Commando to Colditz

Commando to Colditz PDF Author: Peter Stanley
Publisher: Pier 9
ISBN: 9781741963847
Category : Prisoners of war
Languages : en
Pages : 303

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Book Description
Micky Burn's bond with his soldiers is at the story's heart. Before the raid, he had asked his parents to write to his men's families if the worst should happen; the result was the creation of a rich and moving archive of letters between these grieving or anxious families, letters that illuminate the lives and deaths of soldiers.

Commando to Colditz

Commando to Colditz PDF Author: Peter Stanley
Publisher: Allen & Unwin
ISBN: 1742660738
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 305

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Book Description
A compelling, riveting read, Commando to Colditz is an unusual — perhaps unique — war story. It is centred around a most unusual war hero: Michael 'Micky' Burn, soldier, poet and novelist, whose journey from fascist follower, to commander of Six Troop, to Commando, to prisoner (and communist lecturer) in the notorious prison of Colditz forms the focal point of this powerful narrative. In 1942 Micky led his commando troop of 28 men on one of the most daring raids of the Second World War, the assault on the French port of St Nazaire. As a result of this 'night of fire and death', fourteen of Micky's men were killed; seven, including Burn, were captured. Micky's bond with his soldiers is at the story's heart. Before the raid, he had asked his parents to write to his men's families if the worst should happen; the result was the creation of a rich and moving archive of letters between these grieving or anxious families, letters that illuminate the lives and deaths of a small but close-knit group of British soldiers and those who loved them.

Colditz

Colditz PDF Author: P. R. Reid
Publisher: Zenith Press
ISBN: 0760346518
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 355

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Book Description
The Nazis thought escape was impossible. Colditz is the true story of the Allied prisoners held there and their (sometimes successful) efforts to escape, written by one of the POWs.

Castle of the Eagles

Castle of the Eagles PDF Author: Mark Felton
Publisher: Macmillan
ISBN: 1250095867
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 329

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Book Description
Vincigliata Castle, a menacing medieval fortress set in the beautiful Tuscan hills, has become a very special prisoner of war camp on Benito Mussolini’s personal order. Within are some of the most senior officers of the Allied army, guarded by almost two hundred Italian soldiers and a vicious fascist commando who answers directly to “Il Duce” Mussolini himself. Their unbelievable escape, told by Mark Felton in Castle of the Eagles, is a little-known marvel of World War II. By March 1943, the plan is ready: this extraordinary assemblage of middle-aged POWs has crafted civilian clothes, forged identity papers, gathered rations, and even constructed dummies to place in their beds, all in preparation for the moment they step into the tunnel they have been digging for six months. How they got to this point and what happens after is a story that reads like fiction, supported by an eccentric cast of characters, but is nonetheless true to its core.

Turned Towards the Sun

Turned Towards the Sun PDF Author: Michael Burn
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Authors, English
Languages : en
Pages : 340

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Book Description


Hostages of Colditz

Hostages of Colditz PDF Author: Giles Romilly
Publisher: New York : Praeger
ISBN:
Category : World War, 1939-1945
Languages : en
Pages : 268

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Book Description
For two years during World War II, Giles Romilly and Michael Alexander shared a small room in the tower of Colditz Castle, the notorious German punishment camp. During that time, Colditz housed some six hundred prisoners of assorted nationalities and ranks. Most of them were there because they had been especially persistent or imaginative, though unsuccessful, in their attempts to escape from other places of internment; Colditz, in the heart of Germany, was considered virtually escapeproof. Romilly, a war correspondent, had been captures as a suspected spy when the Germans seized the port of Narvik, Norway, in April, 1940. In August, 1942, Alexander, a British commando in North Africa, had been taken prisoner behind German lines, wearing a German uniform. As a newspaperman, Romilly would probably have been released if it had not been known to the Germans that he was a nephew of Winston Churchill, which made him of great potential value as a hostage. Alexander, on the other hand, would probably have been shot as a spy if he had not told his captors, with some exaggeration, that he was a close relative of Field Marshal Alexander, then commander of the British troops in the Middle East.

Footprints on the Sands of Time

Footprints on the Sands of Time PDF 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.

