Book description
Compiled from interviews, diaries, letters and contemporaneous
first-person accounts - many unpublished until now - this oral history
follows the adventures of the courageous men and women who volunteered
for service with Britain's Special Operations Executive and the United
States' Office of Strategic Services. They parachuted behind enemy
lines, often alone, with orders to cause mayhem. Arrest almost always
resulted in torture and imprisonment; sometimes in execution. Trained in
the black arts of warfare - sabotage, subversion, espionage, guerrilla
tactics and undermining enemy morale by the distribution of insidious
propaganda - theirs' was a war fought in the shadows. Their activities
extended to every theatre of operations: in occupied France, equipped
with false identities, they played a deadly game of cat and mouse with
the Gestapo; in the Balkans they discovered that the fiery politics of
the region were as dangerous as the enemy; in the Burmese jungle, in
some of the worst combat conditions of the war, they led native
marauders in surprise attacks against the Japanese. From Britain they
were supported by a team of back-room boffins who produced expertly
forged documents and dreamed up ingenious devices like exploding rats
and invisible ink. The special agents of World War II really were a
breed apart. This is their extraordinary story, in their own words.
Born in East London, Russell Miller began his career in journalism at
the age of 16. While under contract to the Sunday Times magazine, he won
four press awards and was voted Writer of the Year by the Society of
British Magazine Editors. He is the author of eleven previous books,
including the widely acclaimed Nothing Less than Victory and, most
recently, the acclaimed history of the legendary Magnum photo agency
Magnum: Fifty Years at the Frontline of History.
