Story Description:
Little, Brown and
Company|May 7, 2013|Hardcover|ISBN: 978-0-316-22022-4
The compelling
untold story of a group of stranded U.S. Army nurses and medics fighting to
escape Nazi – occupied Europe.
When 26 Army nurses
and medics – part of the 807th Medical Air Evacuation Transport
Squadron – boarded a cargo plane for transport in November 1943 they never
anticipated the crash landing in Nazi-occupied Albania that would lead to their
months-long struggle for survival. A
drama that captured the attention of the American public, the group and its
flight crew dodged bullets and battled winter storms as they climbed mountains
and fought to survive, aided by courageous villagers who risked death at Nazi
hands to help them.
A mesmerizing tale
of the courage and heroism of ordinary people, THE SECRET RESCUE tells not only a new story of struggle and
endurance, but also one of the daring rescue attempts by clandestine American
and British organizations amid the tumultuous landscape of the war.
My Review:
Twenty-six Army
Air Forces flight nurses and medics board a military transport plane in
November of 1943, they never anticipate a crash landing in Nazi-occupied
territory, or their ensuing months and their long fight to survive.
There were:
thirteen female nurses, thirteen medics, and a four-man flight crew.
In December of 1943,
Gavan “Garry” Duffy, a twenty-four-year-old special operations lieutenant
working for Britain was looking through his binoculars from the cover of a
hillside in Albania and watched in frustration as waves of German troops and
tanks moved through the steep and winding roads of a town on the valley’s other
side. American rescue planes were
supposed to land that morning in a risky and dramatic mission to evacuate a
group of stranded army personnel. These
people had been lost for fifty-two days and were barely surviving the
treacherous winter landscape while evading capture by the Germans.
Three German
trucks and one armored car drove from the town and parked near the main road
that ran in front of the main road making it too risky for the rescue planes.
The men and women
to be rescued wore filthy, tattered uniforms and the cold icy wind just blasted
through their clothing pushing against their severely malnourished bodies. They were so sick and weak from hunger, sickness,
and despair and riddled with lice.
There were ninety
personnel of the newly formed 807th Medical Air Evacuation Transport
Squadron (MAETS) piled into two railroad cars in Louisville, Kentucky the
second week of August in 1943. The group
included twenty-five female nurses who were busy stashing their field packs
away and settling into their assigned seats.
The officers, including the nurses, sat in one car, while the enlisted
men were assigned to another each having no clue what was soon to become of
them.
All of them were
new members of the Army Air Forces’ MAETS and were part of an innovative
program that transported the wounded and sick from hospitals near the
frontlines to better equipped medical facilities for additional care. During the course of the war, MAETS would
transport more than one million troops, with only forty-six patients dying in
flight. I would say that was an
absolutely awesome accomplishment on their part!
This was such an
interesting story that I just couldn’t put the book down and read it in two
parts. Had I of had the time, I would
have read it in one day.
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