A LEAP IN THE DARK - A WELSH AIRMAN'S ADVENTURES IN OCCUPIED EUROPE by DAVIES, JAMES ARTHUR

Leo Cooper, London, (1994)., , UK first edition, hard bound in dust jacket, 6x9, FINE/FINE CONDITION, x, 170 pages,1 map, illustrations---------------------------------------------------------The chances of any member of a bomber crew in the Second World War completing his allotted thirty missions were remote indeed; even so Jim Davies was less fortunate than most in being shot down over Holland on only his second mission. On the other hand he was extremely lucky to land safely and even more so to find himself among friends. For the next six months he found sanctuary among those incredibly brave Dutch civilians who were prepared to risk torture and certain death for sheltering Allied airmen from their Nazi oppressors. Jim Davies pays a moving tribute to the courage and kindness of those who sheltered him, to nearly all of whom he later had the chance to express his gratitude, some indeed becoming lifelong friends.----------------------------------------------------------Alas, the escape they planned for him went disastrously wrong, thanks to the treachery of a double agent. With evident stoicism, he endured the various indignities which befell him on his way to a prisoner-of-war camp in Poland, and indeed the hardships he endured therein. Worse, however, was to come. The prisoners had assumed that they would be 'liberated' by the Russian 'Allies', then rapidly advancing from the east. They had not imagined that their fugitive captors would take them westward as they themselves retreated. The enduring nightmare of the march for hundreds of miles across central Europe must rank as one of the epic sagas of the Second World War. How any of them survived it was indeed amazing.