Tom: A Life Saved Lives Lost! - Paperback

by Goffinet McLaren (Author)

In the middle of the night you bail out of your stricken plane over Nazi occupied Europe during WWII. You don t know if you ve landed in Germany, or somewhere else. A local farmer comes along. He doesn't know if you are a Nazi, posing as an Allied airman; You don t know if he is a member of the Resistance who might help you. Later, hiding in a Resistor s safe-house, imagine your fear at the sound of Nazi jackboots marching outside the home. And feel the Resistor s fear for himself and his family that the dreaded black car will pull up to the front door and the Gestapo will step out to search for evaders. How can you and your Resistor guide pretend to be unconcerned in a railway carriage as the silver-suited SS officers move along the aisle, checking traveler IDs, while you know that your papers are fake! These were some of RAF Flight Sergeant Tom Hutton s experiences, now told by his daughter Goffinet. Parts of Tom s story are tragic, such as the hail of bullets that cut down one of the most famous agents in Britain s SOE, an agent who had helped her father escape just weeks before. Parts of the story are even amusing, like the Resistor guide who dressed in a flamboyant outfit to attract the Germans attention to himself, rather than to the two Allied evaders who were following in his wake. And almost seventy years later, Goffinet learns the full story of The Village Priest who was instrumental in her father s escape, and why she is reminded of this priest every day of her life.

Author Biography

Goffinet (née Hutton) was born just weeks after the end of WWII and grew up in Carrickfergus, a small historic town on the water`s edge of Northern Ireland. Although hostilities with Germany had ceased, her father, Tom, was still actively immersed in his post-war RAF duties. The war was not a topic of regular conversation in her home, but Goffinet was inevitably aware of her father`s wartime escape after he had bailed out of an RAF bomber over occupied Europe in 1943. In 1979, Goffinet moved to the United States where she married her husband Ian, also a native of N. Ireland. When Ian retired, the couple moved to the coast of South Carolina. While unpacking in her new home, Goffinet found an old photograph of her father with a group of Belgian children who were visiting Carrickfergus after the war. The photo stimulated a renewed interest in understanding more of the details surrounding her father`s escape, and Tom: A Life Saved- Lives Lost! recounts the intriguing story that Goffinet uncovered of her father`s evasion. Today Goffinet`s personal passion in life is to help stop the environmental destruction caused by plastic in our oceans and in our everyday lives. She has previously published a top-selling book, Sullie Saves the Seas to educate our younger generation about the damage caused by plastic to our global environment. Just as Britain`s lack of preparation in the years leading up to WWII caused Prime Minister Winston Churchill to bemoan the "unwisdom" of the British government, today Goffinet finds a close parallel in the "unwisdom" of the world`s governments in not responding to the "plastic holocaust" that is threatening our planet`s ocean life, despite warnings by oceanic environmentalists such as Captain Charles Moore.