France

  • An exceptional agent and his mysterious death

    Just over a week after the end of the war in Europe a car driven by a German soldier who had worked at Flossenbürg concentration camp was involved in a car accident. In the other vehicle was a Welsh-born officer named Major Jacques de Guélis. A highly-decorated war hero, de Guélis had served behind the…

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  • During the liberation of Chartres a Life magazine photographer spotted Simone Segouin and snapped a photograph, turning the 19-year-old into an icon of the French Resistance and the Liberation. Photographer Robert Capa and reporter Jack Belden had driven into the embattled city in August 1944 with soldiers from General George S. Patton’s Third Army. Intrigued…

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  • World War Two was the war in which old gender rules changed, as intelligence agencies created specific training and roles for women. SHADOW WARRIORS is the story of women as undercover combatants: armed with Sten guns and grenades; cutting telecommunication wires, laying mines in roadways; organizing bombing raids; preparing the way for the D-Day invasion…

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  • Two children interview a D-Day veteran.  His name is Ted Owens. He was a commando and a sniper. He almost died on D-Day and was wounded twice more in the Netherlands. I’ll be posting some of their clips over the next fortnight. Question one: What was it like saying goodbye to your parents to go…

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  • November 11 1943 is, I understand, a well-remembered day for historians of the Resistance in Nazi-Occupied France. It was on that day that the Maquis paraded through the town of Oyonnax in an event designed as a show of strength, a morale boost for the local population. The town was chosen because there was no…

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  • Shadow Warriors: Daring Missions of World War II by Women of the OSS and SOE KIRKUS REVIEW A group biography of the fearless young women who became secret agents during World War II. Award-winning journalists Thomas (Operation Exodus: From the Nazi Death Camps to the Promised Land: A Perilous Journey That Shaped Israel’s Fate, 2010,…

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  • World War Two was the war in which old gender rules changed, as intelligence agencies created specific training and roles for women. SHADOW WARRIORS is the story of women as undercover combatants: armed with Sten guns and grenades; cutting telecommunication wires, laying mines in roadways; organizing bombing raids; preparing the way for the D-Day invasion…

    Read more →

  • A veteran of 41 Commando has made an emotional return to the beaches of Normandy. Ted Owens, aged 88 and from Pembroke Dock, Wales, returned to the spot at which he had been wounded during the landings as part of filming for an upcoming television programme. Ted also made an astonishing visit to a town…

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