Student to Stalag

At the tender age of eighteen Robin Thomas, like so many of his peers, faced the prospect of war with Germany with a mixture of determination, dread and even a little excitement, but how best could he serve his country in its time of need? Having lived all his life in Portsmouth, a city with centuries old naval traditions and association with generations of seafarers, it was logical that his first steps to joining up were directed in that quarter. But more by accident than design he found himself in the RAF. After many months of training to be a Navigator, in England and Canada, he finally joined the active war machine -- at a time when the famous Mosquito Bomber came into service. Three years after the outbreak of war his plane was shot down twenty-six thousand feet above the Dutch city of Utrecht. He and his pilot managed to bail out, at a height that was considered likely, without an oxygen supply, to cause death by asphyxiation. But survive they did and Robin spent the next two and a half years as a prisoner of war in Stalag Luft 3, the camp made famous by the book and film of 'The Great Escape' -- and the horrific massacre, on Hitler's personal orders, of fifty of the prisoners that were recaptured after a mass breakout through a tunnel dug beneath the perimeter fence. Robin Thomas, Portsmouth born, bred and living in retirement, was awarded the DFC for his service to King and Country. He recounts the events that took him from Student to Stalag in a humorous style, making light of the suffering and hardship that war brings to the lives of those involved.