Black Cross

AFTERWORD

Black Cross is a novel of historical fiction. In certain instances, I have taken small liberties with facts or time frames for dramatic purposes, but not in such a way as to distort essential historical truths.

There was no concentration camp called Totenhausen in Mecklenburg. However, there were far too many camps like it throughout Germany and Poland. The medical experiments described in the book involving Dr. Clauberg are documented facts. Those involving meningitis are fictional, but do not approach in horror and effect some of the actual experiments carried out by the Nazis.

The Victoria Cross, Britain’s highest military award, has been awarded to only one non-British citizen: an “unknown American warrior.” So far as I know, there is no “secret list” as described in Chapter One. The actual medal that would have been received by a non-British civilian for the type of mission described in the book would be the George Cross, which is relatively unknown to most Americans.

Achnacarry Castle is a real place, and during the Second World War produced some of the greatest unsung heroes in history. Colonel Charles Vaughan was the real C.O. of the Commando Depot there, and much of the credit for the exploits of its graduates — including the U.S. Army Rangers — goes to him. Sir Donald Walter Cameron was the real Laird of Achnacarry during the war, and also the father of the present laird, Sir Donald Hamish Cameron, who served with distinction with the Lovat Scouts during WWII. I fictionalized both Colonel Vaughan and the elder Sir Donald with the utmost respect and admiration.

The nerve gases described in Black Cross were and are real. Tabun was discovered by the Germans in 1936; Sarin in 1938; and Soman in 1944. Sarin and Soman are still the most feared war gases in the world. The Nazis produced over 7,000 tons of Sarin by the end of the war. According to official accounts, Soman never reached the mass production stage; however, as a curtain of secrecy descended over all these captured compounds after the Nazi surrender, we cannot be certain that all facts are known.

I believe that Adolf Hitler, a man willing to destroy Germany rather than surrender, would have required powerful reasons to stay his hand from a weapon as potentially decisive as Sarin. I like to think that the Allies, particularly Winston Churchill, possessed the nerve and the guts to order a mission like the one described in Black Cross. A similar “suicide mission” was carried out by Norwegians — with the assistance of SOE — against a heavy water plant in Norway in 1943. This costly raid ensured that Adolf Hitler was denied nuclear weapons.

The Allied reaction — or lack thereof — to the news of what was occurring in the Nazi concentration camps remains one of the darkest chapters of WWII. It is expertly detailed in Auschwitz and the Allies, by Martin Gilbert.

All of us owe our freedom to men and women we shall never know. Some of their stories are told in: Skis Against the Atom, by Knut Haukelid; The Holocaust and Churchill, by Martin Gilbert; Castle Commando, by Donald Gilchrist; Moon Squadron, by Jerrard Tickell; A Man Called Intrepid, by William Stevenson; and The Glory and the Dream, by William Manchester.

Finally, I would ask young readers to realize that fifty years is not a long time.