Early in 1943, David Smiley volunteered to join the Special Operations Executive for service in the Balkans Smiley and his small group of colleagues were to help the Albanian resistance fighters to drive out their German occupiers Living off the land in harsh, inhospitable country, they took part in a savage guerilla war and, as the enemy withdrew, they found themselves caught up in a vicious civil war between the Communist partisans and the royalists