Behind Enemy Lines

Behind enemy lines is an examination of gender relations in wartime using the Special Operations Executive as a case study. Drawing on personal testimonies, in particular oral history and autobiography, as well as official records and film, it explores the extraordinary experiences of male and female agents who were recruited and trained by a British organisation and infiltrated into Nazi-Occupied France to encourage sabotage and subversion during the Second World War. With its original interpretation of a wealth of primary sources, it examines how these ordinary, law-abiding civilians were transformed into para-military secret agents, equipped with silent killing techniques and trained in unarmed combat. This fascinating, timely and engaging book is concerned with the ways in which the SOE veterans reconstruct their wartime experiences of recruitment, training, clandestine work and for some, their captivity, focusing specifically upon the significance of gender and their attempts to pass as French civilians. This examination of the agents of an officially-sponsored insurgent organisation makes a major contribution to British socio-cultural history, war studies and gender studies and will appeal to both the general reader, as well as to those in the academic community.

ISBN 0719075696   Pages 256 ISBN13 9780719075698 (What's this?)   Volumes 1 Publisher Manchester University Press   Weight (grammes) 440 Imprint Manchester University Press   Published in Manchester Format Hardback   Series title Cultural History of Modern War Publication date 01 Nov 2007   Height (mm) 216 Library of Congress D731   Width (mm) 138 DEWEY 940.548641   Spine width (mm) 25 DEWEY edition DC22   Academic level Undergraduate, Postgraduate

1		Reconstructing the Special Operations Executive		1
2		'To pass as a native': recruiting for operations in France		25
3		'Taught how to play a part': training agents for undercover work		51
4		'A jittery business': representations of anxiousness in personal and filmic accounts		85
5		'Living a different life': performing 'heroic' and 'stoic' masculinities		113
6		'The best disguise': performing femininities for clandestine purposes		136
7		'Pretending at once': passing performances in captivity		155
8		'So many happy memories': demobilisation and the return to civvy street		180
App		Biographies of interviewees		206
		Bibliography		215
		Index		229

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