The long watch

The British patrol's mission: enter a well-guarded French prison, find an old professor, get from him secret chemical knowledge that can help secure victory for the allies. Easier said than done when the countryside is crawling with German soldiers, when the citizens they depend on may be collaborators, when the leader is a private and one of the men he commands is a major and there's no love lost between them. This story opens as the patrol spills out of a farmhouse under fire, and the action and suspense build from there: to preventing the disloyalty of villagers, to securing a cemetery hide-out in direct sight of the Germans, to scaling the prison walls between guard's rounds, to the final clever act of bravado that gains access to the prison...