NAME, RANK, AND SERIAL NUMBER.

By Florimond Duke '18, with Charles M.Swaart. New York: Meredith Press, 1969.162 pp. $5.95.

Colonel Duke's book can be added to the long list of exciting yarns of wartime intrigue and undercover work - stories that make Mission Impossible seem not so fantastic, after all. A football captain at Dartmouth and a member of the first New York Giants pro football team, the colorful Duke left the publishing world (Time, Inc.) in 1939 to join the OSS. In March 1944, at the age of 49, he made his first parachute jump ever into Hungary as part of a three-man "Mission Sparrow," whose near-impossible assignment it was to try to help Hungary break with Hitler's Germany and join the Allies.

The three men landed safely in the countryside and soon found themselves in the hands of friendly Hungarians. By the time they got to Budapest, however, the Regent of Hungary, Admiral Horthy, had been summoned for a meeting with Hitler, and shortly thereafter 12 German divisions invaded that hapless member of the Axis. "Mission Sparrow" was over almost before it began and Duke and his two companions were turned over to German interrogators.

The bulk of the book relates how these three brave men outwitted their captors and endured endless months of questioning as the Germans tried to break both their spirits and their story. They were buffeted around from one camp or center to another, put in solitary confinement, threatened and nearly starved. Insisting on their rights under Geneva Convention treatment of POWs, they finally arrived at the famous Colditz Castle, from which they were freed in April 1945.

This book doesn't rank with earlier World War II classics - The Colditz Story or TheGreat Escape - and it is too bad that Duke was so busy until his retirement that he didn't get to write it earlier. Nonetheless, in this day when conflict is still very much with us, it is an apt reminder that there are more to wars than just battlefield strategy. Are there "Mission Sparrows" under way in Vietnam? Sadly, Colonel Duke died last April, just before his war memoir was published.

Mr. Hier is Director of Public Programs atDartmouth. He spent 12 years in Europeafter the war and was close to the Hungarian scene during his six-year tenure withRadio Free Europe.