210- Affair at Mandrake

Tired of the everyday grind? Have a dream of a life of romantic adventure? Want to get away from it all? We offer you... Escape! Escape! Designed to free you from the four walls of today for a half hour of high adventure!

You are standing in the bedroom of an English inn. The sound of revelry coming faintly at the stairs. But in the shadows across the room from you, the gun in his hand already aimed at you is an enemy agent whose success depends upon your death.

Listen now, as escape brings you Ben Wright's story, a fair at Mandrake. This town, this beach, might have been wonderful in peacetime, I don't know. I don't know, I've never saw it before, but in war in 1940 it was held.

And on the map that I held in my shaking hands at Ren, Dunkirk, I stood by a burnt-out truck, reading the fatigue, watching what was left of my battalion lurch-like sleepwalkers onto the shells' web dunes, to await their turn on the little ships that were struggling so desperately to get them away and back to England.

Hey, Jamaica! Over here, son Major! Behind the cannon. Wait, he's boarded, sir. Him and the old Italian order group. All of them? Yes, sir. One bloody shell. Nasty. Very nasty. You want to look over the prisoners now, sir?

I suppose, uh, regades still once unit identification. This way, sir. All right. I left them with the lance corporal of D Company. Here you are, sir. This bomb, all here. Right. Okay, you Nordic superman, up on your bloody feet.

That's it. Get them lined up. We'll see what we've got. It's nice! Dad! That man at the end, Holloway, get him turned round. You! Face the officer! You're un-talking to! Turn, Dad. That's more like a...