Page 57 of Last Hope Island


  “as deafening as”: Jones, Most Secret War, 351.

  “so sited”: Ibid.

  “this extraordinary report”: Ibid., 354.

  “one of the most effective”: David Ignatius, “After Five Decades, a Spy Tells Her Tale,” Washington Post, Dec. 28, 1998.

  “teased them”: Ibid.

  “had a far-reaching influence”: Winston S. Churchill, The Second World War, vol. 5: Closing the Ring (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1951), 207.

  “Were the Germans able”: Stirling, Nałęcz, and Dubicki, eds., Intelligence Cooperation Between Poland and Great Britain, 476.

  “The man going home”: Churchill, Triumph and Tragedy, 39.

  “as impersonal”: Angus Calder, The People’s War: Britain, 1939–1945 (New York: Pantheon, 1969), 560.

  “aerial shooting gallery”: Lynne Olson and Stanley Cloud, A Question of Honor: The Kosciuszko Squadron: Forgotten Heroes of World War II (New York: Knopf, 2003), 330.

  “Although we could do”: Churchill, Triumph and Tragedy, 53.

  “excellence” and “gallantry”: Ibid., 49.

  “lonesomeness”: Jones, Most Secret War, xiv.

  “We have been working”: R. V. Jones, Reflections on Intelligence (London: Heinemann, 1989), 218.

  “A substantial proportion”: Jones, Most Secret War, 346.

  “a self-propelled projectile”: Jones, Reflections on Intelligence, 43.

  “We will go”: Sarah Helm, Ravensbrück: Life and Death in Hitler’s Concentration Camp for Women (New York: Doubleday, 2015), 426.

  “to stir up old memories”: Jones, Most Secret War, xiv.

  “a great personal experience”: Ibid.

  CHAPTER 19: “A FORMIDABLE SECRET ARMY”

  “YOU ARE TRYING”: H. J. Giskes, London Calling North Pole (London: William Kimber, 1953), 135.

  “would gladly have murdered me”: Patrick Howarth, Intelligence Chief Extraordinary: The Life of the Ninth Duke of Portland (London: Bodley Head, 1986), 175.

  “supreme objective”: Giskes, London Calling North Pole, 146.

  “Despite severe setbacks”: Ibid., 139–40.

  “Drops of agents”: Ibid., 147.

  “a highly efficient espionage organization”: Ibid., 150.

  “To a greater extent”: Werner Warmbrunn, The Dutch Under German Occupation 1940-1945 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1983), 120.

  “In parts of Belgium”: Giskes, London Calling North Pole, 154.

  “Well, of course”: Roderick Bailey, Forgotten Voices in the Secret War: An Inside History of Special Operations During the Second World War (London: Ebury Press, 2008), Kindle edition, loc. 3228.

  “There was no shadow”: Ray Jenkins, A Pacifist at War (London: Arrow, 2010), 102.

  “We thank you”: Leo Marks, Between Silk and Cyanide: A Codemaker’s War, 1941–45 (Stroud, UK: The History Press, 2013), 521.

  “I knew that”: Bailey, Forgotten Voices, Kindle edition, loc. 3415.

  “Without Churchill”: M.R.D. Foot, SOE in France: An Account of the Work of the British Special Operations Executive in France, 1940–1944 (London: HMSO, 1966), 352.

  “a man of the Scarlet”: David Stafford, Churchill and Secret Service (London: John Murray, 1997), 277.

  “Like de Gaulle”: Ibid.

  “Brave and desperate men”: Ibid.

  “After Churchill”: Marks, Between Silk and Cyanide, 29.

  “Tommy was always prepared”: Ibid.

  “Our present puny efforts”: Stafford, Churchill and Secret Service, 278.

  “carry messages”: Ibid.

  “From January 1944”: Foot, SOE in France, 356.

  “By now, France”: Philippe de Vomécourt, An Army of Amateurs (New York: Doubleday, 1961), 176.

  “These are very difficult”: Jenkins, A Pacifist at War, 119.

  “No one man”: de Vomécourt, An Army of Amateurs, 184–85.

  CHAPTER 20: “THE POOR LITTLE ENGLISH DONKEY”

  “lived by faith”: Jan Nowak, Courier from Warsaw (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1982), 104.

  “the ideals”: Ibid., 105.

  “a rage I could”: Ibid., 268.

  “the forcible transfer”: Martin Gilbert, Winston S. Churchill, vol. 7: Road to Victory, 1941–1945 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1986), 17.

  “found it convenient”: Max Hastings, Armageddon: The Battle for Germany, 1944–1945 (New York: Knopf, 2004), 508–9.

  “go[ing] to the peace conference”: U.S. Department of State, Foreign Relations of the United States, vol. 3, 1943, 15.

