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Author:
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781877007156
Category : Prisoners of war
Languages : en
Pages : 157
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Book Description
Author:
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781877007156
Category : Prisoners of war
Languages : en
Pages : 157
Get Book Here
Book Description
Author: David Coombes
Publisher: ReadHowYouWant
ISBN: 9781458738523
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 728
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Book Description
So wrote an Australian prisoner - of - war, Corporal Lancelot Davies, only recently taken prisoner at the first battle of Bullecourt, on 11 April 1917. For him - like another 1,200 Australians captured at Bullecourt - the future was indeed 'blank' and unpredictable. The experiences of Australian prisoners of war (POWs) or Kriegsgefangeners held captive in Germany has been largely forgotten or ignored - overshadowed by the horrid stories of Australians imprisoned by the Japanese during World War II. Yet, as David Coombes makes known, the stories are interesting and significant - not only providing an account of what those young Australian soldiers experienced, and the spirit they showed in responding to captivity - but also for the insight it provides into Germany in the last eighteen months of the war.
Author: Aaron Pegram
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108486193
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 285
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Book Description
Surviving the Great War is the first detailed analysis of Australians in German captivity in WW1. By placing the hardships of prisoners of war in a broader social and military content, this book adds a new dimension to the national wartime experience and challenges popular representations of Australia's involvement in the First World War.
Author: David Coombes
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1922387789
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 574
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Book Description
“Comrades in distress we were, and it was now that one felt the existence of a brotherhood that establishes itself in circumstances of this kind … A few of the men are very dejected, and appear to be losing all interest in themselves, their habits and practices not being approved by the majority. In some cases, for the most miserable reward, they cringe to the Germans for the chance of being of some service; others also, despite the fact their bodies can ill-afford the sacrifice, trade their boots and other clothing in exchange for food and smokes … This is regrettable, but censure has no effect on the few. Most of us have resolved to maintain some sort of dignity, though ’tis difficult.” So wrote Australian prisoner of war (POW) Corporal Lancelot Davies who was captured at the First Battle of Bullecourt on 11 April 1917 where Allied forces were ‘badly smashed up’. Davies was one of almost 1,200 Australians captured that day, facing an uncertain future at the hands of their German captors. – he described the future as ‘blank’ and unpredictable. The experiences of Australian prisoners of war (POWs) or Kriegsgefangeners held captive in Germany has been largely forgotten or ignored – overshadowed by the horrid stories of Australians imprisoned by the Japanese during World War Two. Yet, as David Coombes makes known, the stories are interesting and significant – not only providing an account of what those young Australian soldiers experienced, and the spirit they showed in responding to captivity – but also for the insight it provides into Germany in the last eighteen months of the war. Coombes draws upon previous inaccessible records – including the interviews conducted many years before by Chalk – as well as private papers and unpublished manuscripts. He paints a vivid picture of young soldiers who survived the trauma of battle, only to find themselves facing an unknown fate at the hands of an often vindictive and cruel enemy. These ‘comrades in distress’, many wounded and traumatised by trench warfare, quickly discovered the bond of brotherhood, often the key to survival in a harsh environment with little food, poor medical treatment, back-breaking work and the anguish of confinement. What emerges in the pages of this amazingly detailed account is the typical Australian sense of humour and the sheer will to live that marked these men. Above all, it was their determination to be free and to return once more to their families that ensured their survival; often against overwhelming odds. Crossing the Wire is a fitting tribute to the World War One soldiers and POWs. David Coombes highlights the ordeals these men went through, their stoicism in enduring their mistreatment, and the fearlessness of a few in launching ingenious attempts to escape. He proves beyond doubt that their stories are by no means less compelling than those of their World War II brothers.
Author: Sarah Kovner
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 067473761X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 337
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Book Description
A pathbreaking account of World War II POW camps, challenging the longstanding belief that the Japanese Empire systematically mistreated Allied prisoners. In only five months, from the attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941 to the fall of Corregidor in May 1942, the Japanese Empire took prisoner more than 140,000 Allied servicemen and 130,000 civilians from a dozen different countries. From Manchuria to Java, Burma to New Guinea, the Japanese army hastily set up over seven hundred camps to imprison these unfortunates. In the chaos, 40 percent of American POWs did not survive. More Australians died in captivity than were killed in combat. Sarah Kovner offers the first portrait of detention in the Pacific theater that explains why so many suffered. She follows Allied servicemen in Singapore and the Philippines transported to Japan on “hellships” and singled out for hard labor, but also describes the experience of guards and camp commanders, who were completely unprepared for the task. Much of the worst treatment resulted from a lack of planning, poor training, and bureaucratic incoherence rather than an established policy of debasing and tormenting prisoners. The struggle of POWs tended to be greatest where Tokyo exercised the least control, and many were killed by Allied bombs and torpedoes rather than deliberate mistreatment. By going beyond the horrific accounts of captivity to actually explain why inmates were neglected and abused, Prisoners of the Empire contributes to ongoing debates over POW treatment across myriad war zones, even to the present day.
