This, my tenth novel, is the third in a Jack Telford series of political thrillers.
Read the blurb…
‘Swear,’ Leclerc shouted, ‘that you will never lay down your arms until our colours, our beautiful colours, are flying afresh on Strasbourg Cathedral!’
Headstrong newspaperman Jack Telford’s weapon is his pen, but the oath he’s taken at Kufra will still bind his fate to the passions and perils of the men and women who shape his life – his personal heroes, like the exiled Spanish Republicans now fighting for Free France. But from Oran and Casablanca to the heart of Africa, then into the cauldron of Normandy and the Liberation of Paris, Jack’s fate is also bound to those who will betray them, and to the enemies who want Telford dead.
The Oath of Kufra
At the end of January 1941, Leclerc launched an audacious attack across 250 miles of some of the most inhospitable territory of the Sahara against the Italian fortress at Kufra in the southern Libyan desert. The odds were hugely against his success but, with some assistance from the British Long Range Desert Group, Leclerc’s mixed force of Free French African and European troops besieged the fortress and, on 1st March 1941, forced the Italian garrison to surrender. On the following day, Leclerc had his men swear the oath. Astonishing. In 1941, the idea of the Allies being able to invade occupied France must itself have seemed absurd. And even if such an invasion might happen at some point in the future, Strasbourg is, of course, in the very farthest east of France. An almost impossible dream. Yet, in November 1944, Leclerc’s dream was fulfilled – and the story is very much at the heart of A Betrayal of Heroes.