The War Behind The Wire. The Life, Death And Glory Of British Prisoners Of War, 1914-18

Cover Type: Hardcover
Book Condition: As New
Jacket Condition: As New
Publisher: Weidenfeld & Nicolson
Publisher Place: London
Publisher Year: 2014
Edition: First Edition

Description: 368 pages. Ex-Library. Book and Jacket appear to have hardly been read and are both in As new condition throughout.

Publishers Description: On capture, British officers and men were routinely told by the Germans "For you the war is over." Nothing could be further from the truth. British Prisoners of War merely exchanged one barbed-wire battleground for another. In the camps the war was eternal. There was the war against the German military, fought with everything from taunting humor to outright sabotage, with a literal spanner put in the works of the factories and salt mines prisoners were forced to slave in. British POWs also fought a valiant war against the conditions in which they were mired. They battled starvation, disease, Prussian cruelties, boredom, and their own inner demons. And, of course, they escaped. Then escaped again. No less than 29 officers at Holzminden camp in 1918 burrowed their way out via a tunnel (dug with a chisel and trowel) in the Great Escape of World War I. It was war with heart-breaking consequences; more than 12,000 POWs died, many of them murdered and buried in shallow, unmarked graves. Using contemporary recordsfrom prisoners diaries, to letters home, to poetryJohn Lewis-Stempel reveals the death, life, and, above all, the glory of Britains warriors behind the wire. For it was in the POW camps, far from the blasted trenches, that the true spirit of the Tommy was exemplified.

ISBN: 9780297608080