My grandad was a Nazi hunter, by Bear Grylls: TV adventurer reveals relative was involved in top secret mission to capture scientists after D-Day
- Bear Grylls told how grandfather took part in top secret wartime mission
- TV adventurer unearthed untold story after rummaging in his family's attic
- Dusty documents showed Brigadier Ted Grylls commanded Army's T-Force
- It captured German scientists after D-Day and brought them to Britain to prevent their valuable knowledge from falling into Soviet hands
Untold story: Bear Grylls has revealed how he discovered his grandfather was involved in a top secret wartime mission to capture Nazi scientists
Bear Grylls has told how he discovered his grandfather was involved in a top secret wartime mission to capture Nazi scientists.
The TV adventurer was rummaging in his family's attic when he found dusty documents showing Brigadier Ted Grylls commanded the Army's T-Force.
It captured German scientists after D-Day and brought them to Britain to prevent their valuable knowledge from falling into Soviet hands.
Grylls was 19 when his grandfather died having never spoken of his part in the elite force.
But when the adventurer unearthed dusty ‘Top Secret’ documents wrapped in maps in an old military trunk, he nearly missed the amazing truth of Brigadier Grylls’ untold role.
‘I never really took much notice of it, took it home and stuffed it in a cupboard and thought nothing more of it for years,’ Grylls said at Hay Festival.
It was only years later when he was researching his new novel, Ghost Flight, that he realised the value of the papers, the Daily Telegraph reported.
Grylls said: ‘What we found was that in the closing days of the Second World War, Winston Churchill established the most clandestine unit ever put together, called T-Force.
‘It was tasked with hunting down a lot of the high-ranking Nazi scientists, who were developing weaponry and technology, and extracting them secretly. They were to hide them within the West to protect us from a newer enemy than the Nazis: the Soviet threat.’
Details about T-Force were only disclosed for the first time in 2007 when some of the unit’s official wartime records were finally declassified.
Grylls said of his grandfather’s role: ‘It was a morally dubious line to walk, because for the greater good you have to protect those who should not be protected.
‘It was something he obviously lived with for a long time. So this story was the driving force behind the dark presence that lingers throughout the book.’
Hero: Ted Grylls led a clandestine unit during the Second World War and has now inspired his grandson
Brigadier Ted Grylls commanded the Army's T-Force, which captured German scientists after D-Day (pictured as landing craft approached the beach code-named Omaha in France on June 6, 1944) and brought them to Britain to prevent their valuable knowledge from falling into Soviet hands
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