Charles Whiting studied at the Nunthorpe Grammar School and left in 1943, at age 16, to join the British Army by lying about his age.
10 Facts About Charles Whiting
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Keen to be in on the wartime action, Charles Whiting was attached to the 52nd Armoured Reconnaissance Regiment, and by age 18 saw duty in France, Holland, Belgium, and Germany in the latter stages of World War II, rising to the rank of sergeant.
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Charles Whiting completed his first novel The Frat Wagon while still an undergraduate at Leeds; it was published by Jonathan Cape in 1954.
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Charles Whiting taught as an assistant professor of History at Maryland and Bradford universities before returning to Germany with a post at Trier in 1958.
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Charles Whiting lectured at Saarbrucken and Bielefeld before returning to Britain in 1973.
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Elsewhere, Charles Whiting worked as a translator for a German chemical factory, in spells as a publicist, as a correspondent for The Times, and as a feature writer and German correspondent for such diverse periodicals as Education Forum and The Times Literary Supplement, International Review of Linguistics, Soldier Magazine, and Playboy.
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Charles Whiting became a touring academic living in Spain, France, Germany, Turkey, and Italy while teaching military history and strategy to the US Army.
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Charles Whiting was a prolific and popular military historian, who developed a niche market for writing about the Second World War from the point of view of the experiences of regular soldiers rather than the military strategists and generals.
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Charles Whiting married first wife, Irma Krueger, in 1948; she died in 2001.
10.
Charles Whiting died 24 July 2007 in York, aged 80, from renal failure.