Green Beach

‘Of all the war stories I have read, truth or fiction, this is the best’ – Ottawa Journal

‘…a cracking good story’ – Globe & Mail

In August 1942, radar expert Jack Nissenthall volunteered for one of the most dangerous missions of the Second World War. Landing with Canadian troops during the Dieppe Raid, he was tasked with penetrating a German radar station overlooking Green Beach and gathering intelligence vital to the Allied war effort.

Nissenthall knew Britain’s most closely guarded radar secrets. To prevent them falling into enemy hands, he was assigned a bodyguard of sharpshooters with extraordinary orders: protect him at all costs, but if capture became inevitable, kill him.

Based on first-hand accounts and meticulous research, Green Beach tells the remarkable true story of Nissenthall and the men who fought beside him through nine desperate hours under relentless enemy fire. First published in 1975 to widespread acclaim, James Leasor’s gripping account remains the definitive story of one of the Second World War’s most extraordinary secret missions.

‘Green Beach has blown the lid off one of the Second World War’s best-kept secrets’ Daily Express

‘If I had been aware of the orders given to the escort to shoot him rather than let him be captured, I would have cancelled them immediately’ Lord Mountbatten

‘Green Beach is a vivid, moving and at times nerve-racking reconstruction of an act of outstanding but horrific heroism’ Sunday Express