heroism as a 12 year old. Other members of this heroic family were similarly distinguished. The downing of two B-17's on July 4, 1943, brought the Auduc's face to face with the five surviving U. S. airmen and changed each other's lives forever as the airmen were first sheltered and then repatriated to England. The graves of those airmen who perished were resolutely guarded by French citizens. The Auduc family and their fellow resistants teach us how much people will sacrifice to gain freedom from an oppressor. American, British, Canadian and French worked in cloaked secrecy and harmony to rid the world of the greatest evil in recorded history. U. S. airman Sgt. David Butcher stayed with the Resistance for eight months, training its members in the use of the weapons parachuted to them. Other downed airmen were assisted by underground networks to escape to Spain and eventual repatriation to England. American Army Captain and OSS member Fred Floege twice parachuted into France on missions for the SOE. During his second mission, he organized and led a large group of resistants in the east of France who stymied German movements before and during the D-Day landings. This is a true, previously untold story of undaunted resistance to the Nazis. Alfred Auduc awes with his reckless determination to thwart the Nazis even while imprisoned in concentration camps along with his brother and other resistants from his region. His mother at age 66 harbors a radio transmitter and its operator while receiving munitions drops on her farm. The end of the War is not the end of the Auduc's story. Through them we learn how the Marshall plan helped to restart European's lives. But we also learn how the deep scars of their incarceration pain them throughout their lives. For many years, Jean-Jacques Auduc has belonged to a French association whose mission is to remember Allied sacrifices to liberate their country. Jean-Jacques relates his story to French school children; he proudly carries the American flag at commemorative events; and, he restores and maintains Allied monuments. Jean-Jacques chooses to use his meager funds in this way rather than on a TV set or a computer or the internet or other comforts. Perhaps the proceeds from this book may allow him some comforts in his eighties. My wife, Claire, who translated the several bios which are included in this book, Jean-Jacques, who so much wished to have his family's and friends' stories preserved, and I thank you for your interest. Kendrick Kirk This book has been endorsed by Sir Peter F. Ricketts, the British Ambassador to France.

Download or read book SAS with the Maquis written by Ian Wellsted and published by Frontline Books. This book was released on 2016-06-30 with total page 245 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: On the night of 5/6 June 1944, D-Day, a Lockheed Hudson dropped a small group of parachutists into the mountainous Morvan area of central France. Their mission was to operate as an advance reconnaissance party 400 miles behind the German lines and to make contact with the French Resistance.One of the team, later to become its commander, was Ian Wellsted, known by his nom-de-guerrre of Gremlin. During the next three months No.1 Troop of the 1st Special Air Service Regiment relayed vital information about enemy troop locations and movements, sabotaged bridges and supply lines, skirmished with German columns and harried the occupying forces as they retreated eastwards in the face of the Allied invasion.Camped deep in the woods of the Montsaughe region, the small force worked alongside the local groups of Maquis, forging strong links of mutual respect and friendship.Ian Wellsteds exciting first-hand account of his operations behind enemy lines is a tale of gallantry and daring, of comradeship and cooperation, full of humour and perceptive insight revealing one of the most significant chapters in the history of the SAS.

Download or read book SOE in France written by Michael Richard Daniell Foot and published by . This book was released on 1966 with total page 602 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

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 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 F Section SOE written by Marcel Ruby and published by Pen and Sword. This book was released on 1988-09-26 with total page 347 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 Commando Country written by Stuart Allan and published by National Museums of Scotland. This book was released on 2007 with total page 284 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This publication offers a unique Scottish perspective on a popular subject written by the curator of the National War Museum of Scotland.

Download or read book Shadow Warriors of World War II written by Gordon Thomas and published by Chicago Review Press. This book was released on 2017-01-01 with total page 201 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In a dramatically different tale of espionage and conspiracy in World War II, Shadow Warriors of World War II unveils the history of the courageous women who volunteered to work behind enemy lines. Sent into Nazi-occupied Europe by the United States' Office of Strategic Services (OSS) and Britain's Special Operations Executive (SOE), these women helped establish a web of resistance groups across the continent. Their heroism, initiative, and resourcefulness contributed to the Allied breakout of the Normandy beachheads and even infiltrated Nazi Germany at the height of the war, into the very heart of Hitler's citadel—Berlin. Young and daring, the female agents accepted that they could be captured, tortured, or killed, but others were always readied to take their place. Women of enormous cunning and strength of will, the Shadow Warriors' stories have remained largely untold until now.

Download or read book The Jedburghs written by Will Irwin and published by Hachette UK. This book was released on 2009-04-29 with total page 375 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The story of the Special Forces in World War II has never fully been told before. Information about them began to be declassified only in the 1980s. Known as the Jedburghs, these Special Forces were selected from members of the British, American, and Free French armies to be dropped in teams of three deep behind German lines. There, in preparation for D-Day, they carried out what we now know as unconventional warfare: supporting the French Resistance in guerrilla attacks, supply-route disruption, and the harassment and obstruction of German reinforcements. Always, they operated against extraordinary odds. They had to be prepared to survive pitched battles with German troops and Gestapo manhunts for weeks and months while awaiting the arrival of Allied ground forces. They were, in short, heroes.The Jedburghs finally tells their story and offers a new perspective on D-Day itself. Will Irwin has selected seven of the Jedburgh teams and told their stories as gripping personal narratives. He has gathered archival documents, diaries and correspondence, and interviewed Jed veterans and family members in order to present this portrait of their crucial role - a role recognized by Churchill and Eisenhower - in the struggle to liberate Europe in 1944-45. This is narrative history at its most compelling; a vivid drama of the battle for France from deep behind enemy lines.

