When in 1995 he announced that he had finished writing his wartime story, I simply complied with his request that I make a number of photocopies of his manuscript. These he sent to various publishers. He was disappointed when he got rejection letters from them all, but his habitual modesty made him accept rejection graciously. I thought no more about it. With an important birthday approaching in 1997, we (the family) decided to produce a bound volume to let him see his account as a finished book. I asked my wife Mary to key in the manuscript on our PC and arranged to have the book formatted and printed digitally. When Mary asked me, ‘Have you read this?’ I had to admit that I hadn’t. I was astonished at what I read, and asked my brother John, fourteen months my senior, if he knew any more about our father’s escapades – but drew a complete blank. There were many elements of my parents’ relationship that I couldn’t understand before reading Dad’s book.
