Michael Asher - Get Rommel: The Secret British Mission to Kill Hitlers Greatest General

I would like to give special thanks to Dr Rolf Wichmann of the UN High Commission on Human Settlement, Nairobi, for translating the German documents, and for his encyclopaedic knowledge of German forces in the Second World War. I would also extend a similar deep thanks to David List of the BBC, for his intimate knowledge of the Second World War Special Forces, his patient assistance, and particularly for helping me compile the initial nominal roll. I am extremely grateful for the crucial help of Ronald Youngman of the Commando Association, and the advice of Henry Brown, formerly of the Commando Association.

A great debt of gratitude and admiration is due to those who took part in the raid or its preparation: Jim Gornall MM, Charles Lock, Frederick Birch and Sir Thomas Macpherson MC, for their personal accounts. I would also like to thank the survivors of 11 (Scottish) Commando, and other Second World War special forces, who wrote to me and sent me various documents, including George, the Earl Jellicoe DSO, Sir Carol Mather MC, Robin McCunn, Walter Marshall, Eric Garland MC, D.D. Drummond, Adam B. Archibald and Jimmy Foot.

I would like to add an additional thank-you to Lord Roger Keyes, second Baron Keyes of Zeebrugge, for both the personal interview and for crucial family documents.

Further deep thanks go to Mary Louise Guiver and Charles Lock junior, the children of Charles Lock, for giving me access to their fathers diaries and letters; to Mrs Ruth Lock for her personal account of life on Arran; Mrs June McCunn for her letters relaying her husbands experiences in 11 Commando; Paul Hughes, grandson of Malcolm Spike Hughes, and his aunt, ne Alice Hughes; John Terry, son of Jack Terry DCM; William Briggs of the Glasgow Herald , for archive material, and for his assistance in finding survivors of the raid; Alan McSherry of the Cameronland Museum; Bert Riggs, Archivist, Centre for Newfoundland Studies, University of Newfoundland, for details of Joseph Kearneys letters; Hans Edelmaier and his publisher for sending me a copy of Das Rommel Unternehmen ; David and Margaret Short of the Spean Bridge Hotel, Scotland, which houses the Commando Museum, and John Condon, who sent me the background material on John Haselden.

I am grateful for the assistance of the staff of the Public Records Office, Kew (now the National Archives), and to the staff of the Liddell-Hart Centre For Military Archives at Kings College, London. I owe a deep debt of gratitude to my editor at Weidenfeld & Nicolson, Ian Drury, for his advice and suggestions, and further special thanks to my agent, Anthony Goff, and his assistant Georgia Glover, without whose help my research would not have been possible. Last but not least, I would like to thank my wife, Mariantonietta, and my two children, Burton and Jade, for their encouragement while I was researching and writing this book.

Michael Asher
Langata, Nairobi, 2004

OPERATION CRUSADER