As he struggled to regain consciousness McLean heard the stretcher-bearers arguing whether it was possible to carry him through the heavy shelling to the mountain tracks. ‘Pick up Scotty and get back over,’ insisted his buddy Rocky. ‘We cannot go over that open ground to the mountain.’ ‘Pick him up now.’ They still hesitated. Adam heard the bolt rattle in Rocky’s rifle. ‘Pick Scotty up, or you won’t pick up anyone ever again.’ So they took him back ... and that is how McLean reached Rome. There he was to spend a great part of the next twenty years. He found himself led into a pattern of friendships with Catholics and communists, aristocrats and militant socialists - men and women who were to rebuild their shattered country.
Adam McLean’s story takes him from the shores of the Firth of Forth to New York, Washington, Hollywood, the aircraft factories of Boeing and Lockheed on America's West Coast. Then into the US Army fighting up the length of Italy.
Today he lives with his Swiss wife Elsbeth in Fife. It was for his grandchildren that Adam first wrote the tale of his adventures. Now a fuller account interwoven with shrewd observations reveals the freshness and humour of a born story-teller.
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