King's Cross Kid (25 page)
Authors: Victor Gregg
We hung around and drank beer in places like this, unaware that before long our world was about to change for ever.
Oswald Mosley and his Blackshirts tried to stir up hatred against our Jewish neighbours. When I was seventeen we fought him and his mob in the Battle of Sidmouth Street. He didn’t come back.
Me, a newly enlisted Rifleman, ready to take on the world. My apprenticeship in King’s Cross is over. I am off to learn a new skill – the art of war.
Encouragement comes from all points of the compass and in all manner of forms, but reality, in the form of the number of words a publisher might accept, means that only the surface can be skimmed. Right at the top of the pile have to be my editor, Rick Stroud, and his lovely wife, Alexandra, and next to them the young men and women at Bloomsbury, headed by Bill Swainson. There is no doubt in my mind that it has been the persistent encouragement of this small circle that has driven me on. Thanks to them especially, and to Simon Fenwick, archivist to the Shaftesbury Young People Organisation.
VICTOR GREGG
was born in London in 1919 and joined the army in 1937, serving first in the Rifle Brigade in Palestine and North Africa, notably at the Battle of Alamein, and then with the Parachute Regiment, at the Battle of Arnhem. As a prisoner of war he survived the bombing of Dresden to be repatriated in 1946, and now lives in Winchester. The story of his adult years,
Rifleman: A Front-line Life from Alamein and Dresden to the Fall of the Berlin Wall
, also co-written with Rick Stroud, was published by Bloomsbury in 2011. An eBook single of his POW experiences,
Dresden: A Survivor’s Story
, was published in February 2013.
RICK STROUD
is a writer and film director. As well as working with Vic Gregg on
Rifleman
he is the author of
The Book of the Moon
and
The Phantom Army of Alamein: The Men Who Hoodwinked Rommel
. He lives in London.
Rifleman
Also Available by Victor Gregg with Rick Stroud
RIFLEMAN: A FRONT-LINE LIFE FROM ALAMEIN AND DRESDEN TO THE FALL OF THE BERLIN WALL
‘One of the last voices of a vital generation . . . gripping reading’
CONN IGGULDEN
On his eighteenth birthday in 1937, Victor Gregg enlisted in the Rifle Brigade and began a life of adventure. A soldier throughout the Second World War, he saw action across North Africa, was a driver for the Long Range Desert Group and fought at the Battle of Alamein. Taken into captivity at the Battle of Arnhem in 1944, he was sentenced to death for sabotaging a Dresden factory; he escaped only when the Allies’ infamous air raid blew apart his prison and soon encountered the advancing Red Army. Gregg’s fascinating tale does not end with the war – he also recounts his later adventures behind the Iron Curtain, offering behind-the-scenes glimpses into the shadowy world of Cold War espionage. Rifleman is the extraordinary story of an independent-minded and quick-witted survivor.
‘A gripping life-story: an incident-packed account of heartache, violence and cunning by a man whose will to survive and unbreakable optimism are a true inspiration’
INDEPENDENT
First published in Great Britain 2013
This electronic edition published in 2014 by Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
Copyright © Victor Gregg 2013
Preface copyright © Rick Stroud 2013
The right of Victor Gregg to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988
Photographs reproduced in this book are from the authors’ own collections except where credited otherwise Maps by ML Design
Every reasonable effort has been made to trace copyright holders of material reproduced in this book, but if any have been inadvertently overlooked the publishers would be glad to hear from them
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A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
eISBN: 978-1-4088-4052-8
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