Fight Another Day by J M Langley

Fight Another Day by J M Langley

As a young subaltern in the Coldstream Guards, the author lost his arm at Dunkirk and was captured but eventually escaped via Lille, Paris, Marseilles, Spain and Gibraltar. He describes the fierce fighting outside Dunkirk, his captivity, escape and extraordinary life in Vichy France, before the Germans controlled it. His fellow escapees and the French who sheltered them make a rich cast of characters. On return to London, Langley is recruited into the Secret Service and told to organise the safe return of allied soldiers, sailors and airmen who had succeeded in either escaping from or evading the Germans. He describes the astonishing courage and sacrifice of the heroic underground operators who ran these escape lines across Belgium and France. Despite betrayal and infiltration from Germans, collaborators and traitors, over 3000 men were safely brought back to 'fight another day'. Langley and Airey Neave, who joined him after his historic home run from Colditz, had to wrestle with rival secret organisations for resources to carry out their vital work. All this and more is brilliantly described in this gripping, beautifully written book.

This book carries a foreword by the Late Airey Neave MP who was murdered by an IRA bomberAppropriately, the same publisher has reprinted, in a new format, the book by Airey Neave that was originally published in the early 1950s. The two men served together after escaping German prisons, having been captured during the closing stages of the Battle of France. Together they combined their experiences to help evaders and escapers to exfiltrate from Occupied Europe as members of MI9. Langley was head MI9. The two books complement each other and expand the combined story. Neave was wounded at Calais and ended up in the 'escape proof' Colditz Castle, where he was to make the first successful 'home run' escaping via Switzerland. Langley lost an arm at Dunkirk, was captured, but eventually made his escape Lille, Paris, Marseilles, Spain and Gibraltar. Firetrench Reviews A classic Second World War prisoner-of-war 'home run' escape story by the man who led M19, and who organised the POW escape chains from Nazi occupied Europe. Suffolk & Norfolk Life In Fight Another Day both Langley and Neave return to old wounds to publicly settle accounts with MI6. The story of MI9 becomes a stick with which to further beat the record of MI6. Given Neave's political prominence in the 1970s, and later conspiracy theories about his murder, the criticisms of MI6 contained in Fight Another Day are interesting on more than one level. Criticism of MI6 was significantly more muted in Darling's 1977 book and in the collaboration between Foot and Langley. Fight Another Day therefore represents a particularly significant text in terms of wartime British intelligence and the process of revealing that past in the 1970s. Pen and Sword are to be congratulated in reprinting this previously hard to purchase text. The Second World war Military Operations Research Group: http://secondworldwaroperationsresearchgroup.wordpress.com

James Maydon (Jimmy) Langley was born in 1916 and graduated from Cambridge before joining the Coldstream Guards. Post-war he worked for Fisons and then ran the Deben Bookshop at Woodbridge and the Ancient House Bookshop, Ipswich. He died in 1983

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9781781592533
ISBN 10	1781592535
Title	Fight Another Day
Author	J M Langley
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Hardback
Publisher	Pen & Sword Books Ltd
Year published	2013-07-01
Number of pages	254
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.
Note	Unavailable