Moondrop to Gascony
- Author Anne-Marie Walters
- Narrator Nicola Barber
- Publisher Blackstone Publishing
- Run Time 9 hours and 41 minutes
- Format Audio
- Genre Biography: general, Biography: historical, political and military, Gender studies: women and girls, Memoirs, Second World War, True war and combat stories.
Titles Purchased
- 1-5
- 6-10
- 11-15
- 16-20
- Over 20
Price p/Title
- €9.95
- €8.95
- €7.95
- €6.95
- €5.95
Listen to a sample
What to expect
On a cold, moonlit night in January 1944, Anne-Marie Walters, just twenty years old, parachuted into southwest France to work with the Resistance in preparation for the long-awaited Allied invasion. The daughter of a British father and a French mother, she was to act as a courier for George Starr, head of the “Wheelwright” circuit of the Special Operations Executive. Over the next seven months, Walters crisscrossed the region, carrying messages, delivering explosives, arranging the escape of downed airmen, and receiving parachute drops of arms and personnel in the dead of night—living in constant fear of capture and torture by the Gestapo. Then, on the very eve of liberation, she was sent off on foot over the Pyrenees to Spain, carrying urgent dispatches for London.
Anne-Marie Walters wrote Moondrop to Gascony immediately after the war, while the events were still vivid in her mind. It is a tale of high adventure, comradeship and kindness, of betrayals and appalling atrocities, and of the often unremarked courage of many ordinary French men and women who risked their lives to help drive German armies from French soil. And through it all shines her’s quiet courage, a keen sense of humor and, above all, her pure zest for life.
For this new edition, David Hewson, a former regular-army officer interested in military history, adds biographical details for the main characters, identifies the real people behind the code names, and provides background information. He also tells about Anne-Marie Walters’ early life and what happened to her in the postwar years.
Critics Review
-
“One of the outstanding surveys of the real life of a secret agent.”
M. R. D. Foot, former British military historian and WWII British Army intelligence officer -
“With her clipped British accent, narrator Nicola Barber is a great choice to portray author Walters, whose memoir captures her adventures as a member of the French Resistance during WWII…Barber ably handles all the French names and locations as well as the passages in French…[in this] fascinating look at one woman’s contribution to the war effort.”
AudioFile
Subscribe to our newsletter
Sign up to get tailored content recommendations, product updates and info on new releases. Your data is your own: we commit to protect your data and respect your privacy.