One That Got Away (Pen & Sword Military Classics)

From The Great Escape to The Colditz Story, readers have become familiar with the many stories of British wartime escapes. But what of German prisoners in British hands? Did they try as persistently as their British counterparts to escape? Did they bait their guards with similar ironic humor and with horseplay often carried to dangerous extremes? Were similar epics of courage and endurance enacted unknown to us on our own soil and on the surrounding seas? How were our prisoners fed, interrogated, guarded? In other words, how did we treat them?

These questions are all answered in the first book to tell the full story of Franz von Werra, a Luftwaffe officer escaping in England, set against the background of our own familiar countryside, and with our own countrymen—police, soldiers, home guards, shepherds, bus conductors and booking clerks playing the unfamiliar roles of pursuer and sometimes unconscious abettor of one of the most ingenious and brazen of all escapers. Based on von Werra’s own account, this exciting story provides a fascinating insight to the war from the German point of view.