He left school at 14 and spent the next four years kicking round Soho. Vic and his brother and sister were brought up by their mother in a two-room slum in King’s Cross. Together, we co-wrote his three-volume memoir: Rifleman: A Front-Line Life, King’s Cross Kid and Soldier, Spy plus an eBook, Dresden: A Survivor’s Story. That meeting led to a friendship that lasted for the rest of Vic’s life, he died last Monday aged 101, three days short of his 102nd birthday. Vic said Popski had told him: “Before you go in, suss out how you are going to get out.” This was a life lesson for Vic, I had just been “sussed out” by him before going further. Vic’s job was to drive thousands of miles, alone, through the dunes, carrying stores and intelligence to Popski’s contacts. It was Vic practising a routine he had learned more than 50 years earlier in the Western Desert, when Rifleman Gregg was assigned to Vladimir Peniakoff, the founder of “Popski’s Private Army”, a unit of British special forces. After 10 minutes a car parked up the road flashed its lights. He was 90 and had sent me an email saying he would pick me up at Winchester station. I first met Victor Gregg on a freezing afternoon in 2009 when we were to talk about his experiences in the second world war.
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