Re: Plock!
Posted by:
Simon (---.lancing.org.uk)
Date: April 29, 2003 01:52PM
Skiffle _
I'm mainly relying on library books rather than my own collection (which is actually rather short on WWII material nowadays) as sources... Fortunately the local library system is not only well-stocked in the relevant section but also allow a person to borrow up to 20 items at a time. I've read most of the books that you listed, apart from 'Boldness Be My Friend' and maybe 'Escape or Die' (although of course I've read Brickhill's account of 'The Great Escape', and the library also had 'Escape from Germany' which was the Air Ministry's book about all of the escape attempts by RAF personnel) unless I saw that one years ago ... And maybe apart from 'Hostages At Colditz' too, unless I read it years ago, but that is quoted as one of the primary sources for several of the books that I DID find this time...). I haven't been able to obtain a copy of Neave's book from the library, but I remember reading it (and the sequel, about his work at MI9 which was the agency involved in helping escape & evasion attempts, too) at some point in the past. Other books that I've borrowed include_
'Colditz Recaptured' (a variety of individual POWs of various nationalities provide memoirs, collected & commented on by Eggers).
Colditz, The Full Story' (by P.R. Reid, written some years after his other books & drawing on a wider range of sources).
'Colditz: the Definitive History' (written [by somebody who wasn't an ex-POW] to accompany a recent TV documentary series, which I didn't watch; draws on various primary sources, including some private memoirs & some books that have only been published in foreign languages).
'Colditz Last Stop' by Major Jack Best (4 countries, 11 camps, 6 escapes)
'The Diggers of Colditz' (about Australian POWs).
'Love & War in the Appennines', by Eric Newby (captivity in Italian hands, & hiding in northern Italy _ behind the German lines _ later on...)
'Prisoner of Hope' (Memoirs of a British Army chaplain who worked in the camps that the Germans set up in Poland for British "Other Ranks")
An authorised history of MI9.
'10 Minutes to Buffalo' (a Lutwaffe pilot's memoirs about his escape attempts from camps in Britain & Canada).
'The March on London' (about German & Italian POWs in Britain in 1944: They planned a mass break-out to coincide with the Battle of the Bulge, when there would only have been barely over a Division of regular troops available here to defend the country against them!)
'Island of Barbed Wire' (about the internment of Axis nationals & British fascists on the Isle of Man)
'Renegades _ Hitler's Englishmen' (about German attempts to convert British POWs & civilian internees to the Nazi cause)
and also a couple of books about how Allied POWs suffered in Japanese hands, incuding one that's largely about the building of the Thailand-Burma railway.
Which edition of 'The Wooden Horse' do you have? Apparently the earlier ones included some fictional scenes which the author added to increase the book's dramatic content (& sales...), and because making it less factual helped him to get around official complaints of some kind about his writing a true book on the subject, but he subsequently removed these from at least one of the later versions.
Given the rather limited amount of space that I will have available to cover this entire topic (and to include roleplaying rules & suggestions) I'm not sure whether there will be a Cinematography section as well as a Bibliography, but I agree that if there is going to one then that GREAT movie 'Chicken Run' (whose writer[s]s had clearly done their homework...) certainly deserves inclusion.
Of course you can see my book: All that you have to do is wait until it's published and then either buy a copy or persuade a friend to do so... :-)
(I might get around to emailing the original articles to you before then, but they're currently scattered across a number of files & would need some editing work first... and I do have a number of other demands on my time, such as getting the book itself written. We'll have to see...)
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"Some days I diet, other days they serve lasagne."
Post Edited (04-29-03 19:42)