Barbed-Wire University (eBook)

The Real Lives of Prisoners of War in the Second World War

Midge Gillies (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2011
400 Seiten
Aurum Press (Verlag)
978-1-84513-727-4 (ISBN)

Infos

The conventional picture of allied POWs in the World War II prisoner-of-war camps is of escape attempts (Colditz and The Great Escape) or terrible brutality (the Far Eastern camps and Bridge on the River Kwai). But what did the men really do all day...? In fact, as this extraordinary book shows, British prisoners showed the most amazing ingenuity and determination to turn their camp into a hive of every kind of activity. Whole golf courses were laid out in the exercise yard, hours and days spent watching the birds beyond the barbed-wire perimeter were turned after the war into definitive monographs on bird behaviour. Terry Frost turned himself into one of the finest postwar abstract artists after taking up painting as a POW with a brush made from horse's hair snatched from the animal that toiled at the latrine pump. Clive Dunn's theatrical career - like that of many postwar theatre names - began in extravagant drag costume in camp productions. When men went 'Stalag-happy' they even recreated a whole hunt hurtling pell-mell through the camp. Midge Gillies - whose own father was a wartime POW - has done an amazing amount of research, and interviewed many surviving POWs to produce a work of social history which will genuinely redefine our picture of the POW camps and leave us with renewed admiration for the initiative, creativity and fortitude of men in wartime captivity.

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"e;A moving and eye-opening account of the lives of second world war PoWs by the daughter of a man who was captured . . . a riveting collection of stories."e; -The GuardianFeature films like The Bridge on the River Kwai and The Great Escape have created the stereotype of the Second World War prisoner of war. But, as Midge Gillies shows in this groundbreaking work of social history, the true experiences of nearly half a million Allied servicemen held captive during the Second World War were nothing like the Hollywood myth and infinitely more extraordinary. The real lives of POWs saw them respond to the tedium of a German stalag or the brutality of a Japanese camp with the most amazing ingenuity and creativity. They staged glittering shows, concerts and elaborate sporting fixtures, made exquisite ornaments even, amid the terrible privations of the Thailand-Burma railway, improvised daring surgical techniques to save their fellow men's lives. Whatever skills or hobbies they took with them to captivity they managed to continue and adapt to the extent of laying out a 9-hole golf course between the huts of one German camp. They took up crafts and pastimes using materials they found around them: even the string from a Red Cross food parcel was used to make cricket balls, football nets and wigs for theatrical performances. Men studied, attended lectures, learned languages, sat for qualifications and exams, on such a scale that one camp was nicknamed "e;The Barbed-Wire University."e;Drawing on letters home, diaries and interviews with redoubtable survivors now into their nineties, Midge Gillies recreates the daily lives of a truly remarkable group of men. "e;Astonishing tales of improvisation, ingenuity and courage."e; The Spectator

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 20.12.2022
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Geschichte ► Allgemeine Geschichte ► 1918 bis 1945
• Themenwelt: Geisteswissenschaften ► Geschichte ► Regional- / Ländergeschichte
• Themenwelt: Geschichte ► Teilgebiete der Geschichte ► Kulturgeschichte
• Themenwelt: Geschichte ► Teilgebiete der Geschichte ► Militärgeschichte
• Themenwelt: Sozialwissenschaften ► Politik / Verwaltung
• ISBN-10: 1-84513-727-2 / 1845137272
• ISBN-13: 978-1-84513-727-4 / 9781845137274