Ed. with Aage Juul, Campaigning with the Buffs: A Dane’s Odyssey through Italy from Anzio to the Alps

I am currently editing the memoir of a Dane named Aage Skov Bojesen Juul, a soldier whose World War II journey led him from Nazi-occupied Denmark to fierce fighting in the Italian campaign from 1944 to 1945, and finally, to the battlefields of memory where in 1946 he would revisit his wartime experiences in writing.

During the war, Juul assumed the titles of infantryman, intelligence officer, and ally—although resistor, exile, and liberator equally apply. Orchestrating a daring escape from Denmark in 1943, Juul joined the British army and fought up the Italian peninsula from the embattled Anzio beachhead until war’s end in the Austrian Alps.

As a member of The Buffs (Royal East Kent Regiment) in the British Eighth Army, he experienced artillery bombardments, the death of close friends, night raids, German captivity, and a daring escape back to friendly lines. After the liberation of Rome, he participated in the Allied offensive to break the Gothic Line, enduring one of the worst winters on record before observing the total collapse of the German Wehrmacht in Italy.

Witness to one of the most brutal military campaigns of the twentieth century, Juul returned to Denmark in 1945. He wrote about his unique journey as a means of “get[ing] over traumas caused by events of war.” The resulting memoir, På felttog med The Buffs gennem Italien, was published in Copenhagen by Chr. Erichsens Forlag in 1947.

Many decades passed before Juul revisited his memories in writing. With his children’s assistance, in 2002 he translated the original manuscript into English. Unfortunately, the result of his efforts—Campaigning with the Buffs—was never republished, and until now has only been available to close friends and family—or, like me, those who serendipitously stumbled upon it.

With his wife and children’s blessing, I am seeking to bring Juul’s remarkable story to English-speaking audiences around the world.