Anthony M. Brooks obit

From today's New York Times:

Mr. Brooks was 20 when he parachuted into France in July 1942 as a British undercover agent dispatched to France to aid the anti-Nazi resistance — part of a special force that Churchill assigned to “set Europe ablaze”. . .

Before he was 21, Mr. Brooks received the Distinguished Service Order, a medal awarded for exceptional valor. Sabotage by his network of Resistance fighters succeeded in bringing railway transit to a stop in southern France, thereby preventing German troops from moving to the north as Allied forces pressed south after D-Day, on June 6, 1944. . .

Mr. Brooks’s triumph was in hindering the progress of the Second Panzer Division, an armored unit commanded by Heinz Guderian, considered the father of the blitzkrieg, or lightning war. That was accomplished by sabotaging rail cars carrying tanks, and by creating barriers by sabotaging other trains. Every train leaving Marseille for Lyon was derailed at least once.

Posted by David on May 21, 2007 4:17 PM