I was in a
secondhand-book shop the other day rummaging semi-blindly – it was a dark and
dingy place, and having just stepped out of the rain I was having trouble with my
glasses steaming up – and I was just wondering to myself why all the stock
seemed to be priced (in pencil) at £10.00 when I spotted an unassuming-looking volume called Spies and Saboteurs priced at ‘£1 .00’. Note the space
between the 1 and the decimal point. A quick scan of the first few pages was
enough to tell me it would be an instant addition to my ‘Best Books Ever Read’ list
and I went straight downstairs to pay for it. The owner looked at the price
inside and hesitated, but it wasn’t me who had rubbed out the 0 (honest) and he
had no choice but to charge only the one pound for it. Anyway, what about the
actual book? Published by Gollancz in 1955, it is American psychologist William
J. Morgan’s account of assessing OSS (Office of Strategic Services) candidates
in England in WWII. Successful candidates were parachuted into France as... spies
and saboteurs. Written in wonderfully plain English – one chapter is headed ‘Minefield
and Acid Bath’ – it is a fascinating insight into how the brightest and bravest
can make fools of themselves when tested under pressure. It is also full of
amusing anecdotes. My favourite is how they early on identified one candidate
as a German spy, strung him along for months on end then, when they finally
dropped him over France, ‘forgot’ to attach his ripcord to the fixing-point in
the plane… My copy of the book doesn’t have one, but
this is what the dust jacket looked like:
(Apologies for the quality of the pic, but it was the only one I could find online.)
Good to have you back - but that's a horrible story (if I understand it right).
ReplyDeleteI don't think you would have found many people at the time shedding a tear for one less Nazi murderer. Agents were told always to check for themselves that the line from their parachutes to the fixing point in the plane had been properly secured, and not just assume that it had been, so in the final analysis the spy only had himself to blame.
DeleteThat makes it much clearer.
ReplyDelete