Many of the most famous escapes in history took place during the Second World War. 

These daring flights from Nazi-occupied Europe would never have been possible but for the assistance of a hitherto secret British service: MI9. 

This small, dedicated and endlessly inventive team gave hope to the men who had fallen into enemy hands, and aid to resistance fighters in occupied territory. 

It sent money, maps, clothes, compasses, even hacksaws – and in return coded letters from the prisoner-of-war camps and provided invaluable news of what was happening in the enemy's homeland. 

Understaffed and under-resourced, MI9 nonetheless made a terrific contribution to the Allied war effort. 

First published in 1979, (this version is the 2020 reissue; same book different cover) this work tells the full, inside story of an extraordinary almost unknown organisation of Men & Women.

Authors Details.

M.R.D. Foot (1919-2012) was the son of a career soldier who was educated at Winchester College and New College, Oxford prior to 1939. He joined the British Army on the outbreak of the Second World War and was commissioned into a Royal Engineers searchlight battalion. In 1941 searchlight units transferred to the Royal Artillery. 

By 1942, he was serving at Combined Operations Headquarters, but wanting to see action he joined the SAS as an intelligence officer and was parachuted into France after D-Day (1944).                                                                    He was for a time a prisoner of war, and was severely injured during one of his attempts at escape.                    For his service with the French Resistance he was twice mentioned in despatches and awarded the Croix de Guerre.                                                                                                                                                                                      He ended the war as a major and remained in the Army after 1945, transferring to the Intelligence Corps in 1950.

After the war he taught at Oxford University for eight years before becoming a Professor of Modern History at Manchester University. His experiences during the war gave him a lifelong interest in the European resistance movements, intelligence matters and the experiences of prisoners of war.                                                                This led him to become the official historian of SOE, with privileged access to its long secret records, allowing him to write some of the first, and still definitive, accounts of its wartime work, especially in France.                Even so, his definitive works about the histories of SOE (1984) and MI9 (1979) took four years to get the necessary clearances from MI6 before in each case either book could be written. 

In 2001 he was awarded the OBE (CBE).

Some of his major Military works include:

Men in Uniform: Military Manpower in Modern Industrial Societies (1961).                                                                          SOE in France. An Account of the Work of the British Special Operations Executive in France 1940–1944 (1966).  War and Society: Historical Essays in Honour and Memory of J. R. Western 1926–1971 Editor (1973).                Resistance – An Analysis of European Resistance to Nazism 1940–1945 (1977).                                                            Six Faces of Courage (1978).                                                                                                                                              MI9: Escape and Evasion 1939–1945 with J. M. Langley (1979).                                                                                      Little Resistance: Teenage English Girl's Adventures in Occupied France with Antonia Hunt, née Lyon-Smith (1982)   SOE: The Special Operations Executive 1940–1946 (1984).                                                                                              Art and War: Twentieth Century Warfare as Depicted By War Artists (1990).                                                          Open and Secret War, 1938-1945 (1991).                                                                                                                            The Oxford Companion to World War II with I. C. B. Dear (1995).                                                                                    Foreign Fields: The Story of an SOE Operative (1997).                                                                                                    SOE in the Low Countries (2001).                                                                                                                                        Secret Lives: Lifting the Lid on Worlds of Secret Intelligence Editor (2002)                                                                The Next Moon: The Remarkable True Story of a British Agent Behind the Lines in Wartime France with Ewen Southby-Tailyour and André Hue (2004).                                                                                                              Clandestine Sea Operations in the Mediterranean, North Africa and the Adriatic 1940–1944 with Richard Brooks (2004).                                                                                                                                                                        Memories of an SOE Historian (2008).

J.M. 'Jimmy' Langley (1916-1983)

Jimmy Langley was born in Wolverhampton, England and He was educated at Uppingham School and Trinity Hall, Cambridge.                                                                                                                                                                     Having served as a cadet under officer in the Uppingham School Contingent of the Junior Division of the Officers' Training Corps, he was commissioned as a second lieutenant in the Coldstream Guards (Supplementary Reserve) on 4 July 1936 and promoted to lieutenant on 4 July 1939. He was mobilised for War Service on 24 August 1939 and served with the 2nd Battalion of the Coldstream Guards, after the declaration of war in 1939 he was sent to France as part of the British Expeditionary Force (BEF).

In early June 1940, during the savage battles against the SS in and around Dunkirk, he was seriously wounded in the head and arm while covering the retreat.                                                                                                           Unable to walk, he was left behind at a Casualty Clearing Station, where he was captured, and later had his left arm amputated by a German Army doctor.                                                                                                                      On 10 October 1940 he escaped from a hospital in Lille and made his way to Marseille.                                           Like other British prisoners inside the 'Vichy Zone' of France, he was held at Fort Saint-Jean after being recaptured, though this confinement was nominal, as they were only required to attend roll-call once a week, but were otherwise allowed to move freely.                                                                                                                 While in Marseille He worked as a courier for the escape line run by the Scottish officer Ian Garrow and Church Minister Donald Caskie. In February 1941 after being declared to be "unfit for further military service" by a Medical Board due to his injuries, he was repatriated to England, arriving there in March 1941.

On his return to England he was personally recruited by Claude Dansey into the Secret Intelligence Service (MI6) to serve as a liaison officer between MI6 and MI9, where most of his work involved the support of escape and evasion lines inside of north-west Europe.                                                                                                                            He was promoted to captain on 30 October 1943, and to major on 14 April 1944, and then to acting-lieutenant colonel on 14 January 1944.                                                                                                                                                    In January 1944 Jimmy Langley left MI9 and was appointed to a newly formed joint command made up of a new Anglo-American unit; Intelligence School 9 (Western European Area); which was attached to SHAEF during the western campaign of 1944–45. 

IS9(WEA)'s role was to organise escape and evasion, setting up reception centres, collating intelligence and organising the return of personnel to the UK.                                                                                                             These operations extended to liberated POWs as their camps were overrun and liberated by advancing Allied Ground Units.                                                                                                                                                                           It was also involved in setting up "safe areas" behind enemy lines in which men could congregate until liberation, rather than risk breaking through hostile front line defences.                                                                                          The organisation had its greatest success after the failure to capture Arnhem Bridge in September 1944, during "Operation Pegasus" which recovered from behind German Frontlines cut off groups of Paratroopers left behind after the withdrawal from the bridges or others who had escaped from their German Guards. 

He was demobilised in 1946 and after a successful peacetime career retired in 1967 to be a manager/owner of a bookshop in Suffolk along with his wife Peggy who herself was a former 'Escape Line' Operative from Belgium (Married 1944). Selling the bookshop in 1976, he wrote two books before passing in 1983 (His Wife survived upto 2000). Jimmy's story has since regained popularity since being portrayed on TV in the BBC TV Documentary Series 'Dunkirk' (2004) with Benedict Cumberbatch portraying his actions during the retreats of 1940.

James Langley was awarded the Military Cross (1940) & the MBE (1941) for his Wartime Escape Work and actions at Dunkirk, his Wife Peggy was also awarded the MBE for her own wartime efforts.

Fight Another Day (Bio) (1974) and MI9 with MRD Foot (1979)