A Brilliant Little Operation by Paddy Ashdown: review The book's title comes from Admiral Louis Mountbatten's description of the raid that saw 10 Royal Marines paddle their canoes - the cockleshells - into Bordeaux and plant limpet mines on German cargo ships. Led by the extraordinary Major Herbert "Blondie" Hasler, it was fantastically heroic, but such exploits, while humbling to read about, are the stuff of Commando magazine. Instead, Ashdown provides a more interesting corrective mix from alternative sources to show just how much chance and mischance bedevilled the operation. For a start it was unevenly planned: much time was spent perfecting the design of the canoe, for example, while very little thought went into the manner in which any survivors would escape once they had planted their bombs. It was as if everything before the operation mattered, and nothing after it. A suicide mission, in other words. A little bit of joined-up thinking would have meant there was no need for Frankton, or at least the agents in Bordeaux could have spirited those survivors away into one of the escape routes the SOE had set up to smuggle downed pilots into Spain. Instead, Combined Operations suggested they make their way 120 miles north of Bordeaux, through countryside crawling with German soldiers. What makes Ashdown's book so fascinating is his description of the German reaction to the raid, and it is cheering to see the Wehrmacht was like any other large organisation, with everyone trying to cover his back, so that - despite learning exactly what Hasler and his men were up to two days before the raid - they sat on their hands and let it happen. The details about what happened to the six marines who went missing and were executed by firing squad are chilling. Ashdown has also discovered the casual heroism of the French men and women on whom Hasler's men had to rely. Farmers and fishermen took the marines in, or brought them food, at great risk to themselves and their families. His research into their subsequent fates reveals that most were deported and lost to history. No doubt many more books will be written about the war, but I hope this becomes a model for them since, though the heroism of our boys is stirring stuff, history only makes real sense if you can see it from all sides. Paddy Ashdown's A Brilliant Little Operation (Aurum, £25) is available from the Telegraph for £20 plus £2.50 p&p Buy now from Telegraph Books