As a young subaltern in the Coldstream Guards, the author lost his arm at Dunkirk and was captured but eventually escaped via Lille, Paris, Marseilles, Spain and Gibraltar. He describes the fierce fighting outside Dunkirk, his captivity, escape and extraordinary life in Vichy France, before the Germans controlled it. His fellow escapees and the French who sheltered them make a rich cast of characters. On return to London, Langley is recruited into the Secret Service and told to organise the safe return of allied soldiers, sailors and airmen who had succeeded in either escaping from or evading the Germans. He describes the astonishing courage and sacrifice of the heroic underground operators who ran these escape lines across Belgium and France. Despite betrayal and infiltration from Germans, collaborators and traitors, over 3000 men were safely brought back to fight another day. Langley and Airey Neave, who joined him after his historic home run from Colditz, had to wrestle with rival secret organisations for resources to carry out their vital work. All this and more is brilliantly described in this gripping, beautifully written book. AUTHOR: J.M. Langley (Jimmy) was born in 1916. Educated at Uppingham and Trinity Hall Cambridge, he was commissioned into the Coldstream Guards in 1936. In 1940, as part of the BEF, he was severely wounded on the perimeter of Dunkirk, and taken prisoner. He escaped from a German prison hospital and eventually, via Gibraltar, reached England. Back in London, he was taken up by MI6 and seconded to MI9, the secret escape and evasion service. As Head of Operations for north-west Europe, he was responsible for bringing back about 3,000 people to England. After the war, he worked for Fisons and, later, in the book trade. He died in 1983, aged 67, of war wounds.