Five Past Midnight

Five Past Midnight PDF Author: James S Thayer
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1501131915
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 431

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Book Description
Escaping from Germany’s Colditz Castle where he was being held as a prisoner of war, Captain Jack Cray fights his way to Berlin in April 1945, following a twisted trail of terror across Germany. The American Army commando has just been handed the most dangerous mission of his career—the assassination of Adolf Hitler.

Operation Chariot

Operation Chariot PDF Author: Jean-Charles Stasi
Publisher: Casemate
ISBN: 1612007309
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 130

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Book Description
An illustrated history of the World War II British amphibious attack on a dry dock in the German-occupied French town. At the beginning of 1942, the prospect of Germany’s Tirpitz, the heaviest battleship ever built by a European navy, patrolling the Atlantic posed a huge threat to the convoys that were the lifeline for Britain. Bombing raids to destroy the ship failed. A more radical plan was conceived to destroy the dry-dock facility at St Nazaire on the French Atlantic coast. Without the use of the only suitable base for the ship, the threat would be neutralized. The plan was to ram the entrance gates with a ship packed with explosives on a delayed fuse. A motorboat armed with torpedoes would fire at the inner gate causing further damage to submarine pens. The troops and crew would then destroy as many dockyard targets as they could and withdraw in fast motor launches that had followed them in. All this was to be achieved under cover of an air raid. HMS Campbeltown, a U.S. lend-lease destroyer, was chosen for the task. On the night of March 27, the raid commenced. The Campbeltown succeeded in lodging its bows in the outer gates. The fuses detonated the explosives in its hold the following day. The dock gates were destroyed. The cost to the Allies was high, but the Tirpitz was never able to leave Norwegian waters. This volume in the Casemate Illustrated series gives a clear overview of the planning and execution of the raid and its aftermath, accompanied by 125 photographs and images, including color profiles and maps.

Rogue Heroes

Rogue Heroes PDF Author: Ben Macintyre
Publisher: Crown
ISBN: 1101904178
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 344

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Book Description
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The incredible untold story of World War II’s greatest secret fighting force, as told by the modern master of wartime intrigue—now a limited series on Epix! “Reads like a mashup of The Dirty Dozen and The Great Escape, with a sprinkling of Ocean’s 11 thrown in for good measure.”—Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times ONE OF NPR’S BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR • “Rogue Heroes is a ripping good read.”—Washington Post (10 Best Books of the Year) Britain’s Special Air Service—or SAS—was the brainchild of David Stirling, a young aristocrat whose aimlessness belied a remarkable strategic mind. Where most of his colleagues looked at a World War II battlefield map and saw a protracted struggle, Stirling saw an opportunity: given a small number of elite men, he could parachute behind Nazi lines and sabotage their airplanes and supplies. Defying his superiors’ conventional wisdom, Stirling assembled a revolutionary fighting force that would upend not just the balance of the war, but the nature of combat itself. Bringing his keen eye for detail to a riveting wartime narrative, Ben Macintyre uses his unprecedented access to the SAS archives to shine a light on a legendary unit long shrouded in secrecy.

Simpson's Donkey

Simpson's Donkey PDF Author: Peter Stanley
Publisher: Allen & Unwin
ISBN: 1742664032
Category : Juvenile Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 101

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Book Description
Based on the most famous animal in Australian history Simpson's Donkey tells the story of his service during the Gallipoli campaign where for three weeks he was one of several donkeys that Simpson used to carry wounded men down to Anzac Cove. His life before and after Gallipoli is a mystery but Peter Stanley beautifully imagines the rest for the reader. Stanley tells the donkey's story--in the donkey's own voice--taking the reader on a journey from the Aegean island of Lemnos to Gallipoli to Egypt, Palestine and then back to Gallipoli at the end of the Great War. In doing so Simpson's Donkey not only brings the donkey's story to life it also brings the horrible realities of war to the fore. The war is the backdrop to the donkey's tale and as we follow the little donkey on his journey we also learn about the war and its terrible impact on people and animals alike. The story begins with the donkey being separated from his adored mistress Sofya when the Greeks occupy Lemnos in 1913, and after various adventures--in which each new owner calls him by a new name--he returns to Gallipoli in 1919 to be reunited with his beloved Sofya. From village beast of burden to hospital pet, to supply carrier for the war in the desert, the donkey's story is an adventurous journey on which he meets courage and cruelty, and comradeship between human and donkey alike.