Where The Hell Have You Been? : Monty, Italy and One Man’s Incredible Escape

A terrific read’ Andy McNabIn November 1942, two nights after the Battle of El Alamein, a young British army officer was captured. As the Nazis deliberated about what to do with him, Richard Carver had particular reason to be afraid: unknown to anyone, he was the stepson of Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery, the Allied Commander who had just inflicted the first defeat on the Third Reich. This gripping story tells of Richard’s internment in a POW camp in northern Italy.

Having decided to risk making his way back to Allied HQ in the south, he embarked on a gruelling 500-mile journey through German-occupied territory, evading capture again and again and ultimately being saved by a family of brave Italians who jeopardised not just their own lives but those of an entire village to hide him. In the winter of 1943, a year after he disappeared, he staggered back into Army HQ, to be greeted by his stepfather with the words, ‘Where the hell have you been?’This is a great adventure story – a reminder of a lost age, and of a generation forced to rise to extraordinary feats of valour in the service of a cause greater than themselves. ‘Riveting and remarkable’ Ben Macintyre, author of Operation Mincemeat ‘This account is a gem.

It reminds one of the gallantry and devotion to duty of a generation that has left us.’ Patrick Cordingley, Commander of the Desert Rats, Iraq, 1991Where the Hell Have You Been? provides a completely new way of seeing the prickly old warrior, Monty’ The Daily Telegraph