Books in Brief

Moon Squadron, by Jerrard Tickell (Doubleday, $3.50). In 1940, when the British were shaking off the effects of the disaster in France, a secret military organization was set up with Winston Churchill’s blessing. This was the Special Operations Executive, and its mission was informal warfare, any kind that could be mounted in enemy-occupied country, including sabotage, spying, deception and the raising and supply of guerrilla bands. Most of the SOE people who worked on these matters in France were delivered by air, either by parachute or in equally hazardous landings on secret strips. This book describes some SOE adventures from the standpoint of Royal Air Force Squadron 138, which carried in the agents, picked them up and brought them back on occasion, and looked after their supply dropping, itself an exceedingly difficult and dangerous task. The Squadron’s Polish crews even made a gallant attempt to help the patriots of Warsaw betrayed by the Communist forces outside the town. Whatever the final military evaluation of “special ops” may be, Mr. Tickell underlines one moral certainty when he says that these fliers and agents showed the world “they believed in victory.”

F. FARR

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Winston Churchill

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Moon Squadron, by Jerrard Tickell (Doubleday, $3.50). In 1940, when the British were shaking off the effects of the disaster in France, a secret military organization was set up with Winston Churchill’s blessing. This was the Special Operations Executive, and its mission was informal warfare, any kind that could be mounted in enemy-occupied country, including sabotage, spying, deception and the raising and supply of guerrilla bands. Most of the SOE people who worked on these matters in France were delivered by air, either by parachute or in equally hazardous landings on secret strips. This book describes some SOE adventures from the standpoint of Royal Air Force Squadron 138, which carried in the agents, picked them up and brought them back on occasion, and looked after their supply dropping, itself an exceedingly difficult and dangerous task. The Squadron’s Polish crews even made a gallant attempt to help the patriots of Warsaw betrayed by the Communist forces outside the town. Whatever the final military evaluation of “special ops” may be, Mr. Tickell underlines one moral certainty when he says that these fliers and agents showed the world “they believed in victory.”

F. FARR