Below are reviews of From Liguria With Love (original edition of A British Partisan) A gripping account of the many months spent behind enemy lines living with Italian people who daily risked their lives for him – one of whom eventually became his wife. A more exciting story than mine! - Eric Newby CBE MC – Author of Love and War in the Apennines I have always been a sucker for escape stories, so no need to tell you tell you that I greatly enjoyed it. - Sir Ludovic Kennedy This real gem, excellently written, fresh, vivid, attention holding, has added something substantial to the history of the period. - British Army Review This uplifting story has often sustained me in challenging situations in tough places. - General Sir Nicholas Carter KCB CBE DSO ADC Gen Chief of the Defence Staff In this action-packed account, the author, a Welch Regiment officer, describes his remarkable Second World War experiences. These include his baptism by fire in the Western Desert against Rommel’s armour in 1942, the spontaneous help of nomad Arabs when on the run for ten days behind enemy lines, his capture and life as a POW in Italy. Ross and a fellow officer made the first escape from Fontanellato POW camp only to be recaptured on the Swiss border. During his second escape, Ross fought against the occupying German forces in north Italy alongside the Italian partisans, who nearly executed him initially. He avoided recapture for over a year before finally reaching Allied lines. The reader learns of the extraordinary courage and sacrifice of local Italians helping and hiding Allied soldiers. Ross’s story has a poignant conclusion as, while on the run, he fell in love with a prominent anti-fascist’s daughter whom he married after the war. Originally published as From Liguria With Love, this superbly written and updated memoir is a powerful and inspiring tribute to all those who risked their lives to help him and his comrades.

A British Engineer for Western Telegraph & Cable & Wireless for 40 years based in locations around the world, Cecil Harold Riviere was a first-hand witness to the fall of Singapore to the Japanese army in World War 2. He survived a dramatic escape on HMS Grasshopper, which was bombed & sank. He undertook a challenging journey to Sumatra, across the South China Sea, up the torrid Inderagiri River, through dense jungle, over mountains and into Padang, where he was captured by the Japanese. He endured the most harrowing three and a half years in internment. His determination to keep busy and his skills at mending and building things for others in the camp earnt him the nickname "Able & Tireless" by his fellow prisoners. Weighing little more than seven stone on his release from captivity he was one of the lucky few to survive the horrors of a Japanese civilian internment camp. In his 99 years, Cecil was a chorister in Westminster Abbey, took a mayday call from the Titanic in 1912, and travelled the world in the days before travel was commonplace. He was based in Porthcurno in Cornwall, Madeira, Cape Verde Islands, Portugal, Brazil, Argentina, Malta and Singapore, where he helped to keep global communications open during World Wars 1 and 2. He had a zest for life, a passion for building and mending clocks, and a lifelong love of golf. This is his story.

Eddie Fung has the distinction of being the only Chinese American soldier to be captured by the Japanese during World War II. He was then put to work on the Burma-Siam railroad, made famous by the film The Bridge on the River Kwai. In this moving and unforgettable memoir, Eddie recalls how he, a second-generation Chinese American born and raised in San Francisco's Chinatown, reinvented himself as a Texas cowboy before going overseas with the U.S. Army. On the way to the Philippines, his battalion was captured by the Japanese in Java and sent to Burma to undertake the impossible task of building a railroad through 262 miles of tropical jungle. Working under brutal slave labour conditions, the men completed the railroad in fourteen months, at the cost of 16,000 POW and 70,000 Asian lives. Eddie lived to tell how his background helped him endure forty-two months of humiliation and cruelty and how his experiences as the sole Chinese American member of the most decorated Texan unit of any war shaped his later life.

A Spanish Prisoner in the Ruins of Napoleon's Empire offers a rare primary document from an important moment in history: the Spanish War of Independence, which culminated in the expulsion of France from the Iberian Peninsula in 1814. Fernando Blanco White, a Spaniard whose family made its fortune in trade in Seville - historically Spain's vital link to its American empire- experienced the turmoil of this time period, both as a prisoner of war and as a free man. Blanco White's diary offers personal insights into how people in Europe and across its global empires coped with these profound transformations. Taken prisoner by the French in 1809, Blanco White finally fled from captivity in 1814. Along with other Spanish escapees, he crossed Switzerland, the Rhineland, and the Netherlands before finally setting sail for England. Unlike most of his countrymen, who were quickly whisked back to Spain, Blanco White stayed in England for two years, during which time he composed his account of his flight across Europe. His diary offers gripping, witty, and sometimes cranky accounts of this time, as he records rich descriptions of places he passed through, his companions and fellow Spaniards, and his many encounters with soldiers and civilians. He writes vividly about his imprisonment, his fear of recapture, his renewed exercise of autonomy, and the inverse, his ""slavery""- a term he employs in evocative fashion to describe both his captivity at the hands of the French and the condition of Spaniards more generally under the absolutist Bourbon monarchy. Now available in paperback, Blanco White's diary tracks firsthand the Spanish experience of war, captivity, and flight during the War of Independence.

