Roald Dahl is a complex figure—a product of both privilege and hardship. Born in Wales in 1916 to an affluent family, Dahl’s life was nevertheless punctuated by misfortune. His childhood was marred by the deaths of his sister and father, the traumas of British boarding school, and a car accident that almost severed his nose.

By the time WWII began, Dahl was no stranger to disaster. In 1940, he was considered one of the British Royal Air Force’s “most promising pilots” but was shot down on his first official flight, suffering spine, nose, and eye injuries before “his airplane’s machine guns, stoked by the heat, started shooting at him” (Anderson, Sam. “Big Sometimes Friendly Giant.” New York Magazine, 3 Sept. 2010).

Undeterred, Dahl returned to the war and flew multiple missions as a fighter pilot. During the war, he began to write about his experiences. “Beware of the Dog” emerged from this initial phase of his career, in which Dahl wrote suspenseful short stories, many of them based on his own experiences in combat. The protagonist in “Beware of the Dog” is an RAF fighter pilot who is shot down during battle—something Dahl claimed happened to him as well, though his 1940 crash was caused by an accident, not enemy fire.