Popski's Private Army (Cassell Military Paperbacks)

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He went to France and worked in a factory until accepted for the French Army in which he saw some action with the artillery and was wounded.

During the raid, he saw women, men and children trying to escape the flames in huge water tanks set up by the fire brigade and boiling to death; he saw others burning in molten tarmac and yet others sucked into the air with their heads on fire, their bodies exploding in the heat.It overlooked the upper reaches of the River Chienti and beyond to the walled town of Camerino, which was the headquarters of a German mountain division. They deduced that when 1st Airborne, which was now being reinforced, advanced from the Taranto area, the Germans would fall back. As soon as he was able to get replacement jeeps, Popski made his way to the mountain village of Sarnano, 40 miles southwest of Fermo, where Yunnie and his four men met him. Popski went off recruiting, looking for men who were, or would soon be with training, expert in navigation; as drivers, machine gunners, mechanics; and in demolitions.

On June 12, Yunnie and a small advance party including two Royal Navy officers sailed in a Navy P-boat for the mouth of the River Tenna, 60 miles behind the front line.The Garibaldi Brigade was communist, under the command of Arrigo Boldrini, but ready to cooperate with anyone fighting the Germans. After being rejected by the Royal Navy and RAF, ‘Popski’, a Belgian of Russian ancestry by birth, joined the Libyan Arab Force (LAF) and later formed his own unit, LAF Commando. Popski was back 30 hours later to report that the Italian armed forces in the area were either friendly or apathetic, and although they would not take up arms against their former German comrades, they would do nothing to hamper Allied forces. His father took him to England, where Peniakoff resumed his studies at St John's College, Cambridge, reading mathematics. German intelligence had sent Carl Lody, a naval reserve officer, to the United Kingdom in 1914 where he failed to pose as an American and began to attract suspicion.