It was a sunny Saturday lunchtime in June 1944. Most of the inhabitants
of a sleepy village situated in the 'Free Zone' of war-ravaged France
were sitting down to a leisurely meal. Without warning, an attachment of
Das Reich soldiers (the elite force of the Nazi's Waffen-SS division)
arrived. Hours later, 642 defenceless people had been massacred; their
homes were smouldering ruins. From these embers emerged life-affirming
stories of survival as individuals defied machine-guns, snipers,
explosives and burning buildings to escape the clutches of the deadly
Wolf's Hook (the Das Reich emblem). Wolf's Hook is a factionalised
account of the Das Reich attack on a hillside village. It recaptures the
essence of what happened that day, using four first-person narrative
strands: a waiter, a young boy, an SS soldier and a grandmother. Through
their eyes we see the terrifying day unravel. Not suitable for readers
under 12.