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)

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, RŽanne 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

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.

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.

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.

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"

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.