The Tartan Pimpernel

By Donald C. Caskie

Subjects: World War, 1939-1945, Military Chaplains, Secret service, English Personal narratives

Description: "I had caught up with a struggling mass of people when German and Italian aircraft streaked down from the sky. Machine guns spat indiscriminate death. Bombs thudded and exploded all along the road."This is the remarkable story of Donald Caskie, minister of the Scots Kirk in Paris at the time of the German invasion of France in 1940. Caskie helped to establish a network of safe houses and escape routes for Allied soldiers and airmen trapped in occupied territory. Finally arrested and interrogated, he was sentenced to death at a Nazi show trial, and it was only through the intervention of a German pastor that his life was saved.