Tuesday 10 September 2013

Recommended reading....

 Yes, you read that correctly....I've gone all serious for once... don't worry, I'm sure it won't last long...


Robert Kee - A Crowd Is Not Company.

"Journalist and broadcaster Robert Kee was an RAF bomber pilot in the Second World War. His plane was shot down over Nazi-occupied Holland, he was captured and spent three years and three months in a German POW camp.

From the beginning he was intent on escape. After several false starts he finally made it.

First published in 1947 as a novel, but now revealed to be an autobiography, A CROWD IS NOT COMPANY recounts Kee's experiences as a prisoner of war and describes in compelling detail his desperate journey across Poland - a journey that meant running the gauntlet of Nazism."
A good account of life as an RAF PoW.

It must be remembered that, as an RAF Pilot, he was an Officer, and therefore a prisoner "belonging" to the Luftwaffe, not the German Army.

This highlights, quite well, some of the "comradeship" of fellow soldiers as opposed to the enmity of "Tommies and Krauts", the kind of kinship that the general public on both sides wouldn't necessarily understand or condone.

Look for the steak episode...


(there will be more recommended books coming along, some classics on the subject, some little known..)

3 comments:

  1. check out Ken Trout who wrote By Tank D To VE,Day

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  2. Mailed Fist by John Foley is another good book about a churchill squad

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  3. Thanks, I'll have a look for those...

    I have made a page with a list of Recommended Reading books, that I have read personally... I'll add one with viewers suggestions as well...

    (I've got a big fookoff bookshelf with loads on, both read and unread... just need to organize myself...)

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