One of the great books of the Second World War--Antony Beevor Hide and Seek, first published in 1954 and unavailable for many years, is surely among the best wartime memoirs.
In January 1942, Xan Fielding landed on German-occupied Crete with orders to disrupt the resupply of Rommel's Afrika Korps and establish an intelligence network in cooperation with the Cretan resistance movement. Working with bands of Cretan partisans, he succeeded magnificently.
In this memoir of his wartime exploits, Fielding presents a portrait of the quintessential English operative--amateur, gifted, daring, and charming. From the new foreword by Robert Messenger: Hide and Seek is a classic of British war literature, an understated account of a man's coming-of-age thanks to the sudden shouldering of great responsibility. Fielding is deprecating about the dangers and his own achievements. It is typical of the quiet and reticent man who preferred to live outside the limelight and wrote matter-of-factly about the war rather than with a gloss of adventure or heroism.
Xan Fielding (1918-1991) was a British writer and traveler, and a lifelong friend of Patrick Leigh Fermor, who served with him in Crete during World War II.
Fielding also translated many novels from French, most notably, The Bridge on the River Kwai and The Planet of the Apes.