Rick StroudRecensioni

Stroud talks about several agents in this book and therefore he takes the timeline approach to the story. Most, maybe all books of this type, ones that talk about several people who acted during the same period of time, take the same approach. But Stroud mostly devoted a paragraph at a time to each person, and there were several main actors plus several more auxilliary ones, and that constant jumping around from one to another made it a confusing read. You (or at least I) had to think twice about what was the backstory to the current protagonist each time they changed. For that reason and because I thought the writing was a little flat, I didn't rate it highly. But the stories themselves are very interesting and the people deserve to be read about the honored.

All but two. If you've read even one other book about secret agents, you know that when a radio operator send a transmission, it will include his secret codeword, so that those who receive it in London will know it is really him (or her). Each agent has a real codeword and a fake one. If London receives the fake one they know that the agent is transmitting under duress, meaning he's been captured, or that the Germans are sending a message in his name.

These wireless transmissions were the only way the agents in the field had to communicate with London -- sending information about German troops, and all that, asking for supplies, and letting London know that there was trouble.

So if the secret codeword was the key to knowing that it really was the operator sending a message and that he was free, how do you explain that London received more than one message that did not include that secret code? When Maurice Buckmaster, head of the French unit (this book is about France) saw those messages, he decided to ignore the danger. It's the first and only tool the operators had to let London know they were in trouble, and yet he ignored that tool several times. In fact, in one instance, he sent a signal back admonishing the operator for leaving the secret codeword out. When the Germans saw that message, you can imagine (and Stroud mentions it) how the Germans reacted and what kind of treatment that operator received in their hands. Because, of course, he was in their hands -- in their prison in Paris. Vera Adams, his right-hand assistant, saw those same messages, knew as well as he did (or should have) what those omissions meant, and also ignored them.

Maybe Buckmaster was simply an idiot. I haven't seen anyone suggest it, but I've read several books about the SOE and this gross fuck-up, and it makes me think that maybe Buckmaster was really working for the Germans. In any case, it is no wonder the other British secret service agencies didn't trust and didn't want to support SOE. They had wonderful agents, but at best it was fun by idiots.

Buckmaster's French section lost at least two networks -- not only the agents sent over, but also all the French volunteers who they had been sent to work with. That would mean hundreds of people (not just the few named in the book) were arrested and killed by the Germans because Buckmaster didn't want to be bothered with the most basic safety measure he had at his disposal. And never mind another agent that was working for him, one that had been denounced as a German double agent by more than one person and was in charge of the logistics of the air transports. He ignored that too. I suppose he was trying to protect his territory (or he was a traitor) and didn't want to admit any weakness or failures with his organization. Altogether hundreds of people who had volunteered to work with the allies were sacrified for no good reason because of Buckmaster and Atkins.

After the war, Buckmaster was awarded an OBE and Atkins a CBE. They both should have been court martialed.

Typos and grammatical mistakes really bug me. And there are a lot of them in this little book.

Also the main theme is very very specific, and the foreword and first chapter do reveal a lot - maybe too much - of what is going on in the rest of the book.

It's written well enough and features enough colorful characters to make it very readable, I wasn't tempted to put it away and never finish it, as happened a few times this year with other books.

A quick read but it gave me an insight into the tragedy in Dresden at the time of the Allied bombings.

An excellent first-person account of the fire-bombing of Dresden from a British POW.

This short memoir is by a British soldier who, as a POW, was caught up in the (in)famous firebombing by Allied (mostly British) planes of the city of Dresden in February 1945. He describes the horrendous process of uncovering the burnt remains of women and children trapped in shelters and witnessing the hideous firestorms that sucked up those trying to flee. After a few days of helping to find a very small number of survivors, he escaped, going East towards the Russian lines rather than west, as he was under a Nazi sentence of death for sabotage. After a few weeks with the Russians until the end of the war in Europe, he was transported back west and to home.

The author has written several volumes of longer memoirs of his life before, during the after the war. His writing style is not polished, but is simple and direct. While not in any way a pacifist and not criticising the RAF pilots who carried out the bombing, he believes "that in the act of destroying the evil of the Third Reich we employed further and more terrible evils", though he acknowledges "that not everybody agrees with me". The bombing of Dresden is one of the most controversial incidents during the war, with many taking the view that the city was largely full of civilians and refugees by this late stage of the war, and not a justified military target, or at best only a minor one. The issue will always be hotly debated, but has unfortunately been misused by the likes of David Irving and Neo Nazis to posit an unjustified overall moral equivalence between the Allies and the Axis. This short memoir is not, however, a political or military examination of the issues, it is one man's human observations of his experiences.

