This is a book which should be read by all who wish to study the Second World War more completely. It is at once a story of sadness and the subjugation of the Jewish people, and then becomes the story of a group of young Jewish men from Germany and Eastern Europe who are fortunate enough to escape the Nazis, albeit with no clear future before them.
From there it becomes the story of a group of men who have lost everything. Their homes, their futures, their families and even their names. They are strangers in a strange land; Britain. There they find themselves refugees, moved around from one refugee camp to another. Some are even shipped to Austrailia along with German POW's, who, as combatants have more rights via the Geneva Convention than the victims they sought to annihilate.
The POW's have the required living space and food specified by law. The refugees are packed, like cattle, into the hold of the ship, fed only scraps of food and only allowed on deck 15 minutes per day. They are harassed by the POW's as well as the Britush crew members. Their meager belongings are confiscated and, when not stolen, are thrown over the side, into the sea, lost seemingly forever, just as with their identities.
Once in Australia they are kept in Concentration camps, little better off than the labor camps they sought to escape in Europe. After a time there they are returned to England and things become a bit better. Some are placed in the country side and grow food which the British need to feed their troops. But some, not many, have a different fate before them. These are the men who become Commando fighters, serving as "X Troop".
The book is replete with characters, who, if not real, would be unbelievable in a novel. Take for instance "Fighting Jack Churchill" aka "Mad Jack", no relation to Sir Winston, who fought in the war with a longbow, a hilted Scottish broadsword, and a bagpipe. He would help train, and lead, these mostly intellectual half starved refugees into a fighting force no writer could invent.
It took more than two years, much of the time spent in Wales and Scotland, climbing sheer rockfaced mountains, running 53 miles with full packs before swimming back to base in freezing waters to mold them. And they met every obstacle fueled by hatred and revenge for the Nazis, not knowing if their families back home were still alive.
Forced to virtually abandon their own religion, they had to learn to speak English with no trace of an accent. Then, to perfect this, they were quartered in private homes with families who hardly recognized them as refugees.
Interwoven in all this is also the story of the Rothschilds, particularly Miriam, who was self educated by virtue of her grandfather and father. She spent 16 hour days at Bletchley Park, cracking the German's Enigma Code. And along the way she fell in love with Captain George Lane, one of the refugees and a member of X Troop.
They married in secret, and she was carrying his child when he was captured in France. It was there he faced the greatest danger. He was interrogated by Feld Marshal Rommel, in the country mansion which was his secret headquarters. They even shared a cup of tea as Rommel tried to figure out when and where the invasion of France would take place.
From there, rather than being executed, as he expected, Captain Lane was sent to a prison camp in an abandoned castle. There was no food, but there was an extensive library, from which he was able to identify Rommel's headquarters. And with the aid of a secret radio transmitter constructed by the prisoners he was able to get that information back to Britain, resulting in a bombing raid which would have killed Rommel had he not committed suicide after being implicated in a plot to assassinate Adolf Hitler in October 1944.
In this same transmission he was also able to alert Miriam that he was still alive.
Reunited after his escape, the two remained married until 1957 when they seperated. They had two sons and four daughters. Rothschild was a leading world authority on fleas, butterflies, and pyrazines and chemical communication, all self educated. But that story is another book altogether.
Even today, in Wales, there is a monument, erected to these extraordinary men, whom the town fully embraced as their own. When not on duty they were feted at town dances, and some romances and unlikely marriages resulted from this.
These men were trained in counterintelligence and advanced combat, the result being a highly trained suicide squad. They would literally stop at nothing to defeat the Nazis.
The author avails herself of declassified records, and interviews with the last surviving members, to follow this extraordinary group to the beaches of Normandy, battlefields of Italy and Holland, and finally to Terezin concentration camp, where some came face to face with the skeletal, living remains of their own parents.
And after all the battles, the deprivations, the re-inventions of themselves, they faced an even bigger battle after the war was over. These men, without whom D-Day could have gone on as scheduled, are forced to fight Parliment to become citizens of the country they so honorably served. Of all the challenges they faced, and all the odds against them, this was perhaps the most despicable of all.
