Episode 15: “No Colours or Crest” by Peter Kemp

Hank and Bindu explore a forgotten book about a forgotten corner of the Second World War: British special operations in the Balkans and elsewhere. This is the sequel to Peter Kemp’s book “Mine Were of Trouble” which we covered in a previous podcast. In this book, Kemp returns from the Spanish Civil War and steps into the Second World War and the British Special Operations Executive. Kemp participates in cross channel raids against German positions on the French coast and then is sent into help organize and aid the Albanian and later Polish resistance. In both these countries he enters a confusing world of local politics and guerrilla warfare where nothing is what it seems. Hank and Bindu go over all this and more in this lost classic of the Second World War and the British espionage and special operations associated with it.

The BSA Welgun submachine gun used by Kemp and other British SOE operatives.