Download or read book A House for Spies written by Edward Wake-Walker and published by Robert Hale. This book was released on 2011 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is the story of the bizarre role played by Barbara Bertram in the Second World War. From 1941 to 1944 she provided board and lodging in her Sussex farmhouse to men and women of the French Resistance who, acting as intelligence agents for the Secret Intelligence Service (MI6), were flown by moonlight in and out of Tangmere aerodrome by RAF Lysander pilots. Barbara's husband was a conducting officer for the SIS and his house, Bignor Manor, near Petworth, was deemed to be the perfect undercover stopover for agents waiting for their flight into occupied France. As well as Barbara's experiences, which included sewing suicide pills into the cuffs of agents who requested it, the book follows the mixed fortunes of the Lysander pilots and the agents themselves, several of whom were captured, tortured and killed in their efforts to get German military intelligence back to the UK.

Download or read book Special Operations Executive written by Mark Seaman and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2006 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A uniquely accurate and reliable assessment of the Special Operations Executive (SOE). This new volume brings together leading authors to examine the organization from a range of key angles.

Download or read book The Secret War written by Max Hastings and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2016-05-10 with total page 447 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Monumental." --New York Times Book Review NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER From one of the foremost historians of the period and the acclaimed author of Inferno and Catastrophe: 1914, The Secret War is a sweeping examination of one of the most important yet underexplored aspects of World War II—intelligence—showing how espionage successes and failures by the United States, Britain, Russia, Germany, and Japan influenced the course of the war and its final outcome. Spies, codes, and guerrillas played unprecedentedly critical roles in the Second World War, exploited by every nation in the struggle to gain secret knowledge of its foes, and to sow havoc behind the fronts. In The Secret War, Max Hastings presents a worldwide cast of characters and some extraordinary sagas of intelligence and resistance, to create a new perspective on the greatest conflict in history.

Download or read book Fire from the Forest written by Roger Ford and published by Weidenfeld & Nicolson. This book was released on 2004 with total page 308 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is a comprehensive account of the behind-the-lines operations that preceded and supported the D-Day landings and the breakout from Normandy. The French resistance played a key role in undermining German resistance during the liberation of France in 1944. They destroyed vital railways, ambushed convoys and tied down large numbers of German troops in security patrols. Many attacks were spearheaded by British and American special forces, the SAS and US 'Jedburgh teams' (ancestors of the 'Green Berets'). German reaction to their assaults was brutal in the extreme. SS units were unleashed on civilian populations and the Vichy French milice made this a French civil war. Both sides executed prisoners as a matter of routine. It is a sanguinary tale that exposes the limits as well as the potential of elite military units and civilian resistance movements.

Download or read book The Sussex Plan written by Dominique Soulier and published by Resistance (Histoire & Collect. This book was released on 2013-11-19 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Sussex Plan was a French-American-British tripartite mission desired by the staff of General Eisenhower in anticipation of the Normandy landings. Among them, 120 French men and women were recruited to carry out a bold plan to parachute in early February 1944, teams of two plainclothes officers (an observer and a radio) behind enemy lines to complete the liberation of France. Their mission: infiltrate and collect information around the clock about the state of affairs of the German order of battle.

Download or read book SS Hunter Battalions written by Perry Biddiscombe and published by The History Press. This book was released on 2006-11-15 with total page 510 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Conventional wisdom suggests that the Allies and the Soviets were the only side in the Second World War to support resistance movements. This book shows that Hitler had his own version of the SOE and the OSS, and that the Nazis too encouraged underground resistance against their enemies, especially as Europe was liberated in 1944-5.

Download or read book Beaulieu written by Cyril Cunningham and published by Pen and Sword. This book was released on 2005-07-19 with total page 191 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is the outcome of a difficult investigation, and a very remarkable story it is too. It was at Beaulieu that a large number of agents from Britain and the Nazi-occupied countries of Europe were trained in the delicate arts of secret inks, coding, clandestine communications and black propoganda, along with such nefarious skills as silent killing, housebreaking, safe-blowing, forgery, unattributable sabotage and survival techniques. And they were taught by some extraordinary characters including former spies, a professional burglar and the infamous Kim Philby, who played a significant role in the design of the curriculum.

Download or read book A Life in Secrets written by Sarah Helm and published by Anchor. This book was released on 2008-12-10 with total page 546 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From an award-winning journalist comes this real-life cloak-and-dagger tale of Vera Atkins, one of Britain’s premiere secret agents during World War II. As the head of the French Section of the British Special Operations Executive, Vera Atkins recruited, trained, and mentored special operatives whose job was to organize and arm the resistance in Nazi-occupied France. After the war, Atkins courageously committed herself to a dangerous search for twelve of her most cherished women spies who had gone missing in action. Drawing on previously unavailable sources, Sarah Helm chronicles Atkins’s extraordinary life and her singular journey through the chaos of post-war Europe. Brimming with intrigue, heroics, honor, and the horrors of war, A Life in Secrets is the story of a grand, elusive woman and a tour de force of investigative journalism.