the Telegraph obit of Count Robert de la Rochefoucauld..

[dellzeqq]

is worth a read

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/9365640/Count-Robert-de-La-Rochefoucauld.html#

as is that of Knut Haugland

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obi...-forces-obituaries/6901543/Knut-Haugland.html

(thanks to the wonderful Barry Glendenning)

 

[Nihal]

Nice read,Robert fooled a lot of people then

 

[dan_bo]

Blimey- a walk on part in the war.

 

[betty swollocks]

Haugland is mentioned in Leo Marks' book, 'Between Silk and Cyanide', which is a rattling good read.

 

[Noodley]

Never heard of either of them, and now that they are dead I feel I'd be wasting my time.

 

[DCLane]

I wonder what some of today's benefits & Jerem Kyle's TV recipients would make of those exploits.

(note - the 'some', many need them and deserve them IMHO before I get comments)

 

[Dayvo]

Good call, DZ!

This fella lived a very colourful life:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obi...tuaries/8568395/Sir-Patrick-Leigh-Fermor.html

And another Norwegian:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obi...orces-obituaries/9258278/Gunnar-Sonsteby.html

 

[NotthatJasonKenny]

Both trained in England...wonder when it started to go wrong for us?

 

[Ajay]

Wow, a very impressive pair of Counts/Knuts.



(sorry)

 

[dawesome]

Instead he faked an epileptic fit and, when the guard opened the door to his cell, hit him over the head with a table leg before breaking his neck. (“Thank Goodness for that pitilessly efficient training,” he noted). After putting on the German’s uniform, La Rochefoucauld walked into the guardroom and shot the two other German jailers. He then simply walked out of the fort, through the deserted town, and to the address of an underground contact.

shut up.

 

[dawesome]

Nancy Wake:

She led 7,000 guerrilla fighters in battles against the Nazis in the northern Auvergne, just before the D-Day landings in 1944. On one occasion, she strangled an SS sentry with her bare hands. On another, she cycled 500 miles to replace lost codes.​

​

Nancy recalled later in life that her parachute had snagged in a tree. The French resistance fighter who freed her said he wished all trees bore "such beautiful fruit". Nancy retorted: "Don't give me that French shoot."​

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/w...o-led-7000-men-against-the-nazis-2334156.html

 

[Red Light]

Ah, Kon-Tiki. Years of heroic effort that all came to nought when genetics came along and showed the Polynesians had migrated from Asia not South America. Good Boys Own stuff though, what?

 

[dellzeqq]

A familly who kept their own carriage for rail journeys. How jealous would Miranda be?

I knew a chap who had grown up as a refugee that his father ruled (to be honest I was intent on purloining his daughter's virtue, and listening to his tedious reminiscences seemed a small price to pay). His childhood was spent in a railway carriage, shunted all over Europe. His abiding memory was of his father's feet sticking out of the bottom of the bed, which, being railway standard issue, was short, far too short for his old man............

 

[dellzeqq]

Sounds like being Greg's roomy.

Gregulator is
a) less well connected
b) vastly more successful in the purloined virtue stakes

 

[dellzeqq]

it might have had something to do with the gauge of the railway.