WWII spycraft may be best remembered for ingenious bits of technology, but an extrememly low-tech strategy also played an important role in the Allied victory. Derek Perkins ably narrates this audiobook about Great Britain’s use of homing pigeons to communicate with resistance cells and Allied agents in Belgium. Perkins’s British accent adds a pleasurable air of authenticity to his reading. He handles the names of people and places well, keeping the narrative flowing. But he can’t overcome the author’s overly detailed prose. There are so many people involved that it can be difficult to keep them straight. Also, the author’s complex sentence structure occasionally makes it difficult for listeners to discern the primary point. R.C.G. © AudioFile 2018, Portland, Maine
The fascinating, untold story of how British intelligence secretly used homing pigeons as part of a clandestine espionage operation to gather information, communicate, and coordinate with members of the Resistance to defeat the Nazis in occupied Europe during World War II.
Between 1941 and 1944, British intelligence dropped sixteen thousand homing pigeons in an arc across Nazi-occupied Europe, from Bordeaux, France to Copenhagen, Denmark, as part of a spy operation code-named Columba. Returning to MI14, the secret government branch in charge of the ""Special Pigeon Service,"" the birds carried messages that offered a glimpse of life under the Germans in rural France, Holland, and Belgium. Written on tiny pieces of rice paper tucked into canisters and tied to the birds' legs, these messages were sometimes comic, often tragic, and occasionally invaluable-reporting details of German troop movements and fortifications, new Nazi weapons, radar systems, and even the deployment of the feared V-1 and V-2 rockets used to terrorize London.
The people who sent these messages were not trained spies. They were ordinary men and women willing to risk their lives in the name of freedom, including the ""Leopold Vindictive"" network-a small group of Belgian villagers led by an extraordinary priest named Joseph Raskin. The intelligence Raskin sent back by pigeon proved so valuable that it reached Churchill and MI6 parachuted agents behind enemy lines to assist him.
Gordon Corera uses declassified documents and extensive original research to tell the story of the Operation Columba and the Secret Pigeon Service for the first time. A powerful tale of wartime espionage, bitter rivalries, extraordinary courage, astonishing betrayal, harrowing tragedy, and a quirky, quarrelsome band of spy masters and their special mission, Operation Columba opens a fascinating new chapter in the annals of World War II. It is ultimately, the story of how, in one of the darkest and most dangerous times in history, under threat of death, people bravely chose to resist.
The fascinating, untold story of how British intelligence secretly used homing pigeons as part of a clandestine espionage operation to gather information, communicate, and coordinate with members of the Resistance to defeat the Nazis in occupied Europe during World War II.
Between 1941 and 1944, British intelligence dropped sixteen thousand homing pigeons in an arc across Nazi-occupied Europe, from Bordeaux, France to Copenhagen, Denmark, as part of a spy operation code-named Columba. Returning to MI14, the secret government branch in charge of the ""Special Pigeon Service,"" the birds carried messages that offered a glimpse of life under the Germans in rural France, Holland, and Belgium. Written on tiny pieces of rice paper tucked into canisters and tied to the birds' legs, these messages were sometimes comic, often tragic, and occasionally invaluable-reporting details of German troop movements and fortifications, new Nazi weapons, radar systems, and even the deployment of the feared V-1 and V-2 rockets used to terrorize London.
The people who sent these messages were not trained spies. They were ordinary men and women willing to risk their lives in the name of freedom, including the ""Leopold Vindictive"" network-a small group of Belgian villagers led by an extraordinary priest named Joseph Raskin. The intelligence Raskin sent back by pigeon proved so valuable that it reached Churchill and MI6 parachuted agents behind enemy lines to assist him.
Gordon Corera uses declassified documents and extensive original research to tell the story of the Operation Columba and the Secret Pigeon Service for the first time. A powerful tale of wartime espionage, bitter rivalries, extraordinary courage, astonishing betrayal, harrowing tragedy, and a quirky, quarrelsome band of spy masters and their special mission, Operation Columba opens a fascinating new chapter in the annals of World War II. It is ultimately, the story of how, in one of the darkest and most dangerous times in history, under threat of death, people bravely chose to resist.
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Operation Columba-The Secret Pigeon Service: The Untold Story of World War II Resistance in Europe
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Operation Columba-The Secret Pigeon Service: The Untold Story of World War II Resistance in Europe
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Product Details
BN ID: | 2940173405357 |
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Publisher: | HarperCollins |
Publication date: | 10/16/2018 |
Edition description: | Unabridged |
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