Author: Colin Burgess
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1760854301
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 213
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Book Description
Australia's greatest escape stories from two world wars Australia’s Greatest Escapes is a collection of stories about the most hazardous aspect of the prisoner of war experience – escape. Here is all the adventure, suspense and courage of ordinary Australians who defied their captors; men who tunnelled to freedom, crawled through stinking drains, or clawed a passage beneath barbed wire in a desperate attempt to flee captivity. They were willing to risk the odds and even death in the loneliest war of all – the fight to be free. Each possessed in spades the noble qualities of boldness, resourcefulness, cunning, determination and mateship we have come to admire about our Australian service men and women under adversity. Featuring stories of Australian POWs from all theatres of war, including one who fled a German work camp during World War I, another involved in a mass tunnel escape from a notorious Italian camp, and an airman who brazenly attempted to steal a German fighter and fly it back to England. We also re-live the tragic saga of the Sandakan death marches in which six Australian escapers became the only survivors from 2000 POWs, and follow the perilous journeys to freedom undertaken by Australian infantrymen following the appalling massacre of their fellow soldiers on the Japanese-held island of Ambon.
Author: Ian W. Shaw
Publisher: Macmillan
ISBN: 1466825960
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 245
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Book Description
When Singapore fell dramatically to the Japanese on 15 February 1942, hundreds of people scrambled to leave. Amongst the evacuees were 65 Australian nurses who boarded coastal freighter "Vyner Brooke" which Japanese bombers sank. The largest group of nurses that made it to shore gathered at Radji Beach. Eventually the shipwreck survivors surrendered to the Japanese rather than slowly starve to death. The Japanese did not accept their surrender and divided the Europeans into three groups and killed all in turn. The Australian nurses were in the third group, and 21 of them died in a hail of bullets as they walked into the waters off the beach. There was one survivor, Vivian Bullwinkel, and she went on to survive the various camps and diseases that took away several of her friends.
Author: Alistair Urquhart
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1628731508
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 283
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Book Description
Alistair Urquhart was a soldier in the Gordon Highlanders, captured by the Japanese in Singapore. Forced into manual labor as a POW, he survived 750 days in the jungle working as a slave on the notorious “Death Railway” and building the Bridge on the River Kwai. Subsequently, he moved to work on a Japanese “hellship,” his ship was torpedoed, and nearly everyone on board the ship died. Not Urquhart. After five days adrift on a raft in the South China Sea, he was rescued by a Japanese whaling ship. His luck would only get worse as he was taken to Japan and forced to work in a mine near Nagasaki. Two months later, he was just ten miles from ground zero when an atomic bomb was dropped on Nagasaki. In late August 1945, he was freed by the American Navy—a living skeleton—and had his first wash in three and a half years. This is the extraordinary story of a young man, conscripted at nineteen, who survived not just one, but three encounters with death, any of which should have probably killed him. Silent for over fifty years, this is Urquhart’s inspirational tale in his own words. It is as moving as any memoir and as exciting as any great war movie.
Author: Aldona Sendzikas
Publisher: University Press of Florida
ISBN: 0813047986
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 297
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Book Description
Today USS Pampanito is a tourist destination. During WWII the submarine earned six battle stars, sank six Japanese ships, damaged four others, and rescued seventy-three British and Australian POWs from the South China Sea. Astonishingly, this rescue happened three days after she sank one of the transport ships on which the Allied prisoners were being ferried to Japan. The chain of events that led to this rescue is truly remarkable. Captured in 1942, forced to spend fifteen months constructing the Burma-Thai Railroad, and then loaded onto floating concentration camps--hellships, as they were called--the prisoners were in the wrong place at the wrong time when Pampanito and her wolf pack attacked a Japanese convoy. Returning to the coordinates a few days later, the crew was astonished to discover survivors in the water from among the more than 2,200 prisoners who had been aboard the Japanese ships. Even more remarkable is that the officers and crew of Pampanito, after picking up these men (the Lucky 73), thought to have them record their thoughts and experiences while the events were still fresh in their minds, before returning to port. While working as curator for Pampanito, Aldona Sendzikas discovered these documents and began an odyssey of tracking down one of the most incredible rescue stories of the Pacific War.
Author: Oliver Clutton-Brock
Publisher: Grub Street Publishing
ISBN: 1909166308
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 561
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Book Description
The author of RAF Evaders provides a comprehensive reference of the airmen of Bomber Command who were held in German captivity during WWII. This extensive book is divided into two part. The first, which has eighteen chapters, deals with German POW camps as they were opened, in chronological order and to which the Bomber Command POWs were sent. Each chapter includes anecdotes and stories of the men in the camps—capture, escape, illness, and murder—and illustrates the awfulness of captivity even in German hands. Roughly one in every twenty captured airmen never returned home. The first part also covers subjects such as how the POWs were repatriated during the war; how they returned at war’s end; the RAF traitors; the war crimes; and the vital importance of the Red Cross. The style is part reference, part gripping narrative, and the book will correct many historical inaccuracies, and includes previously unpublished photographs. The second part comprises an annotated list of ALL 10, 995 RAF Bomber Command airmen who were taken prisoner, together with an extended introduction. The two parts together are the fruit of exhaustive research and provide an important contribution to our knowledge of the war and a unique reference work not only for the serious RAF historian but for the ex-POWs themselves and their families and anyone with an interest in the RAF in general and captivity in particular.