The internment of 'enemy aliens' during the Second World War was arguably the greatest stain on the Allied record of human rights on the home front. Internment during the Second World War compares and contrasts the experiences of foreign nationals unfortunate enough to be born in the 'wrong' nation when Great Britain, and later the USA, went to war. While the actions and policy of the governments of the time have been critically examined, Rachel Pistol examines the individual stories behind this traumatic experience. The vast majority of those interned in Britain were refugees who had fled religious or political persecution; in America, the majority of those detained were children. Forcibly removed from family, friends, and property, internees lived behind barbed wire for months and years. Internment initially denied these people the right to fight in the war and caused unnecessary hardships to individuals and families already suffering displacement because of Nazism or inherent societal racism. In the first comparative history of internment in Britain and the USA, memoirs, letters, and oral testimony help to put a human face on the suffering incurred during the turbulent early years of the war and serve as a reminder of what can happen to vulnerable groups during times of conflict. Internment during the Second World War also considers how these 'tragedies of democracy' have been remembered over time, and how the need for the memorialisation of former sites of internment is essential if society is not to repeat the same injustices.

Late in 1940, the young men of the 2nd Battalion, 131st Field Artillery Regiment stepped off the trucks at Camp Bowie in Brownwood, Texas, ready to complete the training they would need for active duty in World War II. Many of them had grown up together in Jacksboro, Texas, and almost all of them were eager to face any challenge. Just over a year later, these carefree young Texans would be confronted by horrors they could never have imagined. The battalion was en route to bolster the Allied defense of the Philippines when they received news of the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor. Soon, they found themselves ashore on Java, with orders to assist the Dutch, British, and Australian defense of the island against imminent Japanese invasion. When war came to Java in March 1942, the Japanese forces overwhelmed the numerically inferior Allied defenders in little more than a week. For more than three years, the Texans, along with the sailors and marines who survived the sinking of the USS Houston, were prisoners of the Imperial Japanese Army. Beginning in late 1942, these prisoners-of-war were shipped to Burma to accelerate completion of the Burma-Thailand railway. These men labored alongside other Allied prisoners and Asian conscript laborers to build more than 260 miles of railroad for their Japanese taskmasters. They suffered abscessed wounds, near-starvation, daily beatings, and debilitating disease, and 89 of the original 534 Texans taken prisoner died in the infested, malarial jungles. The survivors received a hero's welcome from Gov. Coke Stevenson, who declared October 29, 1945, as "Lost Battalion Day" when they finally returned to Texas. Kelly E. Crager consulted official documentary sources of the National Archives and the U.S. Army and mined the personal memoirs and oral history interviews of the "Lost Battalion" members. He focuses on the treatment the men received in their captivity and surmises that a main factor in the battalion's comparatively high survival rate (84 percent of the 2nd Battalion) was the comraderie of the Texans and their commitment to care for each other.This narrative is grueling, yet ultimately inspiring. Hell under the Rising Sun will be a valuable addition to the collections of World War II historians and interested general readers alike.

In this revisionist history of the United States government relocation of Japanese-American citizens during World War II, Roger W. Lotchin challenges the prevailing notion that racism was the cause of the creation of these centers. After unpacking the origins and meanings of American attitudes toward the Japanese-Americans, Lotchin then shows that Japanese relocation was a consequence of nationalism rather than racism. Lotchin also explores the conditions in the relocation centers and the experiences of those who lived there, with discussions on health, religion, recreation, economics, consumerism, and theater. He honors those affected by uncovering the complexity of how and why their relocation happened, and makes it clear that most Japanese-Americans never went to a relocation center. Written by a specialist in US home front studies, this book will be required reading for scholars and students of the American home front during World War II, Japanese relocation, and the history of Japanese immigrants in America.

