‘Dig Two Graves’ was inspired by the extraordinary courage of Lieutenant Terence Edward Waters, GC (posthumous), the West Yorkshire Regiment, during the Korean War. Badly injured and a PoW, Waters ordered his men to join the N Korean ‘Peace Fighters’ in return for decent treatment but, refusing to do so himself, died of malnutrition, hypothermia and gangrene.
The fictional story, relocated to the Vietnam war, opens many years after the Lieutenant’s death, with the publication of a photograph of the PoW Camp Commandant responsible, now US citizen and successful businessman Donald Quang. Hershey is commissioned by a fellow Vietnam veteran to carry out a ‘routine check’ into Quang’s background, ostensibly for business reasons. Complications multiply quickly as it emerges that the Lieutenant’s senior NCO who survived the camp is already on his way to the US hell-bent on revenge and that both the CIA and the KGB have an interest in Quang.
