Interview: Peter Snow and Ann McMillan

What gave you the idea to write a book together?

 We have always wanted to write a book together especially since we have worked as a team on Peter's other books. When our editor ask Peter for another book about military history we came up with the idea of the two of us writing personal stories about people who had extraordinary  experiences in wartime. 

What method did you adopt - did you write the stories together or separately? 

We did a great deal of research and came up with a long list of potential subjects. Each of us chose the men or women we found most interesting and when we had each written our account, we handed it over to the other for suggestions and corrections. It worked very well although there was the odd argument - usually friendly! 

There are already many published war stories - what is different about these accounts?

What makes these stories different is that each one is uniquely memorable.  Most importantly we chose individuals who had written first hand accounts of their experiences in diaries or letters from the battlefield. A few of our subjects - for example a refugee from war-torn Syria,  a veteran of the ST Nazaire harbour raid in 1942 and an SAS navigator in the North African desert -  are still alive so we interviewed them personally.  

What do you find fascinating about people caught up in war?

We are both journalists who have covered many conflicts but we have never fought a war. Telling the story about people who have had that life changing experience has been enormously rewarding. We haven't just gone for heroes, there are villains in our book too?  And one of the most astonishing stories is the tale of the captured German Luftwaffe pilot who made several escapes from British POW camps and finally made it home to lGermany

The stories span four centuries - how did you select the subjects, and research their stories?

We hope that readers will find each of the stories unforgettable. We include brave soldiers like Edward Seager who survived the charge of the Light Brigade in the Crimea. And we've gone behind the battle lines as well.  We write about doctors like Norman Bethune who invented mobile blood transfusions in the Spanish Civil War. Women play a large part too: spies like the incredibly brave and beautiful Krystyna Skarbek, Winston Churchill's favourite operative in the Second World War and Belgian/ Congolese nurse Augusta Chiwy who risked her life to save American soldiers in the Battle of the Bulge. 

Are you planning to write together again?

We are so pleased with our book that we are already collecting stories for War Stories Two. Any suggestions greatly welcome!

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