Susan Travers was born in England, but spent a lot of her time in France. Coming to see her homeland as France, when World War II broke out, she wanted to be useful and have an adventure. Through a mixture of determination and grit, she ended up with a lot more than that. She sees battles throughout the war, notably the Battle of Bir Hakeim and El Alamein. Her life story is not sugar-coated in this book, and I am not surprised she waited for all the main people she mentions to pass away before telling her tale.
Susan is a true hero, but my heart breaks for her. She never learned what real love was, and even her "true love" was just her waiting for scraps of his attention. Men in her life didn't deserve what she had to offer, and she was never shown the love she should have commanded. Her later life was a settlement of her earlier one, where she was basically content with what she had. It was just so sad.
This book is a great look into a hidden corner of the war I hadn't peered into before. Susan was definitely wired different than I am, and I admire her determination and the way she didn't hold back during this memoir. It's well worth reading, and I hope that some time in the future, it becomes available digitally. I'd hate for it to fade out of existence because the physical copies are all lost. Good Book!
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