1944 story of a group of British airmen who come down in occupied France. With one of them seriously injured, they plough on - every human a potential traitor - until they meet a kindly French family, willing to put themselves at huge isk by helkping...
Written in a very tense, immediate style...gripping up to the very end. ( )

I had read this novel perhaps forty years ago, but I had no real recollection of the story line. On a second reading I have enjoyed the fact that the book is beautifully written, and the developing love of Franklin and Francoise is delicately handled. One has to put oneself into how life was in occupied France during WW2, and the huge risks the family took to shelter and feed these five British airmen. If interested in this era in our history it is novel of its time which portrays all the hardships, scarcity of supplies, lack of medical facilities, limited travel opportunities, all the things we take for granted today. I was a little disappointed in the ending and would have enjoyed a 'happy ever after scene' back in Britain. ( )

okay, not great ( )

The prose is good. The story is fiction, and subject to the pressure of actually being written in wartime. The love story is a trifle mawkish, but we're talking 1944, here. Chiefly entertaining as a WWII artefact. ( )

155. Fair Stood the Wind for France, by H. E. Bates (read 9 July 1944) This was a part of a dual Book-of-the Month selection for June 1944. I started to read it on July 3, 1944. On July 6 I said it was "very good." But when I finished it on July 9 I said: "Not so good." i remember I was upset by the immoral behavior of the hero and heroine, since I, then and now, prefer my good people in fiction to be morally upright. ( )