Marc Stevens

Marc Stevens was born in Montreal in the late 1950's, but grew up between Ottawa and Toronto. He attended Trinity College at the University of Toronto in the late 1970's. From the age of 10, Marc has had a serious case of wanderlust, and has visited over 55 countries on all 7 continents. An interest in history, especially aviation in World War II, developed because of the service of Marc's father as an RAF bomber pilot in that war. Marc's dad, Squadron Leader Peter Stevens, died in 1979, before Marc was able to question his father about the latter's wartime exploits. This led to Marc's beginning an 18 year quest, to discover exactly why his father had been one of only 69 WW2 members of the RAF to be awarded one of Britain's highest medals for bravery, the Military Cross (a medal for gallantry in the face of the enemy ON THE GROUND). Marc had known from a very young age that his father was originally German, but he was always sworn to secrecy about that part of the family's history. What he did not know, and only discovered in 1996 (17 years after his father's death), was that Peter Stevens was not only a German, but a German Jew, who had fought for England against the country of his birth. Eighteen years of research (including obtaining access to a British government file marked "Secret - Sealed until 2051") eventually showed that Marc's father had been sent to safety in England by his widowed mother in 1934. He had committed identity theft at the outbreak of hostilities, and was the object of a UK police manhunt while he was serving in the RAF under his assumed name. After flying 22 combat operations as a bomber pilot, Peter Stevens was shot down by flak over Berlin, and was taken as a Prisoner of War by his own country, without protection under the Geneva Convention. Had the Nazis ever discovered his true identity, they would have legally been able to execute him for treason. Becoming one of the most ardent escapers of the war, Peter Stevens actually got away from Nazi POW camps 3 times, but was recaptured each time. On one of his harrowing escapes (from a moving prison train in a hail of Nazi bullets), he made his way to his childhood home in Hannover, to get food, cash and civilian clothing from his mother. Upon his arrival in Hannover, he discovered that his mother had committed suicide in July 1939 rather than allow herself to be shepherded through the gas chambers, as her remaining relatives suffered. Peter Stevens never made it back to England until after the war, but he later served for 5 years as a British spy with MI6 at the height of the Cold War, before emigrating to Canada and starting a family in the early 1950's. Marc Stevens did not start his research with the intention of writing a book about what he might find. It was simply that the story became so fascinating and so unique, that he realized he had no choice but to write a book about it. 'Escape, Evasion and Revenge' is a true story of thankless and unheralded heroism.