  “Here I sat”: Paul D. Mayle, Eureka Summit: Agreement in Principle and the Big Three at Tehran (Newark, DE: University of Delaware Press, 1987), 24.

  “I am the leader”: Gilbert, Road to Victory, 646.

  “As long as I live”: Edward Raczyński, In Allied London (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1963), 141.

  “the only line of safety”: Gilbert, Road to Victory, 389.

  “Force is on Russia’s side”: Allen Paul, Katyn: The Untold Story of Stalin’s Polish Massacre (New York: Scribner’s, 1991), 222.

  “This is the end of Poland”: “Władysław Sikorski,” Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/​wiki/​Władysław_Sikorski.

  “He was unmistakably”: William Mackenzie, The Secret History of S.O.E.: Special Operations Executive, 1940-1945 (London: St. Ermin’s Press, 2000), 312.

  “regarded Sikorski”: Ibid., 164.

  “a tremendous impact”: Raczyński, In Allied London, 150.

  “was the only man”: Harold Nicolson, The War Years, Diaries & Letters, 1939–1945, ed. Nigel Nicolson (New York: Atheneum, 1967), 303.

  “the Soviets didn’t want”: Harvey Sarner, General Anders and the Soldiers of the Second Polish Corps (Cathedral City, CA: Brunswick Press, 1997), 155.

  “with the Russians”: Gilbert, Road to Victory, 671.

  “Neither SOE nor”: E.D.R. Harrison, “The British Special Operations Executive and Poland,” Historical Journal, Dec. 2000.

  “make-believe joint planning”: Peter Wilkinson, Foreign Fields: The Story of an SOE Operative (London: I. B. Tauris, 1997), 124.

  “the desirability of preparing”: Michael Alfred Peszke, The Polish Underground Army, the Western Allies, and the Failure of Strategic Unity in World War II (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2005), 106.

  “the time is fast approaching”: Ibid., 110.

  “the Czechs would have found”: Marcia Davenport, Too Strong for Fantasy (New York: Pocket Books, 1969), 273.

  “has been and is now”: François Kersaudy, Churchill and de Gaulle (New York: Atheneum, 1982), 288.

  “this vain and even malignant man”: Ibid., 275.

  “we would not only”: Ibid., 279.

  “I am reaching the point”: Ibid., 291.

  “An open clash”: Dwight David Eisenhower, Crusade in Europe (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1974), 248.

  “The prime minister”: Kersaudy, Churchill and de Gaulle, 338–39.

  “We are going to liberate”: Charles de Gaulle, The Complete War Memoirs (New York: Carroll & Graf, 1998), 557.

  “I did not like”: Gilbert, Road to Victory, 1083.

  “treason at the height”: Lacouture, De Gaulle, 524.

  “FDR’s pique”: Jean Edward Smith, FDR (New York: Random House, 2007), 616.

  “in deathly silence”: R. H. Bruce Lockhart, Comes the Reckoning (London: Putnam, 1947), 304.

  “Without a trace”: Ibid.

  “I’ll have trouble”: Ibid.

  CHAPTER 21: SETTLING THE SCORE

  “but the opening phase”: Asa Briggs, The History of Broadcasting in the United Kingdom, vol. 3: The War of Words (London: Oxford University Press, 1970), 597.

  “In the undergrowth”: Ibid., 405–6.

  “You make up a short message”: Leo Marks, Between Silk and Cyanide: A Codemaker’s War, 1941–45 (Stroud, UK: The History Press, 2013), 487.

  “That was the first manifestation”: Roderick Bailey, For
gotten Voices in the Secret War: An Inside History of Special Operations During the Second World War (London: Ebury Press, 2008), Kindle edition, loc. 1781.

  “active resisters were”: Ibid., loc. 3044.

  “the entire French railway system”: M.R.D. Foot, SOE in France: An Account of the Work of the British Special Operations Executive in France, 1940–1944 (London: HMSO, 1966), 408.

  “among the most formidable”: Max Hastings, Das Reich: The March of the 2nd Panzer Division Through France, June 1944 (London: Zenith Press, 2013), 222.

  “They surrounded the Germans”: Foot, SOE in France, 408.

  “in a state”: Ibid.

  “must immediately pass”: Hastings, Das Reich, 88.

  “obsession with retaining”: Ibid., 39.

  “politically impossible”: Ibid., 74.

  “Not even the most”: Ibid., 75.

  “They burned, pillaged and killed”: Philippe de Vomécourt, An Army of Amateurs (New York: Doubleday, 1961), 14.

  “a foolish”: Ray Jenkins, A Pacifist at War (London: Arrow, 2010), 153.

