The storm over Brindisi refused to break, keeping every special operations plane locked down at this captured Italian airfield. A grand palazzo now served as staging area for Allied commando operations into Nazi-held southeast Europe. Duke looked around the room: antique Italian furniture jumbled with army gear, British commandos waiting amid gilded mirrors and stacked crates to join resistance fighters in enemy territory.
He checked his 1700 hours. They had four hours to lift-off, but they couldn’t fly if the weather stayed rough. Tonight was the last night the moon would be full enough for a month.
But in a month, it would be too late. Operation Sparrow called on Duke to lead a crack three-man commando team on a night parachute jump behind enemy lines. The plan seemed impossible—intentionally walk into capture, face Nazi questioning, and make D-Day lies sound true.
In an ordinary war, the risk would have been unthinkable. But this was no ordinary war. The Allies knew the big picture of the Holocaust.
If Sparrow and other deception operations worked, D-Day could succeed and end the Nazis’ murders. If they failed, the coming Allied attack would be a massacre. Trickery could make the difference between a beachhead and a slaughter.
Duke had set the coordinates near a village called Podturen in Nazi-aligned Hungary: N 46°26′, E 16°31’30”. They had packed the radios, memorized the codes, and rehearsed the cover story. But the weather was the one enemy the Sparrows couldn’t deceive.
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