Some years ago, I came across
an account of the disastrous World War II raid on Dieppe written by a
British naval intelligence officer who viewed the raid from the deck of a
warship off the coast of France.
The intelligence report read
like a thriller, which should come as no surprise, as the naval intelligence
officer was Royal Navy Lt. Commander Ian Fleming,
who went on to write the James Bond thrillers.
The Dieppe Raid was the stuff
of thrillers, and Canadian historian David O’Keefe has written a fine
book about the failed operation called “One Day in August: Ian Fleming,