The Survivor: Scruffy's War - Softcover

It takes brains, grit, and maybe a dash of humour to be a survivor. Nobody knew that better than John Gordon “Scruffy” Weir, the subject of bestselling author Blake Heathcote’s newest book. In The Survivor: Scruffy’s War, Heathcote tells how Toronto-born Weir, the son of investment dealer Gordon Weir, went on to become a World War II fighter pilot, POW, participant in the Great Escape – and spy. Drawing on skills he had learned from an Ojibway hunter and in specials operations training, Weir endures a fiery plane crash and four grim years in POW camps, capped by a 350 mile trek in 1945’s infamous Winter March to Lübeck. In crisp prose, journal entries, and dozens of interview excerpts, Heathcote reveals how Weir was trained almost from birth for conditions neither he nor his teachers could ever have anticipated. Scruffy Weir spoke to no one about his experiences in war. No one, that is, except Blake Heathcote. And once he began to speak, Scruffy held nothing back. Over two years, and hundreds of hours of interviews, he talked to Heathcote about everything from his childhood to his flight training, the prison camps, the Great Escape, and the shadowy world of intelligence. And it wasn’t all just talk. Scruffy’s journals, personal notes, and thousands of photographs – many of them reproduced in this book – tell an unforgettable story of war and courage. What makes a survivor? Most of us can only guess. In this remarkable book, Blake Heathcote paints a moving and affectionate portrait of Scruffy Weir, an extraordinary man: a true survivor. From the Book: “There was a caveat: if John accepted, he could never talk about any assignments he was given, nor could he speak of or in any way acknowledge the existence of any such organization with anyone but Uncle Adrian. No one. Not his father or his closest and dearest friend. What’s more, he would be accountable to the Network for the rest of his life, and there would be no turning back. The work would never be particularly easy, it would always have aspects of danger about it, and there would be no reward apart from the work itself. No one would ever know what he was doing or had done, and nor would he ever be thanked or awarded any medals or decorations. By and large the assignments would be mundane, achieving specific ends that were a small part of a much larger objective known only to Adrian. But there would come a time, as there did in all intelligence work, when John would be asked to take on an assignment that he did not want to take. Refusal was not an option.”

Blake Heathcote was born and raised in Toronto, the son and grandson of Canadian veterans. Blake's father, Lieutenant E.B. Heathcote, served in WW 2, and his grandfather, Major E.T. (Eric) Heathcote MM ED, served in both wars. In WW 2, Major Heathcote, an artist and in his 50s, was posted to London to oversee the Department of National Defense's War Art programme. In Alex Colville's words, he was the "Art Director" of the programme, and curated the work of many of the war artists including Colville, Lawren Harris (the younger), and Charles Comfort. When Eric died in 1987, he left behind a large collection of sketchbooks, photographs, and documents from both wars. Many of these were beginning to show signs of age, and so Blake carefully scanned each item at high resolution to preserve them. This in turn led to researching the stories behind each picture, letter, and journal This absorbing and compelling experience inspired him to create the Testaments of Honour project (www.Testaments.ca), a non-profit initiative whose objective was, and is, to chronicle on digital video first-hand accounts of Canadian veterans. The goal is to provide future generations with a richer, deeper understanding of Canadian history through use of first-person testaments - but also, and of equal importance, to simply share and celebrate the stories of Canadian veterans as they, themselves, told them. Random House, Doubleday, and McClelland & Stewart commissioned Blake to create books based on his work with the veterans: the best-selling Testaments of Honour was released in October 2002, and A Soldier's View in October 2005. He also produced video interviews with a cross-section of Random House authors - Margaret Atwood, Salman Rushdie, John Grisham, Bill Bryson, and Farley Mowat among many others.