Harry’s mission was unusual – to meet the novelist P.G. Wodehouse in Paris and persuade him to work for the Allies.
My friend, Harry Hawkins, had a good war. He served, with distinction, for the Hampshire Regiment. Promoted to Major, he fought his way through North Africa and Sicily, losing many fine friends on the way. He was also, as I have recently learned, recruited for a top-secret task by the Special Operations Executive, in November 1943.
His job was deceptively straightforward – to be dropped into occupied France, in disguise, link up with the comic novelist, P.G. Wodehouse, and, with D-Day impending, have a quiet word with him about helping the British and the Yanks to win the war. Wodehouse had recently been allowed by the Germans, who had held him in captivity, to live in Paris.
Thus far, thus simple. But life for Harry was never simple. The mission did not go as planned. Typical bloody Harry. I have told the full story in this book, because, of course, he is far too modest to do it himself.