Prison Pens presents the memoir of a captured Confederate soldier in northern Virginia and the letters he exchanged with his fiancee during the Civil War. Wash Nelson and Mollie Scollay's letters, as well as Nelson's own manuscript memoir, provide rare insight into a world of intimacy, despair, loss, and reunion in the Civil War South. The tender voices in the letters combined with Nelson's account of his time as a prisoner of war provide a story that is personal and political, revealing the daily life of those living in the Confederacy and the harsh realities of being an imprisoned soldier. Ultimately, through the juxtaposition of the letters and memoir, Prison Pens provides an opportunity for students and scholars to consider the role of memory and incarceration in retelling the Confederate past and incubating Lost Cause mythology.,br> This book will be accompanied by a digital component: a website that allows students and scholars to interact with the volume's content and sources via an interactive map, digitized letters, and special lesson plans.

The huge Auschwitz camp in Poland, the Third Reich's most gruesome death camp, contained not only the infamous concentration camp - whose horrors are well-documented - but also a prisoner-of-war facility that housed British inmates. Situated close enough to the Jewish quarters to smell the stench of burning bodies from the crematoria, the POWs were forced to work alongside concentration camp inmates in a Nazi factory. Witnesses to daily violence, the men survived beatings, hard labour and the extreme cold of Polish winters, whilst subsisting on meagre rations. Their final ordeal was to march hundreds of miles, in the depths of winter, to secure freedom in the spring of 1945. Based on interviews with some of the few surviving members of E715 Auschwitz, this book charts the British captives' true story: from arriving on cattle trucks through to their eventual departure on foot. Haunted by what they had witnessed as young men, Brian Bishop, Doug Bond and Arthur Gifford-England were only able to speak about their experiences decades later, when approached during research for this book. Few people were interested in these remarkable men in post-war Britain, and they coped with the trauma of their experiences with little support. Allies in Auschwitz records an important and forgotten episode of modern history. As corroboration of the men's testimony, the final chapter includes post-war accounts from other British POWs held in E715 Auschwitz, based on documents compiled by war crimes' investigators for the Nuremburg Trials.

A wide range of personal experiences are covered in the eleven chapters of this book. Nearly all the stories are written by the participants who describe exactly what happened to them during the war. What makes them special is that they were written while the images were fresh in their minds. The experiences recorded are those of civilians and soldiers. Where possible information about these men has been provided to explain their life before and after the war. Also included are rarely seen images that augment the text. The writers tell true stories of spying, escape from certain death, escape from captivity and working for the Germans to help the Allied war effort. Edwin Woodhall describes his work in counter-intelligence, spies, counter-spies and disguises, in the early days of the war. Harold Beaumont tells the dramatic story of his escape through Belgium where he was helped by Nurse Cavell. The hardships and difficulties an escaper faced are detailed by Walter Ellison, who failed to get away, while a successful escape is told by Duncan Grinnell-Milne who returned to flying over the Western Front and quickly found himself in no man's land when his plane crashed.Captain Evans was eventually a successful escaper as was H. G. Durnford who managed to escape the first time. Marthe McKenna, one of the most famous spies in the war, tells of the time she was ordered to investigate and assist in a plot to assassinate the Kaiser. Esmee Sartorius tells of her escape to Holland at the start of the war, and the breath-taking thrills of two men disguised as German officers is told by Lieutenant Marchal. The final story describes how Trooper Potts escaped certain death while rescuing his friend on Burnt Hill in Gallipoli.

Approximately 9 million soldiers fell into enemy hands from 1914 to 1918, but historians have only recently begun to recognize the prisoner of war's significance to the history of the Great War. Examining the experiences of the approximately 130,000 German prisoners held in the United Kingdom during World War I, historian Brian K. Feltman brings wartime captivity back into focus. Many German men of the Great War defined themselves and their manhood through their defense of the homeland. They often looked down on captured soldiers as potential deserters or cowards--and when they themselves fell into enemy hands, they were forced to cope with the stigma of surrender. This book examines the legacies of surrender and shows that the desire to repair their image as honorable men led many former prisoners toward an alliance with Hitler and Nazism after 1933. By drawing attention to the shame of captivity, this book does more than merely deepen our understanding of German soldiers' time in British hands. It illustrates the ways that popular notions of manhood affected soldiers' experience of captivity, and it sheds new light on perceptions of what it means to be a man at war.

