The War We Won Apart: The Untold Story of Two Elite Agents Who Became One of the Most Decorated Couples of WWII Audiobook

Love, betrayal, and a secret war: the untold story of two elite agents, one Canadian, one British, who became one of the most decorated couples of WWII.

On opposite sides of the pond, Sonia Butt, an adventurous young British woman, and Guy d’Artois, a French-Canadian soldier and thunderstorm of a man, are preparing for war.

From different worlds, their lives first intersect during clandestine training to become agents with Winston Churchill’s secret army, the Special Operations Executive. As the world’s deadliest conflict to date unfolds, Sonia and Guy learn how to parachute into enemy territory, how to kill, blow up rail lines, and eventually . . . how to love each other. But not long after their hasty marriage, their love is tested by separation, by a titanic invasion—and by indiscretion.

Writing in vivid, heart-stopping prose, Ayed follows Sonia as she plunges into Nazi-occupied France and slinks into black market restaurants to throw off occupying Nazi forces, while at the same time participating in sabotage operations against them; and as Guy, in another corner of France, trains hundreds into a resistance army.

Reconstructed from hours of unpublished interviews and hundreds of archival and personal documents, the story Ayed tells is about the ravaging costs of war paid for disproportionately by the young. But more than anything, The War We Won Apart is a story about love: two secret agents who were supposed to land in enemy territory together, but were fated to fight the war apart.

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"This compelling account of two secret agents parachuted into France on the eve of D-Day is a veritable page turner. Young, energetic, and just married, Sonia and Guy d’Artois were forced to fight apart, and each performed courageously in the field. But their separation came at a price, and Nahlah Ayed brilliantly—and with great sensitivity—captures the demands this placed on their relationship, both then and for the rest of their lives. Thoroughly researched and well-informed, this is a human story that lingers long in the mind."

— David Stafford, author of Ten Days to D-Day and Secret Agent: The True Story of the Special Operations Executive