Obituary: Red Rodney

FURTHER to my obituary of the trumpeter Red Rodney (31 May), writes Steve Voce, I have discovered there was a sequel to his impersonating a US major-general.

When Rodney was sentenced he asked the judge if he could have a week to sort out his affairs before going to gaol. The judge agreed and Rodney was released. He took the first plane to Denmark and that was the last his countrymen saw of him for three years.

When US agents eventually caught up with the trumpeter in Denmark they shot him in each leg to his escaping and took him back across the Atlantic in irons.