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Decision Before Dawn
George Locke Howe was born in Bristol, Rhode Island. He served with the U.S. Naval Reserve Force during the First World War, enlisting as a Hospital Apprentice in September 1917, stationed at Newport before travelling overseas to Queenstown, Ireland, in 1918. He also served in Liverpool, Brest and on the U.S.S. Plattsburg, Cape Finisterre, returning to the US in 1919 where he was discharged in May. After continuing his education at Harvard, Howe followed in his father's footsteps and became an architect in Rhode Island. During World War II, Howe served in Europe with the OSS unit, G-2, U.S. Seventh Army, in Algeria and France, responsible for documentation and cover stories. Call It Freedom, in which an anti-Nazi German prisoner-of-war volunteers to be dropped behind enemy lines as a spy for the American army, was based on actual events and Howe's experiences in Army Intelligence.
- GenresFictionWorld War II
361 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1949
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
October 24, 2018
I found this book in an old bookstore in RI. My book is copyright 1948.
September 7, 2016
This is an excellent book about the waning days of WWII, giving us a view of Germany when only the Gestapo (and by extension their far-reaching bureaucracy) was still functioning efficiently.
I was inspired to read this after watching the film, Decision Before Dawn, which starred a young Oskar Werner as a German POW-turned-spy for the Allies. Like any film adaptation, there were quite a few differences between movie and book—enough to make the book quite suspenseful even after watching the film. It’s noted for both film and book that the story was inspired by true events, so it's hard to say how much is pure fiction and how much is a mish-mash of the author’s own experiences and people he knew, but the author did indeed serve in the OSS during the war.
With regard to how spies were used to help end the war, both movie and book ask the following question:
One question stays with me, unanswered but unforgotten: why does the Spy risk his life? For what compulsion, and after what torment in himself? The gunpoint never forced a man to loyalty, and still less to Treason, whose rewards at best are slim and distant. If the Spy wins, he is ignored; if he loses, he is hanged.
Near the end of 1944, the Allies had reached the Rhine and realized their French spies could no longer help them behind enemy lines. They looked for ways to indirectly recruit Germans (or those who could pass for German) to go into enemy territory and report back on positions, munitions and recruit others in the cause (they weren’t above using Communists, for example, to help end the war). They called these agents “Joes,” and they are mostly referred to by their codenames throughout the story. The narrator tells us the story has been:
...pieced together from all we can remember and a little we can presume, of three Joes who took their chance; one for riches and one for risk and one for faith.
Those Joes are:
--Tiger, a rather boastful and untrustworthy opportunist with communist ties whose talents and past experiences are nevertheless worth the risk (for riches).
--Paluka, the radio operator of Russian descent (for risk). This is one example of how the book is different from the movie; the radio operator in the movie is an American officer with a different perspective.
--Happy, a 19 year-old German POW who had been a medic in the Luftwaffe (for faith, motivated by a desire to see peace reinstated for his people once it’s clear they cannot win the war).
Once the mission begins in February 1945, the story is mostly through Happy’s eyes as he journeys from his drop in Bavaria to Mannheim (the other agents were dropped separately and ended up in a safe-house in Mannheim where they were tasked with paving the way for the Allies once they’re able to enter the city). Happy has five days to make his observations and report back.
This is a book where the details enrich and add tension and atmosphere rather than bog the story down and bear the stamp of someone who has lived it rather than just read about it. I highly recommend it to anyone interested in WWII or espionage fiction. It definitely deserves to be rescued from obscurity (I was quite surprised to find an ebook available for this).
I was inspired to read this after watching the film, Decision Before Dawn, which starred a young Oskar Werner as a German POW-turned-spy for the Allies. Like any film adaptation, there were quite a few differences between movie and book—enough to make the book quite suspenseful even after watching the film. It’s noted for both film and book that the story was inspired by true events, so it's hard to say how much is pure fiction and how much is a mish-mash of the author’s own experiences and people he knew, but the author did indeed serve in the OSS during the war.
With regard to how spies were used to help end the war, both movie and book ask the following question:
One question stays with me, unanswered but unforgotten: why does the Spy risk his life? For what compulsion, and after what torment in himself? The gunpoint never forced a man to loyalty, and still less to Treason, whose rewards at best are slim and distant. If the Spy wins, he is ignored; if he loses, he is hanged.
Near the end of 1944, the Allies had reached the Rhine and realized their French spies could no longer help them behind enemy lines. They looked for ways to indirectly recruit Germans (or those who could pass for German) to go into enemy territory and report back on positions, munitions and recruit others in the cause (they weren’t above using Communists, for example, to help end the war). They called these agents “Joes,” and they are mostly referred to by their codenames throughout the story. The narrator tells us the story has been:
...pieced together from all we can remember and a little we can presume, of three Joes who took their chance; one for riches and one for risk and one for faith.
Those Joes are:
--Tiger, a rather boastful and untrustworthy opportunist with communist ties whose talents and past experiences are nevertheless worth the risk (for riches).
--Paluka, the radio operator of Russian descent (for risk). This is one example of how the book is different from the movie; the radio operator in the movie is an American officer with a different perspective.
--Happy, a 19 year-old German POW who had been a medic in the Luftwaffe (for faith, motivated by a desire to see peace reinstated for his people once it’s clear they cannot win the war).
Once the mission begins in February 1945, the story is mostly through Happy’s eyes as he journeys from his drop in Bavaria to Mannheim (the other agents were dropped separately and ended up in a safe-house in Mannheim where they were tasked with paving the way for the Allies once they’re able to enter the city). Happy has five days to make his observations and report back.
This is a book where the details enrich and add tension and atmosphere rather than bog the story down and bear the stamp of someone who has lived it rather than just read about it. I highly recommend it to anyone interested in WWII or espionage fiction. It definitely deserves to be rescued from obscurity (I was quite surprised to find an ebook available for this).
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews