THEY CAME FROM THE SKY

There are three divisions to this book, each devoted to one of the operatives of England's secret Special Operations Executive. The three: Harry Ree (cover name, Henri), Francis Cammaerts (Roger), and Roger Landes (Aristide). Each of these British officers was parachuted into a different section of France during World War II. Each was charged with more or less the same duty: to organize extant resistance groups and create new ones, sabotage critical targets (railroads, factories, bridges, communications, etc.), keep clear of the informers who seemed constantly to turn up, and, after D-Day, to hinder German reinforcements trying to reach areas under allied attack. All three lived to tell the tale to the author, although Ree was badly shot up, and Cammaerts had to make a hairline escape from the Gestapo with the aid of Churchill's ""favorite spy,"" Christine. Between the horns of faithfulness-to-history and editing-in-favor-of-tale-telling, this book falls nearer the former: both action and intrigue are present, but there is also a great periphery of information which, rather than putting the particular agent against a contrasting backdrop, tends to camouflage him.