Profiles in courage

Have you ever escaped from captivity by removing from your boot the serrated surgical wire cunningly disguised as a shoelace and sawing through the windpipe of your hapless, squirming guard? Me neither, but I know someone who has. He’s a lovely old boy, gentle, thoughtful, slightly melancholy and, but for that unsettlingly sardonic smile and the gimlet glint in his eye, you’d never imagine for a moment that he could have killed anyone.

But he did, quite a few times in fact, during his service in the second world war with the commandos. On this particular occasion, he had been captured with three of his comrades outside Dunkirk. One was shot almost immediately, supposedly while trying to escape; one was moved elsewhere and never seen again; the other two — my friend and his pal (a German Jew) were imprisoned in a bunker and told by their guard that if they made the slightest move they’d be shot.