Garrick Jones
AUSTRALIAN AUTHOR
Farewell, My Boy
Farewell, My Boy
From the deserts of North Africa to the dark forests in the Third Reich, Tommy Haupner, together with his American lover, Henry “Shorty” Reiter, lead their team in a daring mission to rescue a gifted young savant from Nazi Germany’s T4 euthanasia program.
They are forced to flee in a stolen bus in the dead of night across enemy territory with a precious cargo of 24 handicapped children destined for extermination. In a supreme effort to save their charges and to avoid capture and execution themselves, they mount the most daring and dangerous rescue mission possible, the results of which almost end in disaster.
This third book in The Seventh of December series is an action packed wartime adventure set in the early months of 1942. Stolen aircraft, kidnapped senior Nazi officials, doctors of death and bloody revenge massacres, all of which are intertwined with the love of a helpless, rescued child. “Farewell, My Boy,” deals with not only the frailty of men’s hearts, but the truth that even the bravest are not exempt from the pain of loss, even when it is for a greater good.
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Author notes from the preface
The character of Tommy Haupner is modelled after a true life wartime hero and spy, whose abilities make Tommy’s pale by comparison.
Morris “Moe” Berg was a premier league American baseball player, who not only spoke eleven languages, but graduated from Princeton University, studied at the Sorbonne in Paris, and graduated in law from Columbia Law School. He was recruited by Billy Donovan (who you’ll meet in this story) and was sent to Zürich during the war to assess the progress of the Nazi’s atomic bomb development by attending a lecture by the famous physicist, Werner Heisenberg. Combat trained and licensed to kill, Berg was authorised to assassinate Heisenberg if he felt the Germans had already progressed far enough to make a viable nuclear weapon. Although there’s no remaining direct evidence, many historians believe that Berg was also gay.
Thousands of classical performers fought during the Second World War, many of them famous in their homelands and many giving their lives. Equally, MI6, the SOE, and the OSS were not averse to using performers as informants, gathering information as they travelled, entertaining troops or giving morale and fund raising concerts.
Noel Coward was one such British artist, running the propaganda office in Paris at the outbreak of war, also working for the OSS to convince the American public that the war in Europe needed support.
The author wishes to stress that this book is historical fiction. Events, names, places, dates, and the activities of real people may have occasionally been tweaked to advance the narrative.
This book is dedicated to the tens of thousands of gay servicemen on both sides of the war who fought or gave their lives to protect those they loved.