Dad was an SAS hero, but was he also an MI6 spy?

He took regular trips alone to Eastern Europe

THOUGH he was absent for most of my childhood, I do wonder whether some of my adventuring spirit comes from my father’s side. Soon after the outbreak of the Second World War, Charles Bonington volunteered for the newly formed Special Air Service (SAS) in Egypt. This was a tiny group of seven officers and 60 other ranks recruited by David Stirling, a charismatic young lieutenant. At 32, my father was its oldest member. The first operation in November 1941 was a disaster. Divided into five groups, each comprising an officer and ten men, they were to be dropped close to two airstrips near Tobruk in North Africa, packed with Messerschmitt fighters. The weather was bad, with high winds and poor visibility, and all five aircraft missed the drop zone, landing the raiders miles away. Several were injured or killed and only 22 made it to the rendezvous point, where the Long Range Desert Group picked them up.

My father’s plane was shot up by a Messerschmitt and crashlanded. He suffered a badly shattered shoulder, and was captured. He spent the rest of the war in Germany. He joined in several escape attempts but was never successful.

He was estranged from my mother, and had left home when I was still an infant. But he wrote to me from his PoW camp, inspiring me to start hatching escape plans of my own. In a way, this proved my first expedition and exercise in leadership. I must have been eight at the time. The war ended that summer and my father, released from his PoW camp, came back into our lives, much to my excitement. He brought me an SS dagger and a two-dimensional brass model of a U-boat. Mum insisted on having the point of the dagger blunted so that I couldn’t stab myself – or anyone else.

My father tried to get back together with Mum, but she wasn’t interested, and after a couple of visits he no longer called. I remember vividly being hurt. He left to get on with his own life, eventually meeting Mary, who was to become his second wife and the mother of my half-brother and three half-sisters.

My father died in early 1983. In adult life, I had seen him every year or so.

He’d take me to lunch, often an oyster bar, and we’d have an enjoyable catch-up. The conversation never flagged.

He was quite a small man, with small eyes – something of a Bonington trait – but despite his fascinating life, he almost never talked about himself.

Over the years, he took regular holidays alone in Eastern Europe and I often wondered if he was involved in some way in working for MI6.

He could pass unnoticed in any crowd, would have missed nothing with those shrewd little eyes, and, as a good journalist, could persuade people to unburden themselves.

He reminded me of a John Le Carré character, but Dad would never be drawn. I did notice a lot of ageing gentlemen in dark suits, including David Stirling, at his funeral.