Le livre, « Shadow over the Atlantic » par Robert Forsyth rejoint la bibliothèque du BEMALPA dédiée au Mur de l’ Atlantique.

Ce livre est tout simplement LA référence à avoir dans sa bibliothèque concernant l’histoire de la Base aérienne militaire de Mont-de-Marsan dans les Landes, pendant la période de 1943 à 1944.

L’histoire de la naissance de ce livre est stupéfiante. Eddy Creek, ami de l’auteur découvrit aux États-Unis au début des années 2000 un livret, tapé à la machine en allemand, retraçant l’histoire du Fernaufklärungsgruppe 5 basé à Mont-de-Marsan, au travers d’un journal de notes quasi quotidiennes.

La disparition d’Eddy poussera l’auteur à terminer ce travail exceptionnel de traduction et de publication d’archives inédites, qui livre une foule de détails sur les missions et la vie au sein de la base aérienne de Mont-de-Marsan et des unités qui y seront déployées durant son exploitation militaire par la Luftwaffe.

T’ve got something for you.’

So announced my good friend, Eddie Creek, upon his return from a holiday in the United States. It was 13 years ago. Eddie was visiting our office at the time and, with a wry smile, dropped onto my desk a slender, softcover volume in an untitled, wine red cover.

I raised an eyebrow and glanced at him quizzically before picking it up and flicking through it. There were 145 pages and they were covered in typewritten German text. There was the occasional, pencilled annotation in the margin. It looked like a typed draft or a manuscript.

I went to the first page where there was a title: Fernaufklärungsgruppe 5 Atlantik – Eine Auzeichnung von Oskar H. Schmidt.

To say my jaw dropped or my heart missed a beat would be untrue, but my eyes did widen a little in surprise. I seem to recall that I simply looked at Eddie and murmered ‘How…?’

It was a rare history of a little-known but most interesting Luftwaffe unit – one that I knew had flown Junkers Ju 290s from western France in 1943/44 on long-range reconnaissance and convoy-shadowing operations in support of the U-boats. As far as I was aware, in the English language at least, there was very little known about its activities. But here was an account written by the former chief of the Stabskompanie of the Gruppe based partly on his memory and the memories of his former comrades, partly on private records and partly on official reports.