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A new book from the critically acclaimed author of Lonely Courage: The true story of the SOE heroines who fought to free German-occupied France

A unique, moving narrative of the women who volunteered to be trained by SOE and dropped into Nazi-held France to support the underground networks.

In 1941 the German army invaded the strategically important Mediterranean island of Crete. The years of Nazi occupation that followed saw mass executions, widespread starvation and the brutal destruction of homes - but amid the horror, the Cretan resistance, the Andartes, with the support of a handful of British SOE agents, fought on heroically. On a moonlit night in April 1944, a small band of fearless partisans, led by the British SOE agent Patrick Leigh Fermor, kidnapped a high-ranking Nazi general. This is the dramatic story of a top-secret and high-risk mission.

In 1940 a group of artists, sculptors, film makers, theatre designers and set painters came together to form the Camouflage Unit. They were so successful that in August 1942 Montgomery ordered them to to hide the preparations for the Battle of Alamein. In six weeks two entire divisions were conjured from the sand, while real units, stores and men vanished into thin air. Then, right in front of the German's eyes they made 600 tanks disappear and reappear fifty miles away disguised as lorries. Rommel had been bamboozled by an army made of nothing but string and straw and bits of wood.