Operation Pimento: My Great-Grandfather’s Great Escape

By Adam Hart

Published by Hodder & Stoughton; Dist. by Hachette

RRP $34.99 in paperback

ISBN 9781399740142

 

In an interview with History of War online (6 June 2025, Callum McKelvie), Adam Hart described the objectives of Operation Pimento.

“Operation Pimento was a very last minute Operation. It was laid on the day it was to occur – Saturday, August 14, 1943. Frank wrote about how that worried him from the start. His crew were just people who were available on the day – a scratch crew – which also made him nervous. The most important part of the operation was to drop heavy explosives to a resistance group near Modan, in Southeast France in the Alps. In three weeks, the allies were planning to launch their massive invasion at Salerno in Italy and these resistance fighters were trying to blow up a railway tunnel between France and Italy, intending to slow down the inevitable German reinforcements.”

On 14 August 1943, Hart’s great-grandfather Frank Griffiths took off from RAF Tempsford, the SOE ‘Special Duties’ airbase in rural England, as part of this operation, only to be shot down near Annecy in southeast France.

In an extraordinary turn of luck, Frank Griffiths survived, the only one of the five man crew. Though seriously injured, Frank knew it was his duty to get back to England to continue the fight against the Nazis.

He embarked on a perilous, 1,200-mile, 108-day escape across Europe, via the attic of a brothel, a Frenchwoman’s chimney and a Spanish prison cell.

Seventy-nine years later, Frank’s 22-year-old great-grandson retraced the epic escape through France, Switzerland and Spain.

His emotional encounters with descendants of people who’d risked their lives to help his great-grandfather reveal the enduring legacy of Operation Pimento and how we should never forget their sacrifice.

It is a vivid, highly personal account of a man who became a legend in his own family, a story that ultimately inspired Hart to commit his great-grandfather’s extraordinary life to the page.

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