ALONE HE WENT (248 pp.)—Anthony Richardson—Norton ($3).
Air Marshal Sir Basil Embry, D.S.O., is today commander in chief of Britain's Fighter Command. But in May 1940 he was a mere squadron leader, just notified of his promotion to group captain. Promptly he decided to lead his old squadron on a farewell sweep over northern France. An hour or so later, while the rest of the squadron headed home, Group Captain Embry, his plane shot to pieces, was "gently, blissfully" descending upon the German lines by parachute.
The Germans captured him, but Embry was back in Britain again within ten weeks. He made his first break—from a marching column of P.W.s—by taking a lightning header into a ditch of muddy water. The guards never saw him go. He exchanged his R.A.F. uniform for "the most beautiful coat he'd ever seen" (he borrowed it from a scarecrow) and headed for the British lines.
As Embry advanced in tatterdemalion disguise, the British retreated. Once he got close enough to be in danger from their artillery, but he never managed to catch them. When he reached the Channel, he found every coastal boat, down to the smallest dinghy, smashed in by
German sledge hammers. Recaptured, he killed two guards with a rifle butt and escaped; recaptured again a few days later by a German patrol, he managed to persuade an enemy intelligence officer that he was an Irish revolutionary whose sole aim was to get back home and be a thorn in the side of the British. "Put me on a German ship," he begged, "and send me to Ireland ... [or] let me get to Spain, and there I'll find a ship."
Embry got into Spain all right—curled up in the tail compartment of a British agent's car. Meanwhile, in matted beard and filthy clothes, he had witnessed the Germans' triumphal entry into Paris, carefully studied the layout of a strategic airfield, and spent at least one comfortable night cheekily sleeping in the bed of an absent German general. Like most men who escaped through Occupied France, he speaks almost with awe of the peasants and plain folk who unhesitatingly risked their lives to help him on his way.
Alone He Went properly should count as an extraordinary story. But its popularity is likely to be dimmed by two defects. One of them: it is written by an R.A.F. colleague of Embry's, and thus has neither the personal touch of autobiography nor the literary touch of a professional "ghost." The other: World War II has already produced so many amazing tales that nothing short of a masterpiece is likely to raise much flutter.