Moondrop to Gascony

On a cold, moonlit night in January 1944, Anne-Marie Walters, just 20 years old, parachuted into southwest France to work with the Resistance in preparation for the long-awaited Allied invasion. The daughter of a British father and a French mother, she was to act as a courier for George Starr, head of the WHEELWRIGHT circuit of SOE. Over the next seven months Anne-Marie criss-crossed the region, carrying messages, delivering explosives, arranging the escape of downed airmen and receiving parachute drops of arms and personnel at dead of night - living in constant fear of capture and torture by the Gestapo. Then, on the very eve of liberation, she was sent off on foot over the Pyrenees to Spain, carrying urgent despatches for London. Anne-Marie Walters wrote Moondrop to Gascony immediately after the war, while the events were still vivid in her mind. It is a tale of high adventure, comradeship and kindness, of betrayals and appalling atrocities, and of the often unremarked courage of many ordinary French men and women who risked their lives to help drive German armies from French soil. And through it all shines Anne-Marie's quiet courage, a keen sense of humour and, above all, her pure zest for life. AUTHOR: Anne-Marie Walters was born in Geneva in 1923 to British and French parents. In 1943 she was recruited as a secret agent by the Special Operations Executive (SOE) and parachuted into Southwest France to act as courier for the WHEELWRIGHT circuit in support of the local Resistance. After the War, Anne-Marie worked as a journalist, living in New York, Paris and Barcelona, and founded two literary agencies. She died in 1998. 16 b/w illustrations