WHILE most attention during this season has been focused on World War I commemorations, another terrible war has not been forgotten.

Today, Tuesday April 28, at the Hellenic Club in Woden, Katherine Barnes’ book “The Sabotage Diaries” will be launched.

Set in occupied Greece in World War II and is the story of Barnes’ father-in-law, Tom Barnes, the engineer who led the demolition party for the Gorgopotamos Bridge operation in November 1942, and his work with Greek resistance fighters.

As they’re saying, it reads like fiction, although it is based on wartime diaries, reports and letters, plus many other historical sources and first-hand accounts.

Barnes was parachuted behind enemy lines in Greece in October 1942 with a small team of sappers and special operations officers. Under-equipped and under-prepared, their initial mission was to blow up a key railway bridge, cutting Rommel’s supply lines to North Africa, where the battle of El Alamein was about to begin. But ‘Operation Harling’ was just the start of a lengthy and perilous mission.

In an era when Post Traumatic Stress Disorder went unrecognised, countless engineers and their helpers suffered significantly frem the trauma of such demolitions, which were nonetheless an essential part of most military operations.

“The Sabotage Diaries”, HarperCollins, 432 pp, RRP: $29.99 AUD