Stephen Haggard - Second World War

Second World War

At the outbreak of the Second World War Haggard joined the British Army, serving as a captain in the Intelligence Corps. His wife and two sons went to the United States in 1940, where his father was consul-general in New York. Shortly after their departure, he wrote his sons a letter, which was subsequently published in the Atlantic Monthly later that year as "I'll Go to Bed at Noon: A Soldier's Letter to His Sons." Haggard was posted to the Middle East and worked for the Department of Political Warfare. There he met the author Olivia Manning and her husband, the broadcaster R.D. Smith. The latter recruited Haggard to play starring roles in his radio productions of Henry V and Hamlet on local radio in Jerusalem.

While in the Middle East, Haggard fell in love with a beautiful Egyptian married woman whose husband worked in Palestine. Haggard was overworked and felt that the war had destroyed his acting career. He was on the edge of nervous breakdown when after some months the woman decided to end the relationship. Haggard shot himself on a train between Cairo and Palestine on February 25, 1943 at the age of 31. Manning based the character Aidan Sheridan in her Fortunes of War novel sequence on Haggard. The manner of Haggard's death was hushed up, and is not mentioned in the biography of Haggard written by Christopher Hassell and published in 1948. Haggard is buried in Heliopolis War Cemetery, in Cairo, Egypt.