The Hunt

AUTHOR’S NOTE

This book is inspired by the true life exploits of 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 behest at the end of World War Two. The unit was one of the most clandestine ever assembled by the War Office, and its mission was to track down and protect secret technologies, weaponry, scientists and high-ranking Nazi officials to serve the West’s cause against the world’s new superpower, the Soviet Union.

No one in our family had any idea of his covert role as Commanding Officer T Force – ‘T’ standing for ‘Target’ – 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. Pipe-smoking, enigmatic, dry-humoured and loved by those he led.

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