P O W

A tight and unmarked copy with some shelf wear on cover and a small split on spine-" I first read this in the '90s from the library and was disappointed they wouldn't let me buy a copy since I couldn't find one anywhere. I checked it out three or four times and was so glad to find it here. I recently reread it again and it didn't lose any of the appeal that made it a favorite. Douglas Collins was a young British infantryman who was captured at Dunkirk. He was taken to Stalig VIIIB, notorious for its early conditions and from there he made his first escape. Eventually, in a series of ten such endeavors, he ended up spending over a year in Romania and was liberated by a little known raid before Normandy. He was in London when the beaches were stormed, but despite the sometimes dire circumstances he and his fellow pow's were in, he kept trying. There are some incredible encounters he describes as well, a walk during an escape towards what was to become Auschwitz, hearing the repeated "I am alive" broadcast by Hitler after the bunker was bombed, and contacts with memorable individuals who in a few words become real. But despite the setting, it reads like an adventure. He and his friend Lancaster never gave up. Despite almost certain recapture they kept trying to find a way home. I have read a lot of memoirs of late and many have a pervading sense of darkness, but this is about the indomitable spirit of the author and companions which kept them from giving up. But when they got home the reality hit. This is my favorite passage, upon returning home to England. In Bournemouth, the Cadena wasn't the same. Gone was the violin playing trio. Gone the crisp white tablecloths and the bright silver, and people kept saying there was a war on. Get on the bus and go for a ride. And another one. Wander by the places that Victor had known. Don't stand still, or you may rush up and grab some innocent by the arm and ask him what he knows about Stalag VIIIB, where thirty thousand men are waiting for Germany to give up. You should feel completely happy about being at home. There are no cells. You can walk across the road or go to a movie or go find a girl. But there is something wrong. You go down to the beach and stare at the long coils of barbed wire and the dynamited pier, relics of that long summer when the world waited for the invasion, and you remember the cattle train on which the prisoners jolted through Germany. There had been lakes on that journey where girls in sexy bathing suits stared as their boyfriends pointed at the faces that peered through the high barred windows of the wagons. And the owners of the faces, whose being had cracked, felt that the sunbathers were not real. Surely all normal life had stopped? You knew now why you were depressed. Yes was no and positive-negative, normal abnormal. Something is missing, and what was missing was the camp and the challenge of action. I'm pretty sure this isn't the last time I'll read this because it always reminds me no matter how bad the problem is not to give up."-nightbird47