[PDF] The Shelburne Escape Line eBook

Author : Reanne Hemingway-Douglass Hemingway-Douglass
Publisher : Pen and Sword
Page : 226 pages
File Size : 24,18 MB
Release : 2015-04-30
Category : History
ISBN : 1473837782

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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

Author : Réanne Hemingway-Douglass
Publisher :
Page : 197 pages
File Size : 31,46 MB
Release : 2014-01-15
Category : Comet Line
ISBN : 9781934199053

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"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.

Author : Reanne Hemingway-Douglass
Publisher :
Page : pages
File Size : 22,85 MB
Release : 2014-01-15
Category : History
ISBN : 9781934199039

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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.

Author : Air Forces Escape and Evasion Society
Publisher : Turner Publishing Company
Page : 132 pages
File Size : 35,74 MB
Release : 1992
Category : Biography & Autobiography
ISBN : 9781563110344

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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.

Author : Helen Fry
Publisher : Yale University Press
Page : 365 pages
File Size : 11,30 MB
Release : 2020-10-27
Category : History
ISBN : 0300255926

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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.

Author : Peter Eisner
Publisher : Harper Collins
Page : 352 pages
File Size : 34,10 MB
Release : 2005-05-31
Category : History
ISBN : 0060096640

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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.

Author : Lawrence Hill
Publisher : Random House
Page : 511 pages
File Size : 45,6 MB
Release : 2009-02-01
Category : Fiction
ISBN : 1409080609

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'A beautiful, compelling artifice, spun from unspeakably savage facts . . . a fiction that faces the terrible truth about slavery' The Times WINNER OF THE COMMONWEALTH PRIZE FOR FICTION Based on a true story, Lawrence Hill's epic novel spans three continents and six decades to bring to life a dark and shameful chapter in our history through the story of one brave and resourceful woman. Abducted from her West African village at the age of eleven and sold as a slave in the American South, Aminata Diallo thinks only of freedom - and of finding her way home again. After escaping the plantation, torn from her husband and child, she passes through Manhattan in the chaos of the Revolutionary War, is shipped to Nova Scotia, and then joins a group of freed slaves on a harrowing return odyssey to Africa. What readers are saying: ***** 'Beautifully written ... an enlightening read' ***** 'Since reading, this has become my favourite book ever' ***** 'A powerful historical account of an incredible woman's journey'

Author : Susan Tate Ankeny
Publisher : Diversion Books
Page : 238 pages
File Size : 50,11 MB
Release : 2020-09-08
Category : Biography & Autobiography
ISBN : 1635767148

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This enthralling WWII biography combines a downed B-17 bombardier’s unfinished memoir with letters from the French girl who saved his life. Susan Tate Ankeny’s father was a World War II veteran bombardier who had bailed from a burning B-17 over Nazi-occupied France in 1944. After he died, she found his unfinished memoir, stacks of envelopes, black-and-white photographs, mission reports, dog tags, and the fake identity cards he used in his escape. Ankeny spent more than a decade tracking down letter writers, their loved ones, and anyone who had played a role in her father's story, culminating in a trip to France where she retraced his path with the same people who had guided him more than sixty years ago. While piecing together her father’s wartime experience, Ankeny discovered a remarkable hero. Godelieve Van Laere was just a teenaged girl when she saved the fallen Lieutenant Dean Tate, risking her life and forging a friendship that would last into a new century. The result is a fascinating and dramatic World War II tale enhanced by personal interviews with participants. It traces the transformation of a small-town American boy into a bombardier, the thrill and chaos of aerial warfare, and the horror of bailing from a flaming aircraft over enemy territory. It distinguishes the actions of a little-known French resistance network for Allied airmen known as Shelburne. And it shines a light on the courage and cunning of a young woman who risked her life to save another.

Author : Brooks Richards
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 412 pages
File Size : 18,78 MB
Release : 2004-08-02
Category : Education
ISBN : 1135774439

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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.