I've been interested in the underground resistance during WWII for quite a while. Aristide was a major player in that, but I was curious to know if this book would be interesting to me. Overall, I tend to be more partial to autobiographies.
Roger Landes (Aristide) was in France during much of the occupation period. After that, he spent a short time in Malay. He earned numerous medals and distinguished himself among his peers. The book doesn't really explain a lot of resistance operations. It's a lot of arming and supplying circuits. He was the boss basically, so it doesn't get down to the nitty gritty of how he chose people or what exactly they did.
The book starts off with an introduction by Landes. He's given his blessing to the book, so that meant a lot to me. Being partial to memoirs, I prefer to hear events from those that lived it, even if it isn't an impartial view. The writing by Nicolson was easily readable, and I wasn't overwhelmed by names, dates and places.
I appreciated the updates at the end of many of the people mentioned in the book. I was surprised by how many survived. The book itself was around 222 pages. After that, the first of 7 appendices begins. These are mostly letters and reports, but I was interested in Appendix 5, which was Roger's operational diary.
This was a fairly decent account of Landes's time in the field. I wish someone had convinced him to write the story himself, but at least his story has been preserved. I did learn a lot, and I'm glad I read this book. Good Book!
No comments:
Post a Comment