Tag Archives: WW2

That’s Not A Tiger Tank!

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I have heard or read a few things lately questioning the accuracy of war movies. On Radio 4’s Infinite Monkey Cage a member of GCHQ claimed that The Imitation Game (the Benedict Cumberbatch film about Bletchley Park and Enigma) got two things absolutely right: there was a Second World War and Turing’s first name was Alan. In The Times today bestselling historian Antony Beevor, discussing the Arnhem movie A Bridge Too Far, said: “All those war movies are dodgy in some way.”

This is of interest to me because, as the co-writer of the new WW2 film Hurricane, about the Polish pilots who fought in the Battle of Britain and beyond, I am well aware of the compromises with history that have to be made. Let me start by saying the broad brushstrokes of the narrative are absolutely true to life, that in summer 1940 the RAF did reluctantly allow a Polish squadron, 303, to be formed which, flying Mk 1 Hurricanes and not the pin-up Spitfire, managed to chalk up more victories than any other squadron in the Battle of Britain. And that they – in fact all the Polish armed forces – were treated very badly after the war.

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However, some of the details do play a little fast and loose with the facts. There is a scene with gun cameras on 303 Squadron’s planes, when I am fairly sure they weren’t fitted until after the BoB. But gun camera footage always seems very real and visceral on screen, so in they went. The party at the Dorchester celebrating the Poles and their achievements, similarly, did not happen until after the main air battles of 1940 were done, but it was a decent shorthand to show how the Poles were feted by British society at the start of war. The hostess for that party was actually American, but I felt the introduction of a US character without explanation would be confusing.

Although the main players such as Jan Zumbach (Iwan Rheon), Witold “Cobra” Urbanowicz (Marcin Dorociński), Czech flyer Josef Frantisek (Krystof Hádek) and Canadian Johnny Kent (Milo Gibson) were historical figures, some of the supporting characters are fictitious.

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The real 303 (Jan Zumbach, far right) with squadron mascot

One is designed to show the strain of constant air combat suffered by the over-worked pilots (including relying on Benzedrine to stay awake) and he is an amalgam of several individuals (not all of them Polish). Another is a Jewish character (who actually had a larger role in the original script). Although there were no Jewish pilots in 303, there were in some of the RAF’s other Polish squadrons. It seemed OK to move one across.

As in the movie, Josef Frantisek was a lone wolf who went off hunting solo, much to the annoyance of his colleagues. He died when, for reasons unknown, he flew into a hillside – not, having run out of fuel, the White Cliffs of Dover as in the film. But it does look a lot more dramatic.

The two main WAAF women, led by Stefanie Martini, are actually a fusion of four real individuals, with stories based on their memories as young girls thrust into the highly regimented, repressive world of the RAF. The plotting scenes, by the way, were filmed at the Battle of Britain Bunker in Uxbridge, which is a remarkable time capsule. It is open to the public and well worth a visit.

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You might think the Poles’ success with the British women is exaggerated, but there is a persistent story that some RAF pilots sewed “Poland” patches on their tunics and spoke cod-Polish in clubs and bars to try and get some of the attention the foreigners were enjoying. (Sadly, those scenes got cut from the film.)

There are other instances of artistic licence. Appalled by the rag-tag appearance of his new recruits, Squadron Leader Kellett orders uniforms from his tailor, Gieves & Co (as actually happened). When the van turns up, Gieves’ address on the side is given as No 1 Savile Row. In fact, it was Hawkes that were at that address during WW2. Gieves & Hawkes didn’t shack up together at No. 1 until 1974. But the address on the van serves to show how much money Kellett had laid out of his own pocket. Appearances mattered as much to the RAF as the ability to shoot down Germans.

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There is a scene when Zumbach uses his wing to play snooker with an ME-109, ramming the side and sending it crashing to earth. Unlikely? Maybe. Originally I had Zumbach lowering his plane on top of the stricken ME-109, forcing it lower and lower until it clipped the trees. But there is historical basis for these close encounters. In No Greater Ally: The Untold Story of Poland’s Forces in WWII, author Kenneth K. Kosdan states: “Faced with spent ammunition or malfunctioning guns, Polish pilots [in the Battle of Britain] were known to ram enemy bombers, chew off wing tips or tails with their propellers, or maneuver their planes on top of the Germans and physically force them into the ground or English Channel.”

