Victor Gregg was born in London in 1919 and joined the army in 1937, serving first with the Rifle Brigade in India and Palestine, before service in the Western Desert. Later, with the Parachute Regiment, he saw action in Italy and at the Battle of Arnhem, where he was taken prisoner and sentenced to death in Dresden, where, ironically, he was saved from execution by the Allied bombing of the city. He was demobilized in 1946.

He wrote a trilogy of memoirs: King's Cross Kid, about his working-class childhood in London between the World Wars; Rifleman, about his life on the front line from Alamein and Dresden to the Fall of the Berlin Wall; and Soldier, Spy, about his life as a demobbed soldier returning to civilian life and all the challenges that entailed.

He wrote Dresden, A Survivor's Story to mark the anniversary of the bombing of Dresden that took place between 13 and 15 February 1945.