The Eagle Has Landed - Characters

Characters

• Liam Devlin seems to be a compilation of several IRA veterans who collaborated with the Abwehr, especially Frank Ryan (an IRA man who was captured during the Spanish Civil War and "released" to Germany under house arrest). Liam Devlin is featured in several later Jack Higgins books, older and acting as a mentor to Sean Dillon and Martin Brosnan. In Higgins' novel Confessional, Devlin allies with MI6 in order to prevent a rogue KGB assassin from murdering Pope John Paul II.

• The S.S. British Free Corps unit is described in the book. In the novel, a British S.S. Officer named Harvey Preston is attached to Steiner's unit to add credibility. A rabid Nazi and convicted con-man prior to his enlistment, Preston is viewed with disgust by Steiner, Devlin, and their fellow commandos. After Steiner, Neumannn, and Devlin escape, Preston is lynched inside the village's Roman Catholic Church by a mentally ill resident of Studley Constable.

• Lt. Colonel Kurt Steiner is not a Nazi stereotype. His character was based mainly on Fallschirmjaeger officers Frederich August Freiherr von der Heydte and Major Walter Koch. Koch himself was rumoured to have been murdered by the Gestapo. Steiner is a veteran of the Invasion of Norway, Albert Canal, the Battle of Crete, Leningrad, Stalingrad and the Ukraine.

• Leutnant Ritter von Neumann survived the war then joined the French Foreign Legion but was killed fighting as a sergeant in a French Foreign Legion parachute regiment at Dien Bien Phu in 1954

• Hauptstabfeldwebel Otto Brandt killed in action in Studley Constable November 1943

• Feldwebel Hans Altmann killed in action in Studley Constable November 1943

• Gefreiter Werner Briegel killed in action in Studley Constable November 1943

• Joanna Grey is a German Fifth Columnist living in Studley Constable. Killed by American Ranger Jerzy Krukowski November 1943

• Molly Prior

• Paul Koenig Commander of the German E-boat killed in action three days after D-day making a torpedo run on British transports using Mulberry Harbour when his E-boat was blown out of the water by the guns of an American destroyer.

• John Amery, founding father of the The Legion of St. George, was sentenced to death for high treason by Mr Justice Humphreys in No .1 Court at the Old Bailey in November 1945, and Harvey Preston's comrades of the British Free Corps fared no better. In spite of intensive recruiting, the SS never succeeded in raising it beyond a strength of two platoons. Those who survived the war received sentences varying from life down to a year or two. An interesting photo still exists showing twenty men and a sergeant serving with the SS Panzer grenadier division Nordland. When this unit was sent to Berlin to take part in the last terrible battle for the city, the British contingent was ordered to Templin on 15 April 1945, and their names disappear from the Division's records. Preston was, perhaps, in some ways luckier than he knew.

• Pamela Vereker married Harry Kane in 1945 but died of leukaemia in 1948.

• Brana Lezemnikof the little Jewish girl Steiner saved, had jumped from the train seven miles out of the city and had been found in a ditch with a broken ankle by members of a partisan unit. She survived the war and was last heard of in 1947 on leaving Warsaw for Marseilles with a group of other Jews, their intention being to take passage on one of the boats attempting to run the British blockade into Palestine.