Gardens of stone
Subtitle: my boyhood in the French Resistance
By: Stephen Grady
Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton
Published: 2013
Place of publication: London
Language: eng
Number of pages: 448
ISBN-13: 9781444760590; 9781444760613; 9781444760606
Subjects: World War (1939-1945) fast (OCoLC)fst01180924; Underground movements; World War, 1939-1945; War Underground movements; British Personal narratives
Description: September 2011, Halkidiki, Northern Greece: A solitary 86 year-old man gazes across an Aegean headland, knowing that he must finally confront his past. He begins to write. September 1939, Nieppe, Northern France: 14 year-old Stephen is living with his family, 25 kilometers from Ypres. His French mother battles with encroaching blindness. Failing to escape the advancing German army, his English father can no longer look after the war graves that cast so heartbreaking a shadow across the region. Stephen and his friend Marcel embark upon their great adventure: collecting souvenirs from strafed convoys and crashed Messerschmitts. But their world turns dark when they are arrested and imprisoned for sabotage and threatened with deportation or the firing squad. Upon his release, and still only 16, Stephen is recruited by the French Resistance. Growing up under the threat of imminent betrayal, he learns the arts of clandestine warfare, and?in a moment that haunts him still?how to kill. Such was the impact of Stephen Grady's work for the French Resistance, (especially during the countdown to D-Day and its bloody aftermath) that he was awarded the Croix de Guerre and the American Medal of Freedom.