Aterrem em Portugal! - Landed in Portugal

“Aterrem em Portugal” was published in November 2008. It contains the history of dozens of landings from Allied and Axis planes that happened in Portugal during World War II. With the country lying between the routes that linked the United Kingdom to the operational theatres in the Mediterranean, Middle East, Africa and others there were over one hundred emergency landings during the six years of conflict.

About a dozen airmen from the Commonwealth and from USA that where in Portugal between 1941 and 1945, were interviewed for the book. From others, already deceased, it was possible to include information from diaries that family members still posses.

Several Portuguese witnesses also recount their versions about what they saw and lived during those years when war surrounded the country. It was also possible to put together documents from Portuguese, British, Americans, Australians and German archives.

Note that the book Aterrem em Portugal is in Portuguese. However, the fascinating website contains a large amount of information in English, including a list of all the planes that crashed in Portugal during the war.

Available from:
The Author - Carlos Guerreiro

Albanian Escape - The True Story of U.S. Army Nurses behind Enemy Lines

On November 8, 1943, U.S. Army nurse Agnes Jensen stepped out of a cold rain in Catania, Sicily, into a C-53 transport plane. But she and twelve other nurses never arrived in Bari, Italy, where they were to transport wounded soldiers to hospitals farther from the front lines. A violent storm and pursuit by German Messerschmitts led to a crash landing in a remote part of Albania, leaving the nurses, their team of medics, and the flight crew stranded in Nazi-occupied territory.

What followed was a dangerous nine-week game of hide-and-seek with the enemy, a situation President Roosevelt monitored daily. Albanian partisans aided the stranded Americans in the search for a British Intelligence Mission, and the group began a long and hazardous journey to the Adriatic coast. During the following weeks, they crossed Albania's second highest mountain in a blizzard, were strafed by German planes, managed to flee a town moments before it was bombed, and watched helplessly as an attempt to airlift them out was foiled by Nazi forces.

Albanian Escape is the suspense-filled story of the only group of Army flight nurses to have spent any length of time in occupied territory during World War II. The nurses and flight crew endured frigid weather, survived on little food, and literally wore out their shoes trekking across the rugged countryside. Thrust into a perilous situation and determined to survive, these women found courage and strength in each other and in the kindness of Albanians and guerrillas who hid them from the Germans.

Available from:
University Press of Kentucky

The Grey Wolves of Eriboll

The surrender of the German U-boat fleet at the end of World War II was perhaps the principal event in the war's endgame which signified to the British people that peace really had arrived. It is little known that the majority of the surrenders of U-boats on active west-European sea patrols in May 1945 were supervised in Loch Eriboll, an isolated sea loch on Scotland's far north-westernmost coast

With an estimated 160 U-boats on active patrol at the end of the war, it was imperative that these boats were made aware of the capitulation of German armed forces, that they accepted the surrender arrangements and then proceeded, surfaced, to designated British ports.

Loch Eriboll's attraction as the reception port was its isolation and its safe, deep-water anchorage - ideal for the arrival of armed U-boats that might still be intent on one last show of defiance. News of the momentous event was heavily censored - nothing appeared in the local press. Thirty-three U-boats, their officers and men surrendered between 10th and 22nd May 1945. The boats were arrested, boarded and disarmed; in some cases this vital exercise was completed by the simple expedient of lobbing ammunition, explosives and torpedo pistols overboard.

Each U-boat has been positively identified and detailed information provided including contemporary photographs, boat or flotilla emblem, together with the coordinates of where each boat was eventually destroyed in the north Atlantic. However, not all were destroyed by the Allies, some were retained by the British, American, Russian or French navies as spoils of war but the vast majority were lost accidentally or scrapped with the passage of time.

The Grey Wolves of Eriboll includes a wealth of historical insights including the German Surrender Document; detailed descriptions of the construction, service careers and circumstances of each surrendered U-boat; details of the frigates that supervised the surrenders; Operation Deadlight (a hasty plan to ensure the U-boats could not again be used aggressively) and contemporary newspaper reports.

Available from:
Whittles Publishing

Air Sea Rescue During the Siege of Malta: An eyewitness account of life with HSL107 1941-43

Air Sea Rescue During the Siege of Malta provides one of few available eyewitness tales about the often overlooked role of the Air / Sea Rescue teams during World War II. Focussing on High Speed Launch HSL107 which rescued close to 100 pilots during the siege of Malta, this tale is a personal account by Bill Jackson, a crew member of HSL 107.

