WARRIOR WITHOUT SCRUPLES

Press, Volume XCI, Issue 27576, 5 February 1955, Page 3

WARRIOR WITHOUT SCRUPLES

The n°S er Side ’ The Story of Leo J°’ d by John Murdoch Hodder and Stoughton. 256 pp. This .may not be one of the most admirable stories to come out of the war but it must surely be one of the strangest. Leo Dalderup was a young Dutchman whose sole interest in life appears to have been the attaining of a successful military career. He seems to be curiously devoid of any feelings so nat l On u al sentime nt and so, The vision of becoming a highranking officer and a tank expert was always before me. On my father’s side JnSw German extraction, so what could be more logical than to join the German Army as soon as I was old enough. That the Germans had overrun his country made no difference to him nor could he understand why the British, when they captured him regarded him as a traitor and his own friends cut him when he went on leave to Holland in German uniform. He fought on the Russian front in the winter of 1942-53 and then, when the Allies invaded Europe, he fought on the Western front. Here he was taken prisoner and sent to a prisoner of war camp in Britain. The British authorities, having made it clear that they regarded him as a traitor, Dalderup felt he would be handed over bya them to the Dutch authorities; so he decided he must escape, although by this time the war had finished. He was by then at a camp in Cheshire, and managed to get to Holyhead anfi on to a boat to Eire. Here he found some sympathisers among acquaintances he made, and he changed his name to Gallagher and worked as a farm labourer for a year. Then follows the strangest part of his story. Hearing that the police were tracing him, he decided that Ireland was no longer safe, and so, armed with a birth certificate for a real Leo Gallagher (which he got simply by asking for a duplicate), he went to Belfast and joined the R.A.F. For two years, despite his foreign accent, and the fact that although he had given his occupation as “lorry driver,” he was obviously of superior education, Dalderup passed unchallenged in the air force. He describes how he, an escaped prisoner of war from the German Army, when on guard duty at British radar station's, had access to keys admitting to radar equipment and top secret files. He grew to like the air force and decided that he would be very happy to make his career in it. Change of sides appears to have caused him no emotional struggles. However, when he was closely pressed to take a commission he realised that the screening involved would prove difficult, so he deserted and returned to Eire. Here he decided that to be a deserter would be “a blot on my character for ever. I must try to wipe it out.” So .he told the Air Force the true story, and they decided that they would discharge him as a citizen of Eire. And there, tantalisingly, he leaves the story. As a war book, Dalderup’s account of the training methods of the German Army are interesting. Most absorbing and revealing is his account of the winter campaign on the Russian front, and of the gradual breakdown of hope on the part of all but the most fanatical of his fellow soldiers. It is the other side of the coin drawn with some skill. The story of his subsequent escapades taxes credulity; but it holds together—such things could happen.

J. M. Dent and Sons have reproduced in book form two collections of Ogden Nash’s humorous verse, one entitled “Many Long Years Ago” and the othei' “The Face is Familiar.” Admirers of Ogden Nash (and they are legion) will welcome the advent of these two volumes.