This is the remarkable, newfound memoir of a U.S.
fighter pilot, who after his escapades of shooting down
German aircraft in France found himself shot down by
them in turn, thence to begin an even greater adventure.
Ted Fahrenwald was a 22-year-old daredevil pilot in the
famed 352nd Fighter Group when he bailed out of his
burning P-51 Mustang two days after D-Day on his 100th
mission. Parachuting into the farmlands of Normandy, he
was immediately picked up by the local Maquis, the
guerrilla branch of the French Resistance. His
rudimentary French, wily and gregarious personality, and
backwoods skills allowed him to quickly make fast
friends of these unruly outlaws, and he spent the next
several months carousing and raiding with their band.
But determined to rejoin his squadron, Ted left his new
comrades to hike through the fields and forests of the
most heavily occupied areas of northern France toward
the Channel coast, and the advancing Allied liberation
armies. Captured by the Wehrmacht, however, interrogated
as a spy, and interned in a POW camp, the author made a
daring escape just before his deportation to Germany.
Nothing diminished Teds talent for spotting the ironic
humor in even the most aggravating or dangerous
situations, nor his penchant for extracting his own
improvised and sometimes hilarious version of justice.
The author recorded his swashbuckling adventures at age
24, after his discharge and return to the States.
Afterward he went into business and never again put pen
to paper. But his immediate reminiscence of his wartime
experience - recently found - reveal a literary talent
that is rare. At once a suspenseful page-turner and an
outrageously witty tale of daring and friendship, this
book brings to life the daily intrigues of the multiple
sides of World War II.
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