History graduate publishes book on his great-grandfather’s epic wartime odyssey
The remarkable story of an RAF serviceman who undertook a 1,400-mile escape across Southern Europe after being shot down by the Nazis in France has been told for the first time in a new book written by his great grandson – and history graduate of the University of Exeter.
Adam Hart retraced the three-month journey of Frank Griffiths, from the crash site in Annecy, through Switzerland, Spain, and finally to Gibraltar, meeting relatives of those who helped his great-grandfather to reach safety.
He was so moved by the experience that he decided to capture it in writing, and now, two years on, his book, Operation Pimento: My Great-Grandfather’s Great Escape, will be published by Hodder and Stoughton this week.
It is, he says, as much a tribute to those people who risked their lives to help Frank recover from his injuries and find sanctuary as it is to his late relative.
Squadron Leader Griffiths was part of a crew of seven on board the Halifax bomber when it took off from RAF Tempsford on 14 August 1943, as part of a mission codenamed ‘Operation Pimento’. But as they were dropping support supplies for the French Resistance, the plane was damaged by gunfire from Italian troops and crashed just outside of Annecy. The impact killed all six of Frank’s crew as well as five civilians on the ground, but he survived despite suffering serious burns lacerations and several broken bones.
“Growing up, I was always aware of Frank as this family legend, and it was almost compulsory to know about this story and many of his other flying tales,” said Adam, 25, from Pembrokeshire in South Wales. “But it’s clear now that the real heroes of this story were the people who risked arrest, torture, and even death to help a stranger who had fallen into their midst.
“Meeting their descendants decades later brought that home to me, as they shook my hand, hugged me, and even burst into tears at how much it meant to them to be part of this piece of wartime history. It was as much for these people that I felt I had to write the book.”
Adam graduated from Exeter’s BA History and International Relations degree in 2021 and moved on to postgraduate study in journalism at Cardiff. It was there that he received a bursary to fund his travel to research the story, which he undertook over a month in 2022.
Through social media, Adam identified residents of Annecy who had responded to the town’s annual memorial ceremony. This provided him with a starting point for his research, and he was able to follow leads and historical accounts to several sites that figured in Frank’s escape. These included the attic of a brothel, a Frenchwoman’s chimney, a farm, and a Spanish prison cell.
“One of the more remarkable stages of his journey was near the beginning when he crossed into Switzerland,” Adam said. “A 22-year-old local girl walked with him, pretending to be his girlfriend, and he had to maintain the façade of the young lover, trying to conceal his serious facial burns, a broken shoulder, and a broken wrist.”
After a month of recovery, Frank was taken by a 62-year-old woman on a train to Toulouse, before he moved south-west and completed a gruelling crossing of the Pyrenees on foot. Although he was later arrested in Spain and feared being used as a political pawn by the Franco regime, he was eventually released and secured safe passage to Gibraltar and then home. This marked the end of his active service, but he would later go on to achieve perhaps even greater renown as the pilot of the first plane to ‘auto-land’ on a runway.
Adam never had the chance to meet Frank, who passed away four years before he was born. But it was in part due to his heroics that he developed a love of history, which paved the way for his three years at Exeter.
“I was only two years out of Exeter when I started writing the book,” Adam says. “I was researching all of these old documents and sources, and that was a process that I felt my time at Exeter trained me for. I enjoyed the modules I studied, whether it was 200 years of Native American history or the first day of the Somme. I really do think it stood me in good stead.”
Adam says he is “nervous and excited” about the release of the book and is currently considering a second project – as well as coming to terms with the prospect of becoming a historian.
Operation Pimento: My Great-Grandfather’s Great Escape is published on Thursday 5 June. The book is available from Amazon, Waterstones, and WHSmith.
