As far as ww2 memoirs go this was so so.

I give this 2.5 if I could. It's okay so so...
The cover and summary had me thinking this was the authors story, who's going to be the German equal to MI5 or the CIA or some such agency. It wasn't, rather a group of regulars, chosen because they performed well and had some special ability - usually able to speak another language fluently. It was more akin to special operations, if this were Vietnam conflict, then this author would have been SOG.

The book is a lot less emotionally descriptive than a typical war memoir, and spends a lot more time factually describing certain places or events - again, somewhat unusual. This can make it seem a little slow at times, but if I could choose between too much detail, and skipping over things entirely, I'd pick too much detail almost every time.

I found myself googling a certain castle described early on in this book, where the author describes leaving his bike up against some trees that led up an embankment, searching images taken in the last year or so in full colour, I could see the area he described.

The author was offered to (led down the path) join these "special services". The author and his comrades are quick to identify that special services = dangerous missions, and that's exactly what the rest of the book is about, dangerous mission after dangerous mission. As with so many ww2 memoirs, huge numbers of comrades are lost on the regular. I could tell it had been some time since, because the author spends almost no time describing the men who were lost, until the end.

There's a lot of what I would call "German precision" in the book, when it comes to the repeated high praise on certain tactics and commanders and so forth. While it can be a little sickening at times, at least it feels authentic - these people believed they were doing good, and had the best equipment and best trained men for the job.

The narrators job did ok. I was unable to tell if he was German, or just pretending to lay on a thick accent, but it felt wooden at times, and I can only say, despite their best efforts, not everyone has the voice/style to read books about the horror of war.

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