  “never had a chance”: Rick Atkinson, The Guns at Last Light: The War in Western Europe, 1944–1945 (New York: Picador, 2013), 197.

  “the underwater obstacles”: Douglas Porch, The French Secret Services: From the Dreyfus Affair to the Gulf War (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1995), 558.

  “the Allies had never”: Eric Sevareid, Not So Wild a Dream (New York: Atheneum, 1976), 439.

  “the shopkeepers”: Ibid., 436.

  “the resistance reduced”: Foot, SOE in France, 441.

  “yapping at their heels”: Julian Jackson, France: The Dark Years, 1940–1944 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), 535.

  “What the resistance achieved”: David Stafford, Secret Agent: The True Story of the Covert War Against Hitler (Woodstock, NY: Overlook Press, 2003), 239.

  “of inestimable value”: Ronald C. Rosbottom, When Paris Went Dark: The City of Light Under German Occupation, 1940–1944 (New York: Little, Brown, 2014), 273.

  “In no previous war”: Foot, SOE in France, 441.

  “showed as never before”: Porch, The French Secret Services, 258.

  “One may ask”: Ibid., 263.

  “in the end”: Ibid., 262.

  “necessary myth”: Ibid., 263.

  “de Gaulle had to convince”: Ibid.

  “If there had been”: Jackson, France: The Dark Years, 537.

  “a Resistance myth”: Ibid., 535.

  “In recent years”: Airey Neave, Saturday at M.I.9: The Classic Account of the WWII Escape Organisation (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1969), 315.

  “While its military successes”: de Vomécourt, An Army of Amateurs, 10.

  “A man whose army”: Sevareid, Not So Wild a Dream, 434.

  CHAPTER 22: “A TALE OF TWO CITIES”

  “standing at Warsaw’s gates”: Tadeusz Bór-Komorowski, The Secret Army (London: Victor Gollancz, 1950), 292.

  “National dignity and pride”: Stefan Korbonski, Fighting Warsaw (New York: Funk & Wagnalls, 1968), 347–48.

  “in a world of illusion”: Wacław Jędrzejewicz, ed., Poland in the British Parliament, 1939–1945 (New York: Pilsudski Institute, 1946), 498.

  “we are ready to fight”: Bór-Komorowski, The Secret Army, 206.

  “completely impossible”: Ibid.

  “proclaim the insurrection”: Michael Alfred Pezke, The Polish Underground Army, the Western Allies, and the Failure of Strategic Unity in World War II (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2005), 156.

  “We have no choice”: Jan Nowak, Courier from Warsaw (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1982), 339.

  “Every inhabitant of Warsaw”: Tadeusz Bielecki and Leszek Szymański, Warsaw Aflame: The 1939–1945 Years (Los Angeles: Polamerica Press, 1973), 137.

  “From the historical point”: Ibid., 175.

  “maximum effort”: Elisabeth Barker, Churchill and Eden at War (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1978), 253.

  “could only be provided”: Martin Gilbert, Winston S. Churchill, vol. 7: Road to Victory, 1941–1945 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1986), 895.

  “Confident of the part”: Bór-Komorowski, The Secret Army, 263.

  “WHEN IN 1940”: Edward Raczyński, In Allied London (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1963), 334.

  “The Russian armies”: Gilbert, Road to Victory, 871.

  “the Soviet Government could not”: U.S. Department of State, Foreign Relations of the United States, vol. 3, 1944, 1374.

  “We intend to have Poland”: George F. Kennan, Memoirs (1925–1950) (New York: Bantam Books, 1969), 221.

  “My grandfather”: Winston Churchill, speech, American Institute for Polish Culture, Miami, Jan. 28, 2001.

  “Thank you”: Winston S. Churchill and Franklin D. Roosevelt, Churchill and Roosevelt: The Complete Correspondence, vol. 3, ed. Warren F. Kimball (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1984), 294.

  “I suggest that he”: Jean Lacouture, De Gaulle: The Rebel, 1890–1944 (New York: W. W. Norton, 1990), 527.

  “On the barricades”: Larry Collins and Dominique Lapierre, Is Paris Burning? (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1965), 172.

  “Tonight,” he said: Stanley Cloud and Lynne Olson, The Murrow Boys: Pioneers on the Front Lines of Broadcast Journalism (Boston: Mariner Books, 1996), 217.

  “For five weeks”: Bielecki and Szymanski, Warsaw Aflame, 175.

  “heartbreaking”: “A Tale of Two Cities,” Economist, Aug. 26, 1944.

  “vastly bloodier”: Ibid.

  “did not mean”: Lynne Olson and Stanley Cloud, A Question of Honor: The Kosciuszko Squadron: Forgotten Heroes of World War II (New York: Knopf, 2003), 343.

