Arthur Stratton Arthur Mills Perce Stratton ( 1911 – 3 September 1975 ) was an American author and traveller . He was a playwright , a novelist , an OSS agent , a teacher in Turkey , and an assistant college professor in the US , before working for the CIA for about ten years and becoming a travel writer and biographer . While serving with the American Field Service as a World War II ambulance driver , he was twice awarded the Croix de guerre for bravery under fire , the first time on the Western Front , the second in the Libyan Desert . Early life . Stratton was born in Brunswick , Maine , the son of Arthur Mills Stratton ( 1868 – 1916 ) , a native of Portsea Island , Portsmouth , England , a music hall performer known as ' Arthur Rudd ' , by his marriage to Frances Cora Perce , which took place on 16 October 1902 in Kimberley , in what was then the Cape Colony . His mother , a soprano , who had been born in Baltimore in 1873 , lived until 1954 . Stratton ' s father was said to be of a family " impeccably Church and Army " , while his mother was described as " American as can be , which means English , Scottish , French and New York State Dutch " . Stratton ' s mother , the daughter of Colonel LeGrand W . Perce , a lawyer practising at the Chicago Bar , was one of six children and was described as " One of the most promising young singers of Chicago . . . Miss Perce has a pure , even soprano voice , of great range , clear , sweet quality and of more than usual power . " Stratton was educated at Bowdoin College in his hometown and at Columbia University ' s Graduate School , Stratton graduated BS from Bowdoin in the class of 1935 and Master of Arts from Columbia . Life and career . In the 1930s , Stratton was a young playwright in New York , although without great success . He was in France on the outbreak of the Second World War and joined the American Field Service as a volunteer . In 1940 , as an ambulance driver in France , he was the first foreign volunteer to be decorated by the French Army during the war . The annual Report of the President of Bowdoin referred to the incident : He was to receive the Croix de guerre twice . In late April 1942 , while serving with the Free French Forces in the Eighth Army commanded by Montgomery , he was very severely wounded , more than ten times , while trying to evacuate wounded soldiers from the trap laid by the German Army at Bir Hakeim in the Libyan Desert and was incapacitated from further duty . His act was seen as a feat of exceptional courage and he received his second medal . " Free France " magazine reported that " A . M . P . Stratton of Brunswick , Maine was wounded in the right leg and left arm while attempting to salvage a partially demolished ambulance . " The " Columbia alumni news " noted that " ARTHUR M . STRATTON , ' 42AM ( Bowdoin ) . . . was wounded at Bir Hacheim and was awarded the Croix de Guerre with Palms by the Free French . " At that time , Stratton was a close friend of the publisher Arnold Gingrich , whose magazine " Coronet " reported In November 1942 , Stratton returned to Bowdoin College to recover from his wounds . After his recovery , he was recruited as an agent of the Office of Strategic Services and moved to Turkey , where he taught English at Robert College in İstanbul . In 1948 , he was back in Brunswick as an assistant professor of English at Bowdoin College , based at 234 Maine Street . The same year , he published a novel called " Lord Love Us " . This was edited for Scribners by Burroughs Mitchell , a contemporary at Bowdoin . Stratton then worked for the Central Intelligence Agency for some ten years . In the course of this work , he travelled widely , returning to Turkey often and also living in India , Indochina , and Madagascar . His first major book was " One Man ' s India " ( 1955 ) , while Madagascar was to inspire his second travel book , " The Great Red Island " ( 1964 ) , a history of the country presented in the form of a biography weaving back and forth between the past and the present . Stratton paid his second and last visit to Madagascar in 1958 . His editor , Mitchell , later wrote of his travelling " to unlikely places like Madagascar , increasing his odd store of erudition " . In 1964 , he was living in Athens . Reviewing his " The Great Red Island " in 1965 , " The Times " said of him In its review of " The Great Red Island " , " The Spectator " drew attention to Stratton ' s description of a south - eastern stretch of the island as " Almost as lovely as the Attic coast " and noted that " Mr Stratton celebrates Madagascar . A New Englander who , as a volunteer with the Free French , first saw the name Madagascar on a can of singe doing duty for corned beef at Bir Hakeim in 1942 . . . Mr Stratton has a baroque turn of style that offers in the first few pages words like ' struthious , ' ' rhipidistia n ' , and ' xerophytic ' . His last major work to appear was a biography of the Ottoman architect Mimar Sinan , which when it was published in 1972 he dedicated " Chiefly to the Turks " . In 1973 , a donation Stratton made to Bowdoin College was noted in the President ' s annual report . He died on 3 September 1975 . In his memory , Barbara Stratton Bolling and Deborah S . Booker presented a collection of prints to the University of Missouri ' s Museum of Art and Archaeology , including work from Ethiopia , a lithographic portrait by Edvard Munch of the composer Frederick Delius , and comic art by Honoré Daumier . In 1945 , Stratton ' s sister Barbara had married Richard Walker Bolling , later a Democratic Congressman from Kansas City , Missouri , and chairman of the United States House Committee on Rules . Barbara Stratton had four children , one with Bolling and three by a previous marriage . Major publications . < div class = " references - small " >