Agent for the Resistance: A Belgian Saboteur in World War II - Couverture rigide

Texas A&M University Press

Couverture rigide

ISBN 10 : 0890966079 ISBN 13 : 9780890966075

Editeur : Texas A & M University Press, 1994

Synopsis

As German pressure on Europe escalated in the late 1930s, a young Belgian pacifist completing his Ph.D. in chemistry watched with horror the preparation for the inevitable invasion of his country. In the face of advancing German troops, his passion for freedom and his growing hatred of Hitler led him and a group of his friends into the resistance movement and five years of privation, danger, and, for some, torture and death, at the hands of the Gestapo.

This dramatic memoir traces Herman Bodson's transformation from a pacifist and scientist to, in his own words, "a cold fighter and a killer" in the Belgian underground, an expert in explosives and sabotage. Serving first in the OMBR (Office Militaire Belge de Resistance), he later formed a group of underground fighters in the Belgian Ardennes. They undertook blowing up military trains and installations-including the sabotage of a bridge which resulted in the deaths of some six hundred German soldiers-cutting German communication lines, and rescuing downed American fliers. Bodson also served as a medical aide to an American military doctor at Bastogne in the crucial days of the Battle of the Bulge. The powerfully told narrative follows him through the liberation of Belgium and his postwar efforts with the Belgian Special Force to unmask traitors and bring them to justice.

This, then, is the story of a man who gets caught up in a war and rather quickly becomes an efficient and clandestine killer, avenging the Nazi murder of a comrade in arms and revolting against an intolerable regime. It is also the story of the heroic resistance movement-how it came to be and how it fought bravely for the cause of human dignity and freedom.

Bodson's honest and absorbing inside account of the underground effort in occupied Belgium adds much to the record of World War II and provides insight into the intellectual and emotional responses that have led to the birth of underground movements in many nations. It is a compelling story of a people united in a comradeship in the defense of freedom.

A propos du livre

À propos de l'auteur

HERMAN BODSON, veteran of the Belgian underground, was born in Brussels. He holds the Docteur es Sciences in Chemistry from the Universite Libre de Bruxelles. After the war he lived for a decade in the Belgian Congo, now Zaire, then came to the United States to join the fauculty of Lake Erie College in Painesville, Ohio. Now retired, he lives in Taos, New Mexico.

Détails de l'édition

• Éditeur: Texas A & M University Press
• Date d'édition: 1994
• Langue: anglais
• ISBN 10: 0890966079
• ISBN 13: 9780890966075
• Reliure: Relié
• Nombre de pages: 262
• Coordonnées du fabricant: non disponible
• Personne responsable: non disponible