Soldier of Orange: One Man’’s Dynamic Story of Holland’’s Secret War Against the Nazi’’s

Over one million copies of the book, a LA Critic's award for best foreign film starring Rutger Hauer, and presently a record-breaking musical ... here is the new US edition, (of Soldier of Orange) with the original foreword from HRH Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands. When the Germans bombed Rotterdam to rubble in May,1940, Erik Hazelhoff was a carefree student. After being imprisoned by the Gestapo, he escaped from Nazi-occupied Holland, was recruited by the British Secret Service to land agents for the Dutch underground, joined the RAF, earning Dutch and British DFC's for his many missions as a Pathfinder pilot. (His chapter on a Mosquito raid to Berlin is so detailed that one feels being with him in the cockpit ) He returned at the end of the war, knighted with Holland's highest military order by Wilhelmina, the Queen of the Netherlands. As her post-war ADC he brings one into her daily life with its challenges and surprises. 'Soldier of Orange' is a riveting story. Its focus is on choices in time of war. Acts of heroism, friendship, and deceit form the fate of his early fellow students and war-time comrades. (Those wanting to know more of Erik Hazelhoff's entire life ("a hundred lives'" according to Len Deighton) should look for 'Win A Few', his autobiography from birth in Java, through international intrigues and American adventures, to his final resting place at 90, in Hawaii)

Erik Hazelhoff Roelfzema is currently one of the most well-known writers and WW2 heroes in the Netherlands. His memoir ’Soldier of Orange’ has sold more than 1 million copies in Europe and the UK, was made into LA critic’s award film, and is now a record breaking musical. This new English edition shines a light on a piece of little known history of the Dutch resistance-- from a student’s escape to England, secret landings to Holland, to his ’Military Willems Order’-- the highest Military Award for bravery. Finally becoming a Pathfinder pilot in the RAF with 72 missions over Germany. He ended the war as ADC to Queen Wilhelmina on her return to the Netherlands in 1945.