Ocean State Libraries

"At the height of World War I, as Allied and German forces battled in the trenches and in the air, any captured Allied soldiers and pilots were sent to a web of German prisons. The most dangerous POWs, the ones most talented at escaping, were sent to the camp of Holzminden--better known as "Hellminden." A land-locked Alcatraz of sorts, its rules enforced with cruel precision, the prison was the pride of a ruthless commandant named Karl Niemeyer. This...

"The spellbinding story of the downed Allied airmen who masterminded the remarkably courageous--and ingenious--breakout from Germany's most devilish POW camp. In the winter trenches and flak-filled skies of World War I, soldiers and pilots might avoid death only to find themselves imprisoned in Germany's archipelago of prison camps, often in abominable conditions. The most infamous was Holzminden, a landlocked Alcatraz that housed the most troublesome,...

Peter Tunstall's memoir of his days in the British Royal Air Force and as one of the most celebrated British POWs of World War II. Tunstall was an infamous tormentor of his German captors. Dubbed the "cooler king" on account of his long spells in solitary, he once dropped a water "bomb" directly in the lap of a high-ranking German officer. He also devised an ingenious method for smuggling coded messages back to London. But above all he was a highly...

Eric Lomax is a British Army officer who is captured by the Japanese during WWII and sent to a POW camp, where he is tortured and forced to work on the Thai-Burma Railway. Years later, and still suffering from the psychological trauma, Lomax is persuaded by his wife Patti to find and confront one of his captors. Lomax returns to the scene of his torture and manages to track down his captor from the prison camp in an attempt to let go of a lifetime...

Details the experiences of two British prisoners as they escapedfrom the Germans in Italy during World War II.