During his birth on Christmas Day 1916 under a circling, grenade-dropping German warplane, Albert Torreele was blinded in one eye by a panicked midwife. That did not stop him on his tenacious path towards officerhood.

He graduated from the Royal Military Academy in Brussels just in time to lead an ill-fated platoon straight into the German onslaught of May 10, 1940. A single shot that should have left him crippled sent him on a grueling odyssey, though his tumbling country to the edge of the hell of Dunkirk, and across the English Channel to the charming seaside town of Tenby where the Belgian forces regrouped and prepared for another chance to fight.

Finding old friends and true love in Wales, Albert and his comrades of the Free Belgian Forces set their minds on a single goal - cross the English Channel, take back their home and free their families.

Kerstin Trimble is a Nürnberg-born expat in the United States with a passion for all things language, history, and the intricacies of human nature.