Tony Brooks was barely out of school when recruited in 1941 by the
Special Operations Executive (SOE), the wartime secret service
established by Churchill to "set Europe ablaze." After extensive
training he was parachuted into France in July 1942, among the first
(and youngest) British agents sent to support the nascent French
Resistance. Brook's success was primarily due to his exceptional
qualities as a secret agent, although he was aided by large and frequent
slices of luck. Among much else, he survived brushes with a British
traitor and a notorious double agent; the Gestapo's capture of his
wireless operator and subsequent attempts to trap Brooks; brief
incarceration in a Spanish concentration camp; injuries resulting from a
parachute jump into France; and even capture and interrogation by the
Gestapo--although his cover story held and he was released. In an age
when we so often take our heroes from the world of celebrity, it is
perhaps salutary to be reminded of a young man who ended the war in
command of a disparate force of some 10,000 armed resistance fighters,
and decorated with two of his country's highest awards for gallantry,
the DSO and MC. At the time, he was just 23 years old. This remarkable,
detailed and intimate account of a clandestine agent's dangerous wartime
career combines the historian's expert eye with the narrative color of
remembered events. As a study in courage, it has few, if any, equals.
