Editing Dirk Bogarde (section)

==War service==
During the war, Derek "Pip" Bogaerde served in the [[British Army]], initially with the [[Royal Corps of Signals]]. He was then commissioned at the age of 22 into the [[Queen's Royal Regiment (West Surrey)]] on 2 April 1943 with the rank of [[second lieutenant]].<ref name="LG 18 May 1943">{{London Gazette |issue= 36023 |date= 18 May 1943 |pages= 2260-2261 |supp= y }}</ref> He served in both the [[European theatre of World War II|European]] and [[Pacific War|Pacific theatre]]s, principally as an intelligence officer.

===D-Day and aftermath===
Bogarde served as an intelligence officer with [[Field Marshal]] [[Bernard Montgomery]]'s 21st Army Group as it liberated Europe.<ref name="Military">{{Cite web |date=16 March 2021 |title=The Military Man behind the Matinee Idol |url=https://www.keymilitary.com/article/military-man-behind-matinee-idol |access-date=31 October 2022 |website=KeyMilitary.com}}</ref> Taylor Downing's book, ''Spies in the Sky'', tells of Bogarde's work in photo-reconnaissance in the aftermath of [[Operation Overlord|D-Day]], moving through [[Normandy]] with [[Royal Canadian Air Force]] units. By July 1944, they were located at the [[Advanced Landing Ground#Royal Air Force ALGs|"B.8"]] airfield at [[Sommervieu]], near [[Bayeux]]. As an air photographic interpreter with the rank of [[Captain (British Army and Royal Marines)|captain]], Bogarde was later attached to the [[Second Army (United Kingdom)|Second Army]], where he selected ground targets in France, Holland and Germany for the [[RAF Second Tactical Air Force|Second Tactical Air Force]] and [[RAF Bomber Command]].<ref name="Above The Title 1986">''Above The Title'', Yorkshire Television interview, 1986.</ref> Villages on key routes were heavily bombed to prevent the [[Wehrmacht]]'s [[Tank|armour]] from reaching the invasion [[lodgement]] areas.<ref> Bogarde states that before a village was bombed by the RAF they would always drop leaflets warning the inhabitants but that sometimes the leaflets were blown away by the wind. Other air forces allocated to these same tasks, he states, "didn't drop leaflets, they just bombed everything that moved".</ref> In a 1986 [[Yorkshire Television]] interview with [[Russell Harty]], Bogarde recalled going on [[Watercolor painting|painting]] trips, sometimes to see the villages which he had selected as targets:
{{blockquote|I found what I had thought in the rubble were a whole row of [[Ball (association football)|footballs]], and they weren't footballs ... they were children's heads ... A whole school of kids, a [[convent]], had been pulled out of school, and lined up in this little narrow alleyway between the buildings to save them from the bombing, and the whole thing had come in on top of them.<ref name="Above The Title 1986"/>}}

===Bergen-Belsen concentration camp===
Bogarde said he was one of the first [[Allies of World War II|Allied]] officers to reach the [[Bergen-Belsen concentration camp]] in Germany on 20 April 1945, an experience that had the most profound effect on him and about which he had difficulty speaking for many years afterward.<ref>{{cite book|last=Celinscak|first=Mark|title=Distance from the Belsen Heap: Allied Forces and the Liberation of a Concentration Camp|year=2015|publisher=University of Toronto Press|location=Toronto|isbn=9781442615700}}</ref>

[[File:The Liberation of Bergen-belsen Concentration Camp, April 1945 BU4274.jpg|thumb|Women survivors in Bergen-Belsen collecting their bread ration after their liberation, April 1945]]
{{blockquote|The gates were opened, and then I realised that I was looking at [[Dante]]'s [[Inferno (Dante)|''Inferno'']]. And a girl came up who spoke English, because she recognised one of the badges, and she&nbsp;... her breasts were like, sort of, empty purses, she had no top on, and a pair of man's pyjamas, you know, the prison pyjamas, and no hair ... and all around us there were mountains of dead people, I mean mountains of them, and they were slushy, and they were slimy.<ref name="Above The Title 1986"/>}}

[[File:Bergen Belsen Liberation 03.jpg|thumb|A [[British Army]] [[bulldozer]] pushes bodies into a [[mass grave]] at Belsen, 19 April 1945]]
There was some doubt as to whether he really visited Belsen, although, more than a decade after publishing his biography, and following additional research, John Coldstream concluded that "it is now possible to state with some authority that he did at least set foot inside the camp".<ref>{{cite web | url=https://dirkbogarde.co.uk/dirk-bogarde-and-belsen/ | title=Dirk Bogarde » Dirk Bogarde and Belsen }}</ref>

===Long-term effects===
The horror and revulsion at the cruelty and inhumanity that he said he witnessed left him with a deep-seated hostility towards Germany; in the late 1980s, he wrote that he would disembark from a [[Elevator|lift]] rather than ride with a German of his generation.<ref>Bogarde, Dirk. "Out of the Shadows of Hell". ''For the Time Being''. London: [[Penguin Books|Penguin]], 1988.</ref> Nevertheless, three of his more memorable film roles were as Germans, one of them as a former [[SS]] officer in ''[[The Night Porter]]'' (1974).<ref>{{IMDb title|id=0071910|title=The Night Porter (1974)}}</ref>

Bogarde was most vocal towards the end of his life on [[voluntary euthanasia]], of which he became a staunch proponent after witnessing the protracted death of his lifelong partner and manager [[Anthony Forwood]] (the former husband of actress [[Glynis Johns]]) in 1988. He gave an interview to John Hofsess, London executive director of the [[Dignity in Dying|Voluntary Euthanasia Society]]:
{{blockquote|My views were formulated as a 24-year-old officer in Normandy&nbsp;... On one occasion, the [[jeep]] ahead hit a mine&nbsp;... Next thing I knew, there was this chap in the long grass beside me. A gurgling voice said, "Help. Kill me." With shaking hands I reached for my small pouch to load my revolver&nbsp;... I had to look for my bullets – by which time somebody else had already taken care of him. I heard the shot. I still remember that gurgling sound. A voice pleading for death.}}