While everyone around them was hell-bent on death and destruction, the crews of the Air / Sea Rescue Units were dedicated to the survival of both friend and foe alike. They carried out their job with little recognition and with great heroism. Battling the elements, often in appalling sea conditions, and under near-constant air attack from a most determined enemy, the units shared the privations endured by the islanders, coming close to starvation as the Axis forces inched toward invasion.

This book shares with the reader the elation of successful rescues, the exhilaration of the High Speed Launch at full throttle, and the determination of the Units to turn out at all hours in all weathers to go to the aid of both Allied and Axis pilots.

Bill Jackson was born and raised in Workington, Cumbria. He attended RAF Cranwell No 1 Electrical and Wireless School and was posted to Malta as a Wireless Operator Mechanic (WOM) with crew of HSL 107, the 'Old Lady' of Malta. Bill was repatriated in Sept 1943. He sadly died in late 2009, before this account was published.

Available from:
Troubador Publishing

Master of None - The Life Enriched Reminiscences of a 20th Century Survivor

An autobiography of a retired Army officer, Master of None follows the complete life story of Major Douglas Goddard, from his early memoirs of childhood days in south east London and Suffolk farms, then focusing on his service as a regular army officer who fought with the 43rd Wessex Division during World War 2 from the Normandy landings through to Bremen. After the war, he was involved in the repatriation of some 30,000 Russian & Polish displaced people from the area around the Belsen/Bergen Nazi concentration camps (including attending the trial of the camp guards) and saw post-war service in the Middle East during the Suez Canal crisis.

In 1938 he enlisted with the Territorial Army as part of the front line anti-invasion force before regimental duty with the 112th (Wessex) Field Regiment Royal Artillery (RA). During the Second World War he landed on Juno Beach in June 1944 and took part in major campaigns including Hill 112/Maltot, assault crossing of the Seine, Market Garden (Arnhem), breeching the Siegfried Line, the Ardennes offensive, assault crossing of the Rhine and finally through Holland into Germany at Bremen.

In 1946 he was granted a regular commission in the RA serving as an Adjutant (Dortmund), Staff Captain (London), Battery Captain in Egypt during the Suez Canal crisis then Jordan, before returning to Larkhill in the UK as a Gunnery Instructor achieving the rank of Major.

The Author has previously published the 112th Wessex Field Regiment’s wartime history which sold some 600 copies and is a regular speaker on battlefield tours, with an annual engagement mentoring on the Joint Services Command & Staff College Advanced ‘Realities of War’ course.

For more information on Major Goddard's wartime service, see the BBC People's War site.

Available from:
Troubador Publishing

Trautmann's Journey: From Hitler Youth to FA Cup Legend

Every football fan knows the legend of Bert Trautmann. Fifteen minutes from the end of the 1956 FA Cup Final, Trautmann - the goalkeeper for Manchester City - falls spectacularly mid-tackle. He continues to play on to the end of the game, ensuring Manchester City win the cup. An X-ray later reveals a broken neck.

But there is more to this legend than a plucky goalkeeper. Bert Trautmann was born Bernhardt Trautmann in Germany in 1923. Brought up in a country already in the grip of National Socialism, he joined the Hitler Youth at the age of ten and went to fight for the Fatherland when he was seventeen. Despite enduring inconceivable hardships in the name of war, Trautmann continued to believe wholeheartedly in the cause. Until one day he stumbled into enemy territory to be greeted by the words, 'Fancy a cup of tea, Fritz?'

What follows is an extraordinary story of transformation. Bernhardt - a Nazi living in a POW camp in Cheshire - becomes Bert. From an amateur footballer working on a bomb disposal unit in Liverpool, to celebrated Manchester City goalkeeper adored by thousands, Catrine Clay charts Trautmann's conversion from Hitler Youth star to all-England football hero, mirroring Europe's own journey through the horrors of war to a fragile post-war peace.

Available from:
Amazon

Two Survived: The Timeless WWII Epic of Seventy Days at Sea in an Open Boat

On August 21, 1940, the German armed merchant raider Widder torpedoed the British merchantman SS Anglo Saxon approximately 800 miles west of the Canary Islands. The survivors were machine-gunned as they tried to escape in their lifeboats.

One little boat escaped with seven men. Five of them perished, but Robert Tapscott and Wilbert Widdicombe endured for seventy full days and 2,300 miles to landfall on the other side of the Atlantic.

This is the incredible account of their ordeal, one of the most thrilling stories of the sea ever written—and one that almost never came to light. “It has seldom happened,” writes William McFee in the introduction, “that a narrative so circumstantial, so entirely stripped of all humbug and false sentiment, has come out of the depths of the sea, to inspire us with admiration for human valor.”

Read more about the SS Anglo Saxon on the Imperial War Museum website.

Available from:
Amazon