My Blog: Part 5 - The Sheer Nerve
With the 'Trouble at Zero Hour' series doing well in the shops, my agent was contacted out of the blue by a Mr. Richard Foreman, head of Endeavour Press at the time (2018). He enjoyed what I was doing and invited both me and my agent to lunch in London's Borough Market.
We arrived in good time at his offices, but before we even had a chance to properly introduce ourselves, he whisked us out the door to his favourite restaurant. I think it was Thai.
Plenty of food and drinks were consumed with small talk about family, the weather, pets and anything else that filled the silence between mouthfuls of food. We were a few courses and drinks in when we finally got down to the business at hand.
'I like your stuff Rob. I really do.'
'Thank you, I'm glad you like it.'
'You write a good war story. I want you to write one that I will happily publish.'
My agent and I looked at each other, a little perplexed as that was surely the whole idea of us coming to see him. Richard leaned on the table, his eyes locked onto mine.
'I want a war story that involves shooting lots of Nazis in the face.'
Wow! He was as blunt as that. I had no problem writing that kind of story, I just wasn't expecting such a request. he smiled at us.
'What can you do then?'
'How about a ballsy commando raid on Nazi Occupied France?'
'Excellent!' Richard beamed, before relaxing and calling for the dessert menu.
So the following morning, hangover permitting, I began to research what I could do for a good raiding story. I just so happened to be procrastinating on You Tube when I came across a World War Two documentary presented by Jeremy Clarkson.
'The Greatest Raid of All.' https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SCMCr2Kh1wI&t=0s
It was the true story of a British commando raid on the Normandie Dry Dock at Saint Nazaire on the 28th March 1942. British commandos rammed the dry dock with HMS Campbeltown (crudely disguised as a German warship). She was rigged with explosives, so once the commandos had disembarked and ran amok through the enemy facility, she would explode, destroying the dry dock gate and therefore denying the German battleship Tirpitz a dry dock facility on the French Atlantic coast. If she was damaged for any reason, she would have to limp past Great Britain and be crucified by the RAF. It was Clarkson's almost childish enthusiasm for the story that inspired me to write a fictional raid on the U-boat facility at La Rochelle. Sounds pretty straight forward...well... that's what I thought. I first needed to learn about how submarines work and perform when at sea, plus, I needed to learn how to use an Enigma machine...
'The Sheer Nerve: A mission behind enemy lines' by Rob Lofthouse. Available on Amazon.