Using for the first time the full unpublished letters of Pilot Officer
Geoffrey Myers, this book offers a fresh and distinctive insight into
World War II and tells the moving story of a couple whose love was
caught in the crossfire of war.
While Geoffrey Myers was a caught up in the major turning points of the
early years of that war--the Battle for France, Dunkirk and the Battle
of Britain--his French wife and two half-Jewish children were trapped in
Nazi-occupied France, desperate to escape the enemy and be reunited.
While Geoffrey wrote his account of the war for his children to read if
he survived, his family were in mortal danger. As a Jew, he understood
only too well what would happen if the Nazis discovered his children
hiding in Occupied France. For months, Geoffrey had no idea if his
family were dead or alive, free or imprisoned.
These secret letters were never posted and never read by Geoffrey's
family until later in the war. Contemporary personal accounts of the
Battle of Britain of such frankness are extremely rare, and Geoffrey
Myers' letters offer a unique perspective of the war. More than that,
his letters reflect his deep love for his family and an acute anxiety
for their safety, as they tried to escape the tightening net of the
Nazis. Geoffrey Myers writes with eloquence and insight, and the letters
are an unvarnished, sometimes brutal, portrayal of war as his Battle of
Britain Squadron suffered terrible losses.
This moving story of a couple whose love was caught in the crossfire of
war is a powerful and rare portrait of, not only the turbulent events of
those times, but also how a family survives with so much death and
danger swirling around them both.
