The Eagle has Landed

War Movies always have always facinated me (feel the same....). In the past few weeks I saw few of them. Among the new one's were Pearl Harbour, Saving Private Ryan, Behind Enemy Lines. Though these are good movies, somehow I felt a bit disconnected. Well I was not just feeling the same thril. So went ahead and saw some of the old war movies viz. Bridge on River Kwai, A Bridge too Far, Tora Tora Tora . Now these are the real classic World War II movies. The efforts spent on details, the realistic settings and actors is what makes you see them again and again. The other day when I went to library, guess what I asked for?? A god war novel (But of course you might say!!). The Librarian suggested "The Eagle has Landed" by Jack Higgins. After reading the first question that came to my mind was how could I have missed such a classic.
The plot is an audacious plan to kidnap Winston Churchill, if possible, else to assasinate him.
	Bouyed by the daring rescue of Germanys' ally Benito Mussolini by German special forces Hitler asks Admiral Whilhelm Canaris, head of the Abwehr, (German military intelligence) to prepare a feasibility report for kidnap/assasination of Chrchill. Canaris thinks it as a passing folly of the Führer, and asks his subordinate Lt. Col. Radll to prepare the same.
Things fall into place and Radll prepares a report which demonstrates that the plan is very much possible. When he takes the report to Canaris,he brushes it aside calling it utter rubbish. To Radll's surprise he is called by Himmler (Head of SS a large paramilitary organization belonging to the Nazi Party) who puts the plan into motion giving Radll absolute authority to execute the plan.
Radll recruits Colonel Kurt Stiener a discredited War Hero and his paratroopers, Liam Devlin an IRA activist to Paratroop into Studley Constable a remote village in Norwhich county, England where Churchill is going to spend a lonely weekend. What happens in the end should not be difficult to guess at all, but what ensues in between is really thrilling. I was so gripped by the novel, that I went and picked up the movie too. Starring Micheal Caine (Stiener), Donald Sutherland (Liam Devlin) and Robert Duvall(Lt. Col Radll), the movie was a bit of anti-climax as compared to the novel. Lot of incidences depicted in the book are not shown. Couple of plots are changed. But overall not a bad way to spend a lazy afternoon.    Coming back to the book, Higgins has done a lot of research and the way it has been written makes you belive that the incidence really happened (did it??). Well I just started reading the sequel "The Eagle has Flown", which is equally gripping. If you like reading books, and that too about wars, this is one book that you cannot afford to miss. That's all for now....until next week Charlie Out