Ghost Flight

Author’s Note

My grandfather, Brigadier William Edward Harvey Grylls, OBE, 15/19th King’s Royal Hussars – and Commanding Officer of Target Force, the covert unit established at Winston Churchill’s request towards the end of WW2. The unit was one of the most clandestine bands of operators ever assembled by the War Office, and it was predominantly charged with tracking down and protecting secret technologies, weapons, scientists and high-ranking Nazi officials, to serve the Allied cause against the world’s new superpower and enemy, the Soviets.

No one in our family had any idea of his covert role as Commanding Officer of T Force until many years after his death and the release of information under the Official Secrets Act seventy-year rule – a process of discovery that inspired the writing of this book.

My grandfather was a man of few words, but I remember him so fondly from when I was a child growing up. Pipe smoking, enigmatic, dry humoured and loved by those he led.

To me, though, he was always just Grandpa Ted.