Audiobook - MI9: Escape and Evasion

MI9: Escape and Evasion sees Steve Taylor-Bryant discovering about a Secret Service that worked during World War II thanks to Spokenworld Audio...

Written By:
M.R.D. Foot & J.M. Langley
Read By:Michael Fenton Stevens
Edited By:Tanja Glittenberg & Steve Croft
Produced By:
Neil Gardner
Copyright:
Spokenworld Audio/Ladbroke Audio Ltd

35,000 British and American troops escaped or managed to evade capture during the European campaign of World War II thanks, mainly, to a little known member of the British Secret Service structure, MI9. Normally the work of great fiction, I am talking factual truth, a superb book of non-fiction written by Foot and Langley and originally released in 1979. Now, just because I say it's superb, it doesn't mean it’s easy to read. Older works like this very often come across as Grammar School Textbooks rather than exciting fountains of knowledge, but luckily our good friends at Spokenworld Audio provided the dulcet tones of Michael Fenton Stevens to help guide me through.

Much of the information, thanks to file declassification, is a lot more up to date than many other similar books published slightly earlier and another thing that allows this work to stand out is the honesty in it. It doesn't just tell the tale of the successes but also the failures, most notably Field Marshal Montgomery leaving thousands of POW's in situ in Southern Italy, thinking it would only take a couple of weeks to get to them after Mussolini's fall when, in fact, it went on for nearly two years, by which time the Nazi occupiers had either killed or moved them.

The book also tells of the support given to resistance fighters, as well as their own ingenuity in escape plans, equipment and more despite being under resourced and under staffed.

Fantastic history on a little known part of the war effort, told magnificently.

Image - Spokenworld.

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