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More thrilling than any fiction, this book charts the true story of RAF crewman Denys Teare's year in Occupied France, a year spent a half-step ahead of Gestapo troopers determined to hunt him down.

This crisp memoir by a bombadier of the Royal Air Force was first published in England in 1954 but never before in the United States. During the first years of the war, it was the RAF Bomber Command that shouldered the responsibility of carrying England's war to its enemy's heartland. The author's RAF Lancaster Bomber was shot down over France on the night of September 5, 1943, and he spent the next year of his life as an "evader," determined to return to England to carry on the fight. He was able to avoid capture owing to the courage and generosity of countless French men and women who harbored him. The author relates chilling stories of German atrocities against both French civilians and Allied airmen, including watching the crew of five Americans from a shot-down American Flying Fortress bomber machine-gunned as they parachuted helplessly down. This taut and readable firsthand account of a life on the run in occupied France will appeal to any reader with an interest in World War II's European theater. Recommended for larger public and academic libraries.-Robert Andrews, Duluth P.L. Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.