If you missed the latest episode of Tea Time Talks you can watch the youtube recording below.
This year it is the 80th year anniversary of Operation Anthropoid, the plot to assassinate Reinhard Heydrich. In this tea time talk we chat with Dr George Bearfield about his grandfather who took part in SOE operations in Czechoslovakia , and was part of Operation Foursquare, a late operation in the war.
In 1938, when Bohemia and Moravia were occupied by Nazi Germany, Jaroslav and Josef Bublík fought their way to their country’s exiled intelligence service in England. Jaroslav began training parachutists to go back to their home country and in 1941, Josef was amongst the first crop to be dropped. In one of the most daring and momentous actions of the Second World War, Heydrich – the Nazi ‘Protector’ – was assassinated. But Josef and his colleagues were tracked down in Prague and killed.
In the dying days of the War, Jaroslav was asked to take part in one final mission: Operation Foursquare. Sixty years later, his grandson wanted to know the full story. Did he lead the last Czechoslovak parachute drop of the War? What exactly was the mission? And why had it become shrouded in secrecy?
“Operation Foursquare leads the reader into the gloomy demi-monde of Nazi-occupied Prague, a world of heroism and betrayal, patriotism, perseverance and loss…A fascinating, thrilling and meticulously researched trip into an old man’s memory, a personal voyage of discovery that unveils a hitherto unknown post-script to one of the most famous acts of resistance in the Second World War.”
Rob Cameron, BBC Prague Correspondent
“A finely research book and an absorbing one. It is more than a narrative of this heroic operation; it is the moving quest of a grandson to discover the courageous actions of his grandfather.”
Helen Fry, author of ‘Spymaster: The Man who Saved MI6.’
“…fantastically written…reads like a fast-paced novel, with all of the intrigue, action and politics you would expect, except its true.”
Colonel Philip Ingram MBE, Ex British Intelligence.
You can read more about George’s work here:
https://www.facebook.com/LastParachutist/
https://twitter.com/lastparachutist
The Book – Foursquare: The Last Parachutist is available at Amazon
