The Last Escape: The Untold Story of Allied Prisoners of War in Europe, 1944-1945

New York, New York, U.S.A.: Penguin Group - Viking, 2003. First American Edition First Printing . Hard Back. Near Fine/Very Good. 6 1/2" X 9 1/2. 520 Pages Indexed. No defects noted. No marks or stamps. Interior text pages are flawless. By June 1944, hundreds of thousands of British and American soldiers and airmen were prisoners of war in camps across Nazi Germany. The war was reaching its endgame. On the Eastern Front the Red Army was advancing, the front line moving through Poland and toward the border with Germany. In the west, American and British troops were storming the beaches of northern France. News of the D-Day landings, heard on secret camp radios, filled the prisoners with hope, but their joy turned into foreboding as their captors reacted to the threat. Many POWs feared they would be killed by the retreating German armies rather than be allowed to fall into the hands of the Russians. Instead, in the depths of winter, their guards forced them to march out of the camps and farther into Germany, away from their would-be liberators. The marches were long and desperately arduous. Some POWs walked for more than five hundred miles and were on the road for many months. Hundreds died of exhaustion, disease, and starvation. Those who survived were awed by their experience. How they escaped with their lives and eventually reached home is a gripping story of endurance and courage. John Nichol, himself a prisoner of war in the Gulf conflict in 1991 and Tony Rennell have interviewed many veterans, traveling with some of them back to the sites of the camps and retracing parts of the marches. In The Last Escape, they relate the astonishing history of these unrecognized heroes, now in their seventies and eighties and reliving their extraordinary experiences publicly for the first time. Contents in 15 Chapters: The Russians Are Coming, Abandoned to Their Fate, Out Into the Cold, Fears of a Massacre, The Retreat from Stalag Luft IV, The Deadly Road to the West, The Rivers of Humanity, Liberated by the Red Army, Hostages of Stalin, Waiting for Patton, The Hell of Fallingbostel, Death by Friendly Fire, A German Savior, Heading for Home, and Welcome Back.