Publisher's Synopsis
When Len Wilmott joined the Army as a boy soldier corporal punishment was still regarded as a better way of dealing with defaulters than 'jankers' or stoppage of pay - and delivered with sufficient severity to demand the presence of a doctor. Len suffered this indignity with fortitude and no apparent thought of writing to his MP. How he came to be in Poland when the Germans invaded in September 1939, the reader will discover. As to how he managed to survive the next five years the reader can only marvel. His hair-raising adventures in Greece, in company with such legendary figures as Monty Woodhouse and Eddie Myers are, in themselves, worthy of a book, as both have demonstrated. But this is only part of his story. We follow him to Brittany at the time when the Allies landed in Europe, then to Holland (twice) and a little-known side of the Arnhem battle. By now it seems almost predictable that he should be present at the 'liberation' of Belsen. His talent for trouble spots did not end with World War II. Post-war saw him bringing refugees out of East Germany, and involved in the Greek Civil War and the Malayan Emergency. John Simpson met him in Australia, where he eventually settled, and persuaded this quiet and modest man, who never believed that he had done more than his job, to tell his story. To Simpson, himself a distinguished soldier, a great debt is due for discovering and recounting this extraordinary story of a man who can surely claim to have had one of the most remarkable careers in the whole of the Second World War.
