Delayed Steal and On Falcon's Wings by Marshall Umpleby

On Falcon's Wings

On Falcon's Wings

Prague in World War II

Marshall Umpleby’s historical novel On Falcon’s Wings takes place in Prague, Czechoslovakia, and in the Ukraine on the Eastern Front. In 1941 Gestapo General Reinhard Heydrich, a favorite of Hitler’s and architect of the holocaust, was ordered to Prague to quell the resistance. Heydrich suppressed the underground with horrific results.

Gestapo General Reinhard Heydrich and Lidice

In 1942 Czech commandos, trained in England and Scotland, parachuted into Czechoslovakia to energize the resistance and assassinate General Heydrich. The commandos’ success unleashed a murderous retaliation, which included the utter destruction of the village of Lidice, thousands of executions, the torturing of suspects, and the shipment of women and children to concentration camps.

Seven Czech Heroes

Seven of the commandos were holed up in the catacombs of a Greek Orthodox Church awaiting evacuation by the underground to England, but they were betrayed by one of their own who, fearing for his life and that of his family informed the Gestapo. The Gestapo and German police surrounded the church and attempted to capture the commandos. 

Kidnapped by Nazis

The protagonists of Umpleby’s novel, five innocent young men, ages 16 and 17, are swept up in the bloody chaos following the assassination of Heydrich. One of the boys is from Lidice. The others unwittingly find themselves dangerously connected to the seven commandos. All five are virtually kidnapped by the Nazis and taken by troop train to the Ukraine and the Eastern Front.


Eastern Front 1942

How can five naïve Czech teenagers survive the horrors of World War II on the Eastern Front? What would it take to outwit sadistic Nazis in the bloody cauldron of war and return to their loved ones in Prague? These are the questions Umpleby attempts to answer in his riveting novel On Falcon’s Wings.