Why I Became an X Troop Commando

Why I Became an X Troop Commando is the biography of Colin Anson, born Claus Ascher in Berlin in 1922. Nazi persecution and the death of his father after imprisonment in Dachau pushed the teenage Ascher towards flight to Britain, where he joined the British Army, adopted a new identity and was selected for the German-speaking commando unit later known as X Troop.

Helen Fry follows Anson through training and combat in Sicily and Italy, a severe battlefield wound, his return to service and later operations in the Adriatic and Greece. Based on extensive interviews, the book uses one refugee soldier’s life to illuminate the broader story of men who escaped Hitler’s Europe and then returned in British uniform to fight the Nazi regime.