Perilous Moon: Occupied France, 1944—The End Game

Description

“A volume that’s not quite like anything else: the story of [the author’s] father and the Nazi air ace who shot him out of the sky over Occupied France” (Open Letters Monthly). Perilous Moon is a lavishly illustrated book that observes Occupied France during World War II through the eyes of British bomber pilot Neil Nimmo and newly discovered period photographs. Shot down by Luftwaffe night fighter pilot Helmut Bergmann, Nimmo and his crew were the German’s sixth of seven victims in forty-six minutes. With seven wrecked Lancasters and thirty-eight Allied airmen killed, Bergmann had singlehandedly turned what should have been a relatively simple RAF raid into a life-long nightmare. With barely time to parachute from Q-Queenie, his stricken Lancaster, Neil Nimmo’s unholy adventure had only just begun. Unusually, Perilous Moon follows both pilots, Nimmo and Bergmann, through the war after that April night, and continues to observe them as the Occupation of France comes to a sticky end. In the late 1980s, Neil Nimmo passed awat, but in Perilous Moon, his son Stuart Nimmo, a Paris-based documentary maker, closely chronicles the period with over two hundred original, previously hidden photographs. This unusual, fascinating book cuts through the fog that shrouded the Occupation and which continued to linger for decades to come. “A masterwork of rare images and gripping narrative.” —Mort Rosenbloom, former editor of The International Herald Tribune “The detail in the book, including scores of photos and maps, is remarkable.” —The Huffington Post “A special volume among the many about the war.” —The Columbus Dispatch