Hitler Versus Me: The Return of Bartholomew Bandy

Patricia Morley is professor emerita of English and Canadian studies at
Concordia University, and the author of Kurlek, Margaret Laurence: The
Long Journey Home, and As Though Life Mattered: Leo Kennedy’s Story.

Toronto-based playwright and novelist Donald Jack has earned a permanent
slot in the history

of Canadian humor with his series of farcical novels collectively titled
The Bandy Papers,

which have won him three Leacock Medals for Humour.

Beginning in 1962, the first volume, Three Cheers for Me, chronicled
the exploits of Bartholomew Bandy, a World War I air ace who never gives
up and refuses to grow old. In Hitler Versus Me, the year is 1940, World
War II is about to move into high gear, and Bart is a 45-year-old
fighter pilot determined to get a piece of the action, age be damned. A
personal appeal to the prime minister does the trick, and Bart is sent
overseas to worry the Allies as much as the Germans. In a bizarre
ending, Bart is shot down over Normandy and meets CBC war correspondent
Matthew Halton, who finds him distinctly hard to take.

In this eighth volume devoted to Bart Bandy’s exploits, the humor is
based on male camaraderie, the episodic plot is baroque, the farce is
broad, and the situations are outrageous.