George Millar (writer)
He was awarded the Military Cross (MC) in early 1944 for escaping from Germany while a prisoner of war and making it back to England, which he wrote about in his 1946 book Horned Pigeon.
[2] He recorded his experiences fighting behind the lines with the local Resistance in his 1945 book Maquis; this book, his most well-known, belongs with others written by British servicemen who fought behind enemy lines including Ill Met by Moonlight by W. Stanley Moss, Eastern Approaches by Fitzroy Maclean and Seven Pillars of Wisdom by T. E. Lawrence.
Millar joined Alan Moorehead and Geoffrey Cox as Paris correspondents of the Daily Express shortly before the outbreak of the Second World War.
He covered the Battle of France as a war correspondent with the French Army, and was the last Express journalist in Paris before escaping back to England in June 1940 via Bordeaux.
His scout platoon was overrun by the advancing German forces at Gazala in the Libyan desert in June 1942, and Millar suffered light wounds.
Back in London, he found his wife had moved on to a new relationship, and Millar befriended Isabel Beatriz Hardwell, daughter of the diplomat Montague Bentley Talbot Paske Smith (de:Montague Bentley Talbot Paske Smith) and then still the wife of Charles George Hardwell.
He was promoted to captain, and parachuted into the Besançon area of eastern France a few days before D-Day to establish a sabotage unit codenamed "Chancellor".
[5] He quickly made links with the local Resistance, including Georges Molle, and caused disruption to the French railways, hindering the mobility of the German forces and distracting them from the invasion.
For this work, he was awarded the Distinguished Service Order (DSO) by the British and the Légion d'Honneur and the Croix de Guerre avec Palmes by the French.
In an immediate and vivid account, he drew on his journalistic skills to describe life living in the woods with the Maquis, various sabotage missions against the railways and trying to organise the villages before liberation by the Americans.
Millar considered this work a failure, but it received good reviews[6] and Charles de Gaulle privately complimented him on it.
[7] Maquis sold well and was followed by Horned Pigeon (1946) which was based on "prolific notes I had dictated ... to a shorthand typist, during the month's leave following my escape".
In Road to Resistance (1979) he records that while their boat was in Paris he received a summons from General Charles de Gaulle who had read Maquis and had taken the trouble on a trip in the area to detour to the village of Vieilley where Millar had been based.
