Behind Enemy Lines

With three Military Crosses, three Croix de guerre, a Légion d’honneur and a papal knighthood for his heroics during the Second World War, Sir Tommy Macpherson is the most decorated living soldier of the British Army.

Yet for 65 years the Highlander’s story has remained untold. Few know how, aged 21, he persuaded 23,000 SS soldiers of the feared Das Reich tank column to surrender, or how Tommy almost single-handedly stopped Tito’s Yugoslavia annexing the whole of north-east Italy.

Still a schoolboy when war broke out, Tommy quickly matured into a legendary commando. Twice captured, he escaped both times, marching through hundreds of miles of German-held territory to get home.

With a dizzyingly diverse cast of characters, including Winston Churchill, Field Marshal Montgomery and Charles de Gaulle, Behind Enemy Lines is an astonishing story of how an ordinary boy came to achieve truly extraordinary feats when war came calling.