  “terrible and even humbling”: Winston S. Churchill, The Second World War, vol. 6: Triumph and Tragedy (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1953), 141.

  “The problem of relief”: Ibid., 143–44.

  “Had the containers”: Bór-Komorowski, The Secret Army, 350.

  “We have been free”: Ibid., 376.

  “jammed elbow to elbow”: Eric Sevareid, Not So Wild a Dream (New York: Atheneum, 1976), 472.

  “had learned”: Ibid.

  “We all tremble”: Kersaudy, Churchill and de Gaulle, 373.

  “magnanimous in victory”: Ibid., 357.

  “it had to be seen”: Ibid., 374.

  “were cheering”: Lord Ismay, The Memoirs of General Lord Ismay (New York: Viking, 1960), 387.

  “For you”: Charles de Gaulle, The Complete War Memoirs (New York: Carroll & Graf, 1998), 723.

  “incontestable leader”: Kersaudy, Churchill and de Gaulle, 384.

  “We would not have seen”: Ibid., 375–76.

  CHAPTER 23: “I WAS A STRANGER AND YOU TOOK ME IN”

  “The joy of Paris”: Rick Atkinson, The Guns at Last Light: The War in Western Europe, 1944–1945 (New York: Picador, 2013), 231.

  “as much use”: Ibid., 233.

  “At that moment”: Max Hastings, Armageddon: The Battle for Germany, 1944–1945 (New York: Knopf, 2004), 19.

  “refit, refuel, and rest”: Cornelius Ryan, A Bridge Too Far (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1995), Kindle edition, loc. 719.

  “My excuse”: Ibid., loc. 1291.

  “militarily, the war is won”: Atkinson, The Guns at Last Light, 223.

  “bad mistake”: Hastings, Armageddon, 21.

  “It was a flight”: Henri van der Zee, The Hunger Winter: Occupied Holland, 1944–45 (London: Jill Norman and Hobhouse, 1982), 21.

  “I wish to give”: Ibid., 18.

  “The liberation”: Ryan, A Bridge Too Far, Kindle edition, loc. 131.

  “This is not the marriage”: “HRH Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands” (obituary), Telegraph, April 12, 2004.

  “exuded an aura”: Erik Hazelhoff Roelfzema, In Pursuit of Life (Stroud, UK: Sutton, 2003), 143.

  “I would have been”: van der Zee, The Hunger Winter, 108.

  “played a vital”: “HRH Prince Bernhard of the Nether
lands” (obituary), Telegraph, April 12, 2004.

  “adored him”: van der Zee, The Hunger Winter, 111.

  “a major thrust”: Ryan, A Bridge Too Far, Kindle edition, loc. 620.

  “I don’t think”: Ibid., loc. 1001.

  “Montgomery didn’t believe”: Ibid.

  “I would rather”: Michael Alfred Peszke, The Polish Underground Army, the Western Allies, and the Failure of Strategic Unity in World War II (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2005), 224–25.

  “considered us a bunch”: Ryan, A Bridge Too Far, Kindle edition, loc. 1013.

  “I am just”: Ibid.

  “obsessed with the idea”: Ibid., loc. 878.

  “Monty, you’re nuts”: Ibid., loc. 1077.

  “It was absolutely impossible”: Ibid., loc. 1563.

  “hysterical and nervous”: “A Life in Peace and War: Conversation with Sir Brian Urquhart,” Institute of International Studies, University of California, Berkeley, March 19, 1996.

  “was the one awkward fact”: Atkinson, The Guns at Last Light, 264.

  “light-heartedness and inexperience”: M.R.D. Foot, Holland at War Against Hitler: Anglo-Dutch Relations, 1940–1945 (London: Frank Cass, 1990), 164.

  “inability to suffer fools”: Max Arthur, “Obituary: General Sir John Hackett,” Independent, Sept.10, 1996.

  “rather argumentative”: Ryan, A Bridge Too Far, Kindle edition, loc. 5032.

  “After harrying”: Foot, Holland at War, 164.

  “But the Germans”: Ibid.

  “giggling like schoolboys”: Hastings, Armageddon, 36.

  “doesn’t like being told”: Ryan, A Bridge Too Far, Kindle edition, loc. 6807.

  “German capability”: Foot, Holland at War, 165.

  “epic cock-up”: Atkinson, The Guns at Last Light, 288.

  “We were prepared”: Ryan, A Bridge Too Far, Kindle edition, loc. 4157.

  “had an outstanding force”: Ibid., loc. 5832.

  “absolutely invaluable”: Foot, Holland at War, 116.

  “figure of truly heroic proportions”: Ibid., 168.

  “Arnhem, one of the most”: Ryan, A Bridge Too Far, Kindle edition, loc. 4125.