The Embattled Mountain: 'blood Is My Daylight, and My Darkness Too'

On the 28th May, 1943, the author of this book was parachuted, together with Captain Stuart and a small party, to the highlands of Montenegro. These two officers commanded the first British military mission to Tito's headquarters. They landed unawares in the middle of the most critical Axis operation as yet mounted against the Yogoslav partisan movement, whose main forces of four divisions, lightly armed and burdened with three thousand wounded, were encircled on the 'Embattled Mountain' of Durmitor - the symbol of this book - by double their number, headed by German mountain and SS troops, supported by artillery and aircraft. This account of the breaking of the enemy ring is a classic study in partisan war. 'The republication of The Embattled Mountain is both welcome and timely. It is welcome because this remains, four decades on, a compelling and important book. It is not only a classic war memoir in the inimitable British tradition - alternately exciting, moving, funny, understated and poetic - but it is also an important historical study of ant-Axis resistance in Yugoslavia during the Second World War and of Britain's engagement with and changing policies towards that resistance.' Mark Wheeler, Professor of History and International Relations at the Sarajevo School of Science and Technology