They Arrived by Moonlight

This is the remarkable true story of a young Englishman who, for six perilous months, operated a secret radio set under the very noses of the Gestapo. He parachuted into enemy-occupied Belgium on a moonlit night in 1943. From then on Jacques Doneux lived with danger for twenty-four hours a day. This gripping story of his hazardous secret mission will rank as one of the most detailed, informative accounts of the day-to-day life of a wartime secret agent ever published.
Doneux records the series of incredible adventures that befell him from the moment he jumped into Belgium from a Halifax bomber to the epic 23-hour trek across the Pyrenees by which he escaped into Spain from German-occupied Europe.

This is an interesting account by a secret agent working as a wireless operator in occupied Belgium during the second world war.
The author is an Englishman of Belgian descent who volunteers to parachute into his family's country and support the resistance.

The book has two main elements for the reader. First it provides an insight into the danger and banality of the life of a secret agent working in enemy occupied territory. The author was lucky, he survived. Escape from arrest in the daily spot checks was mostly due to taking care and partly due to good luck on his part and boredom and perfunctoriness on the part of the controllers.

The book also provides a vivid impression of life in an occupied country, where the inhabitants have no rights and live under oppressive surveillance and the constant threat of violation by the intruder. In such a context the fear and bravery of those who helped the author each day, offering him accomodation or a site from which to operate his wireless, is all the more remarkable.

Jacques Doneux
Hardcover with d/w 224 pages St Ermin's Press 2001

Near Fine/Near Fine