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Marcin Dorociński as “Cobra”

Having been one of those who shout things like “That’s not a Tiger tank!” at the screen for most of my life, I fully expect and probably deserve  lots of flak about the above and more. But, after my experience with Hurricane, I now agree with Antony Beevor, who said in The Times: “You can nitpick your way through them for all the historical inaccuracies, but the trouble is that the needs of the movie industry and the needs of history are totally incompatible.”

And there rests the defence.

 

 * Hurricane is released on September 7th in cinemas and on digital platforms

First Look

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The first “teaser” trailer for the Hurricane, the film about Polish pilots in the Battle of Britain, which I co-write, is out on You Tube. If you wonder why there is an “American” voice all over it, it is because one of the senior officers in 303 Squadron was Johnny Kent, a Canadian, and he is played in the film by Milo Gibson, Mel’s son, below.

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Also in the movie is the famous Polish actor Marcin Dorociński, as Witold “Cobra” Urbanowicz.

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The film is due out before the end of the year.

THE LONG DROP

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I don’t normally review books on this blog because that’s not what I do. But I’ll make an exception for Howard Linskey’s Hunting The Hangman, not just because it is a cracking read, but because its genesis struck a chord with me.

In 1994 I read a sentence in a motor racing report in the Guardian that said: “..and the Monaco circuit is much the same as it was in 1929, when Englishman Grover-Williams (who went on to became a Special Operations Executive saboteur in France during WW2) won the inaugural event.” Hold the phone. A Bugatti-driving Grand Prix champion joined SOE’s F Section? Not only that, I quickly discovered, so did two others, Robert Benoist and Jean-Pierre Wimille. There’s a book there, I thought.

Indeed there was, but, for various reasons (including access to the then still-sealed SOE files), it proved difficult to write. Early One Morning didn’t get published until eight years later, by which time I had already produced three US-set thrillers.

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Howard Linskey’s novel has had an even lengthier gestation. His equivalent of that sentence about Grover-Williams was catching the second half of a documentary on the History Channel about the assassination of Hitler’s heir apparent, the ruthless Reinhard Heydrich, in Prague by an SOE-trained Czech hit team. Fascinated, he began researching everything he could find on subject. That was in 2000. Seventeen years later, and after six well-received, hardboiled northeastern noir books (No Name Lane, The Search, The Damage etc. – also well worth seeking out), his novel about Operation Anthropoid (as the mission was christened) has finally seen the light of day. Makes mine look like speed publishing.

In fact, I always felt fortunate that Early One Morning wasn’t my first novel. It meant I could get some rookie mistakes out of the way in the first three thrillers, which didn’t trouble the bestseller charts – something writers rarely get a chance to do these days, it being perform or die with the majority of publishers. Early One Morning turned out to be, and remains, my most successful novel in terms of sales.

I don’t remember Howard Linskey making any rookie mistakes in his first book, The Drop, but again the delay might have been fortuitous, in that by his own admission the early version he produced was a mix of fact and fiction that he was uncomfortable with. The Hunting the Hangman of today is meticulously researched and firmly based, as they say, on actual events.

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Having written about WW2 organisations such as SOE, MI9 and MI19 myself, and seen a couple of movies about Operation Anthropoid, and the terrible retributions in its aftermath, I thought I knew the story well. But, in fact, Howard uses his novelist’s skills to really flesh out not only the monstrous Heydrich, but also the assassins, who are far from the usual bland action-hero stereotypes. There’s bravery, of course, in the tale, but also terrible treachery and cruelty. Historical fiction like this isn’t easy to pull off – cleaving to the facts and the real-life characters while creating novel-like suspense. Howard Linskey has pulled it off. It’s been a long time coming, but Hunting The Hangman was worth the wait.