The experience, he admits, gave him quite a nostalgic feeling: he had not been under such heavy fire since his days in the Wehrmacht during World War Two. Since then, his adventures have been political rather than military.
It began when a ragtag fleet of 800 naval vessels, barges, fishing boats and pleasure craft rallied to Winston Churchill's call to save the Allied armies from the encircling Wehrmacht.
He hints at them, using irony. As well as Wehrmacht against resistance, Hamburg was also a reversal of the invasion: an orange-clad Dutch army numbering tens of thousands drove its cars into Germany and defeated the inhabitants.