This had many chapters, with many small sections. I like a book w/ a longer train of thought or better illustrations, so I couldn't really get into it.

ეს უფრო reference book-ია, თხრობის ერთიანი ძაფის გარეშე შეკრებილი ფაქტები და ამბები, ვიდრე სამეცნიერო არამხატვრული ლიტერატურა სადაც წიგნის სტრუქტურა და შეჯერებული თხრობა იგრძნობა. მიუხედავად იმისა რომ ბევრი საინტერესო ინფორმაციაა მთვარეზე, მაინც ძალიან ზოგადია და ზერელე. ძალიან ბევრია მთვარესთან დაკავშირებული არაფრის მომცემი მაგიური რიტუალების და შელოცვების აღწერა. ჩემი აზრით საინტერესოა მსგავსი თემები, არა იმ ფორმით როგორც წიგნი წარმოგვიდგენს, არამედ როგორ შემოდის მთვარე ადამიანის წარმოდგენაში და მაგიურ აზროვნებაში. როგორ შევასრულო კონკრეტული შელოცვა და მთვარის რომელი ფაზის დროს დავთესო კარტოფილი სრულიად უინტერესოა ჩემთვის. წიგნი სავსეა ამ უაზრო "პრაქტიკულ" ტრივიალური რჩევა დარიგებებით. რაც შეეხება წიგნის დიზაინს, სავსეა საინტერესო ილუსტრაციებით ხარისხიან ქაღალდზე (მაგარ ყდიანი გამოცემა Walker) მაგრამ ამ ილუსტრაციებზე მწირი ინფორმაციაა, არ აწერია საიდან მოდის ვინ შექმნა და ა.შ. ასევე ზოგიერთ ადგილას ტექსტის ფონზე გამოსახულია სხვადასხვა დიზაინის ელემენტი რის გამოც ტექსტი კარგად არ იკითხება. იმედი მაქვს მთვარეზე უკეთესი წიგნები არსებობს.

War is hell. Here's more proof. It should have been edited, though.

Ninety-three-year-old Victor Gregg sorts through his memories of surviving the dreadful firebombing of Dresden. Captured at Arnhem, he had escaped from several prisons, but then had committed an act of sabotage that resulted in a death sentence. He was imprisoned with many other condemned men in a long building with a domed glass ceiling in the heart of Dresden.

He barely escaped death in the first wave of bombers; his co-condemned who had been sentenced with him was not so lucky. The walls of their building collapsed and all streamed out as the incendiaries began to fall. Luck was with him as he was conscripted by an extremely conscientious and organized German officer to fight the fires along with a group of soldiers. The task was worse than Sisyphean and they finally hunkered down in a field along the railroad tracks, watching in horror as people were sucked into the fires by extremely strong winds fanning created by the inferno. It wasn’t really what you could call a wind or even a gale, the air that was being drawn in from the outside to feed the inferno was like a solid object, so great was its force. The women were clutching onto the men sensing the danger of being sucked across the open ground into the centre of the enormous bonfire, that had once been the centre of Dresden. Further along the line the station was engulfed. I am not certain that this was the main Railway Station of Dresden but it was a station of sorts. I never got near it, so I cannot say. It had a centre arch, we could all see, which suddenly collapsed and still not one bomb had landed.

Huge tanks filled with water proved to be an illusory haven as the fires heated the water and the slippery sides of the tanks prevented people from escaping leaving them to be boiled alive. Those not trapped in the buildings but who happened to be hit by the phosphorus used in the incendiary bombs became human torches as the phosphoros could not be extinguished.

Their task then morphed into rescue attempts as he and others, soldiers, prisoners, refugees, anyone who could banded together under command of this officer whom he labeled the "General." Their efforts were for naught as they tunneled into cellars where people had sought refuge only to be suffocated as the oxygen was used up by the fires and then their bodies became but piles of rubble. They were hauled out and what remained incinerated in the tanks that had been filled with water.

Told to report to a camp for prisoners, he decided not to risk being recognized as a man marked for execution and so walked east toward the Russian front. He reached it and his skill at getting American Chevy trucks going made him indispensable until he was repatriated to the British Army.

His feelings about the episode remain strong and not a pacifist by any means argues against any future campaigns like those conducted against civilians in WW II. By the time of the bombing of Dresden the formula for the mass murder of civilians had been bought to a fine art. The commanders had developed a technique: first of all fires are started; then canyons of devastated buildings are created to draw the air to feed the inferno thus creating the winds and the fire storm; finally come the blockbusters that demolish everything and trap the helpless victims inside shelters that turn into ovens from which there is no escape. Ironically the ghastly events that I have tried to describe in these pages took place on the Christian holidays of Shrove Tuesday and Ash Wednesday.