Train to Nowhere

One Woman's World War II, Ambulance Driver, Reporter, Liberator

Anita Leslie (Autor)

Buch | Softcover

336 Seiten

2018
Bloomsbury Caravel (Verlag)
978-1-4482-1668-0 (ISBN)

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ONE OF HAY FESTIVAL'S 100 BEST BOOKS WRITTEN BY WOMEN IN THE LAST 100 YEARS.

Train to Nowhere is a war memoir seen through the sardonic eyes of Anita Leslie, a funny and vivacious young woman who reports on her experiences with a dry humour, finding the absurd alongside the tragic.

Daughter of a Baronet and first cousin once removed of Winston Churchill, she joined the Mechanized Transport Corps as a fully trained mechanic and ambulance driver during WWII, serving in Libya, Syria, Palestine, Italy, France and Germany. Ahead of her time, Anita bemoans ‘first-rate women subordinate to second-rate men,’ and, as the British Army forbade women from serving at the front, joined the Free French Forces in order to do what she felt was her duty.

Writing letters in Hitler’s recently vacated office and marching in the Victory parade contrast with observations of seeing friends murdered and a mother avenging her son by coldly shooting a prisoner of war. Unflinching and unsentimental, Train to Nowhere is a memoir of Anita’s war, one that, long after it was written, remains poignant and relevant.

Anita Leslie (1914–1985), daughter of Shane Leslie (Sir John Randolph Leslie, 3rd Baronet) and first cousin once removed of Sir Winston Churchill, was a writer of memoir and biography. She joined the Mechanised Transport Corps as a fully trained mechanic and ambulance driver during WWII, serving in Libya, Syria, Palestine, Italy, France and Germany. She wrote letters home from Hitler's office in the Reich Chancellery and took part in the Victory parade in Berlin. In the latter part of the war she drove an ambulance for the Free French Forces, and was awarded the Croix de Guerre in 1945 by General Charles de Gaulle. Leslie later married Commander Bill King and had two children. She published seventeen books, the last in 1985 – the year she died.

Introduction by Penny Perrick

Part I: Middle East
1. Mechanized Transport Corps
2. Step Off
3. Cape to Cairo
4. Souls in Khaki
5. Desert’s Edge
6. Eastern Times
7. Beirut Base
8. Syrian Kaleidoscope
9. Transjordania
10. Ladies of Lebanon
11. Good Works and Bad
12. Goodbye Middle East

Part II: Italy
13. Spring in Italy
14. ‘Air Evac’
15. ‘Simple Soldat’

Part III: France and Germany
16. My Kingdom for an Ambulance!
17. Debut in the Vosges
18. Le Repos
19. Alsace at Last
20. Beside the Rhine
21. Christmas 1944
22. Winter Wait
23. Hospital
24. Battle of Colmar – Snow
25. Battle of Colmar – Thaw
26. Aftermath
27. Home
28. Bullets in Our Bonnets
29. We Finish Pétain’s Wine
30. The Murder of Lucette and Odette
31. ‘Der Krieg ist Beendet?’
32. Occupation
33. Extermination Camp
34. And so to Potsdam
35. White Wine on the Moselle
36. All Change

A Note on the Author
Index

Erscheinungsdatum	16.02.2018
Zusatzinfo	16 pages of black & white photographs
Verlagsort	London
Sprache	englisch
Maße	129 x 198 mm
Gewicht	261 g
Themenwelt	Literatur ► Biografien / Erfahrungsberichte
	Sachbuch/Ratgeber ► Geschichte / Politik
	Geschichte ► Allgemeine Geschichte ► 1918 bis 1945
	Geschichte ► Teilgebiete der Geschichte ► Militärgeschichte
ISBN-10	1-4482-1668-0 / 1448216680
ISBN-13	978-1-4482-1668-0 / 9781448216680
Zustand	Neuware