Storming the Eagle's Nest

by Jim Ring

  It is to Julian that I owe the current thrust of the book, for at his suggestion it was given a much sharper focus and far finer lines than I had originally drafted; to Julian, too, goes the credit of the final, far more telling title.

  My research then took me to the Alps themselves, often following paths that I had first trodden in the previous century in pursuit of the English in the Alps. Here I was not entirely surprised to discover those who felt the story of the Alps during the war was one best forgotten, that concentration camps and deportations and rocket factories and the Gestapo detracted from the rosy hue and crackling banknotes of tourism. Of the many, many exceptions I would like particularly to thank Timothy Nelson of Bibliotheken der Landschaft Davos, Corina Huber of the Bibliothek St Moritz, the scholar Alois Schwarzmüller of Garmisch-Partenkirchen, and three quite remarkable living witnesses: Frau Inge Rainer of Kitzbühel, Marko Feingold of Salzburg, and Matteus Guidon of Bergün, Canton Graubünden. These people told a truth that was far from invariably comfortable.

  Thereafter, when the book was actually in draft, a handful of specialists troubled themselves to wade through the Dead Sea of typographical errors and non sequiturs in an attempt to generally set the ship to rights. These were the Alpinists David Pirkis and Philip Hawes, the scholar Clive Jenkins, the wizard of the Man Booker Prize David Waller, the iconoclast Alan Page, the Second World War historian Bill Purdue, and the diplomat Michael Zimmermann. I am grateful equally for their patience, their scholarship, and for their insistence that only certain vintages would change hands. In the usual way, I myself bear responsibility for the errors and omissions that remain.

  At the same time a galaxy of others have provided moral and practical support for the book. Prominent amongst them are my very old friend and colleague Tim Lefroy of the Advertising Association, the head of the commentariat Peter York, the business guru Murray Keith, Elisabeth Dyck and Ruth Morgart of the United Nations, Mary Palmer of the NHS, and my business partner Richard Kennan of Gig House Films.

  In a sense most importantly, it is my family that has borne this long voyage with fortitude, humour and even patience. It is a great sadness that my mother Stella, a generous and constructive critic of the book’s early chapters, did not live to see the work completed; my sister and two brothers have been unwaveringly encouraging; and it is with great pleasure that I was able to dedicate this book to my father, hale and hearty in his ninety-first year. To my wife Kate I owe a great deal of typing, fact-checking and childcare; to my son Ashmole time that would otherwise have been spent building his own boat; and to my daughter Jessie the energy that would surely have been devoted to augmenting her wardrobe. All in all, although they have coped with the passage very well, they are pleased it is over. I have yet to tell them that another is about to begin.

  Finally, my thanks go to Faber’s Kate Murray-Browne, who has seen the book through the press so expertly and sympathetically; to my copy editor Merlin Cox, whose eye for detail, English grammar and even maths proved so much better than my own; and to my typesetter, Donald Sommerville, who has added more than just style to the book.

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