Where The Hell Have You Been
In November 1942, two nights after the Battle of El Alamein, a young British army officer was captured by German forces. As the Nazis deliberated about what to do with him and his peers, Richard Carver had particular reason to be afraid: unknown to anyone else, he was the stepson of Lt-Gen Bernard Montgomery, who had just inflicted the first serious land defeat on the Third Reich...
This enthralling wartime story tells of Richard’s internment in a POW camp in northern Italy – the same made famous by Eric Newby – and of his subsequent escape. Having decided on the high-risk strategy of making his way back to Allied HQ in the south, he embarked on a gruelling 500-mile journey through German-occupied territory, evading capture again and again and ultimately being saved by a family of brave Italian peasants who jeopardised not just their own lives but those of an entire village to hide him.
In the winter of 1943, a year after he had disappeared, Carver staggered back into army HQ, gaunt and exhausted – to be greeted by a delighted but characteristically gruff Monty with the now infamous words: Where the hell have you been?
This is a tale of great adventure and derring-do – a reminder of a lost age when, in the face of terrifying challenges, a generation rose to extraordinary feats of valour in the service of a cause greater than themselves
About the author
Tom Carver was a longtime foreign correspondent with the BBC. He lived with the mujihadeen suring the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan, walked with