Hitler Versus Me; The Return of Bartholomew Bandy (Main character: Bartholomew Bandy; Series: Bandy Papers 8.)

February 1940 and the war has yet to hit its stride. Bartholomew Bandy, the Canadian First World War air ace, is eager to enter the fray, but at 45 he is deemed too old for combat. Until, that is, in a dramatic moonlit encounter he makes a personal appeal to Prime Minister Mackenzie King, who is only too happy to send him very far away. Soon Bandy is battling the Boche in the Battle of Britain, and battling just as hard to keep his toupee a secret.

As his many admiring readers would expect, Bandy is soon carrying on shockingly with the nobly born Guinevere Plumley, she of the gorgeous body and the face of “an admiral in drag.” Through Guinevere’s mysterious connections, Bandy meets two Winston Churchills, ends up in the wrong bed in an English country house, and plays a vital security role at the Quebec Conference of 1943. There he preserves the Bandy name while dangling from the Chateau Frontenac, and is arrested as a Nazi spy. All too soon, however, he is back on duty, only to be shot down over France, where he is sought by the Allies, the Resistance, and the Gestapo alike because he knows the date of D-Day.

Whether in London, Ottawa, Quebec City, or Normandy, Bandy is in lock step with the war’s events – feeding immortal lines to the newsmakers, inconveniencing all and sundry (Lester B. Pearson and Evelyn Waugh, to mention but two) – and always seeing history made from his own unique perspective. As the book says “Waugh is Hell.”

Donald Jack was born in England and served in the Royal Air Force in the Second World War before coming to Canada. He was known for his film and television scripts, and his plays. He is most widely remembered, however, for The Bandy Papers, a series of comic novels recounting the adventures of a blundering First World War hero who went on to fame and misfortune in the post-war world. The first six books in the series, Three Cheers For Me; That’s Me In The Middle; It’s Me Again; Me Bandy, You Cissie; Me Too and This One’s On Me were recently re-published by McClelland & Stewart. They gained no fewer than three Leacock Awards for Humour and the undying loyalty of Bandy fans everywhere.

Donald Jack passed away in 2003 at the age of 78.


From the Trade Paperback edition.