Peter Williamson, “Beware of the Dog”
“Beware of the Dog” is arguably the most well-known story in this collection having received credit as the original story upon which a theatrical film adaptation was made in 1965 and a made-for-TV version in 1989. That is not exactly correct, however. Production was already underway for the theatrical film based solely on an original screenplay. That script was sent to Dahl’s wife, actress Patricia Neal, in the hope that she would be interested in taking on a role. Immediately noticing that the plot bore a more than passing resemblance to her husband’s story, the producers lost an actress and gained a lawsuit. The result of that lawsuit is why Dahl receives his “based on” screen credit. This backstory to the film also explains why the RAF pilot named Peter Williamson who is shot down over German-occupied France in World War II and wakes up to find himself the subject of an elaborate ruse by German spies to convince him he is back in England becomes Jeff Pike, Major in the U.S. Army in both of the films supposedly adapted from Dahl’s tale.
Fin, “They Shall Not Grow Old”
Fin is another RAF pilot fighting the good fight against Nazi aggression in World War II. The story opens with the narrator—another pilot—on alert because Fin took off more than two hours earlier and should have long since returned. In fact, he won’t reappear again until two days have passed, but he swears that his has taken only a little over and hour. He has no memory of what caused this discrepancy and also can’t recall where he was for those two days. It is only a week after his return that he finally remembers and relates a strange story to his comrades about thick white cloud, a blindingly blue sky and a line of plans in the air on the horizon carrying crews to their appointment with destiny and death.
“Madame Rosette”
Although this story does include pilots—including a friend of Fin’s—it is unusual in that it does not focus on the actual job of being a fighter pilot. It also features a story with a more risqué plot than the others as the title character runs a brothel in Cairo. Two pilots, Stuffy and Fin’s friend known as The Stag makes arrangements with Madame Rosette for a rendezvous with a beautiful girl they spot in a shop because she supposedly has the power to press any girl in town into being one of her prostitutes. They change their minds at the last minute and instead a launch a plot to rescue the girls from the fourteen girls already in forced servitude to the Madame who ends a prisoner locked inside her own office.
“Katina”
This story and its title character could almost not be more different from that of the story described above. The only thing they stories have in common is the RAF pilots and the World War II setting. While Madame Rosette is a comic figure in comical tale, Katina is a darkly serious character in a darkly serious story. Katina is a little Greek girl who three pilots stumble across in the effort to lend assistance following a German bombing of a small village. They find her alone, bleeding from the forehead and orphaned. Fin reappears to become the paternal caretake of the strange little girl described as having the face of an old woman with hatred in her heart and who has a penchant for standing in a field and shaking her fists and screaming at enemy bombers. The ending of this dark story is as shocking as it is unexpected.