A simple, moving, vivid and heartbreaking account of one young sailor's eventful war. I heard the cries of scared men yelling they couldn't swim, but they jumped in regardless. I pulled off my new boots, dropped them on the deck and, clutching my tobacco tin, jumped overboard, feet first ...We were a good distance away from the sinking Perth when two more torpedoes slammed into it and we watched silently as our ship slid under. Suddenly we were alone at sea in a pitch-black night in an overcrowded Carley float. Someone said, 'Goodbye, gallant one.' Stoker Munro was just an inexperienced seventeen year old knockabout kid when he went to war, but he turned out to be an extraordinary survivor. the sinking of the Perth was only the beginning of his war. Stoker suffered through years of harsh imprisonment in Java and the infamous Changi prison camp, as well as the horrors of the thai-Burma Railway. then, just as conditions improved, he was shipped off to Japan and another disaster. Stoker Munro, Survivor is a simple but moving account of a young sailor's war, as told to his close friend, David Spiteri. Stoker's voice - clear, distinctive, laidback and larrikin, with an ability to find the humour in just about any situation - epitomises everything that is great about the ANZAC spirit: courage, resilience, and the sheer refusal to lie down and be beaten. 'the story of Stoker Darby Munro's survival is an epic of the human spirit ...In our time, when the word hero is flung around so lightly, this book reflects upon genuine heroism. We forget these stories and these lives at our peril.' Mike Carlton

When it opened in October 1864, Camp Lawton was called ""the world s largest prison."" Operational only six weeks, this stockade near Millen, Georgia, was evacuated in the face of advancing Federal troops under General Sherman. The prison served as headquarters for the Confederate military prison system, witnessed hundreds of deaths, held a mock election for president, was involved in a sick exchange, hosted attempts to recruit Union POWs for Confederate service, and experienced escape attempts. Burned by Sherman's troops following its evacuation in late November 1864, the prison was never reoccupied. Over the next 150 years, the memory of Camp Lawton almost disappeared. In 2010, the Confederate military prison was resurrected--a result of the media event publically showcasing the findings of recent archeological investigations. New in paper, this book not only summarizes these initial archeological findings, but is also the first full-length, documented history of Camp Lawton.

Without trial and without due process, the United States government locked up nearly all of those citizens and longtime residents who were of Japanese descent during World War II. Ten concentration camps were set up across the country to confine over 120,000 inmates. Almost 20,000 of them were shipped to the only two camps in the segregated South--Jerome and Rohwer in Arkansas--locations that put them right in the heart of a much older, long-festering system of racist oppression. The first history of these Arkansas camps, "Concentration Camps on the Home Front" is an eye-opening account of the inmates' experiences and a searing examination of American imperialism and racist hysteria.
While the basic facts of Japanese-American incarceration are well known, John Howard's extensive research gives voice to those whose stories have been forgotten or ignored. He highlights the roles of women, first-generation immigrants, and those who forcefully resisted their incarceration by speaking out against dangerous working conditions and white racism. In addition to this overlooked history of dissent, Howard also exposes the government's aggressive campaign to Americanize the inmates and even convert them to Christianity. After the war ended, this movement culminated in the dispersal of the prisoners across the nation in a calculated effort to break up ethnic enclaves.
Howard's re-creation of life in the camps is powerful, provocative, and disturbing. "Concentration Camps on the Home Front" rewrites a notorious chapter in American history--a shameful story that nonetheless speaks to the strength of human resilience in the face of even the most grievous injustices.

Ballykinlar Internment Camp was the first mass internment camp to be established by the British in Ireland during the War of Independence. Situated on the County Down coast and opened in December 1920, it became home to hundreds of Irish men arrested by the British, often on little more than the suspicion of involvement in the IRA. Held for up to a year, and subjected to often brutal treatment and poor quality food in an attempt to break them both physically and mentally, the interned men instead established a small community within the camp. The knowledge and skills possessed by the diverse inhabitants were used to teach classes, and other activities, such as sports, drama and music lessons, helped stave off boredom. In the midst of all these activities the internees also endeavoured to defy their captors with various plans for escape. The story of the Ballykinlar internment camp is on the one hand an account of suffering, espionage, murder and maltreatment, but it is also a chronicle of survival, comradeship and community.

Since 2002, the United States has operated military detention facilities at its Naval Station in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to hold individuals detained during overseas counter-terrorism operations. In 2009, the President directed the closure of these facilities within one year. Since then, a number of statues have prohibited the transfer of Guantanamo Bay detainees to the United States. This book describes the current Guantanamo Bay detention facilities and infrastructure; examines the DoD corrections facilities and factors to be considered if these facilities were used to hold the detainees; and discusses other security and legal considerations.

The clarinetist Rebecca Rischin has written a captivating book. . . . Her research dispels several long-cherished myths about the 1941 premiere. . . . Rischin lovingly brings to life the other musicians Etienne Pasquier, cellist; Henri Akoka, clarinetist; and Jean Le Boulaire, violinist who played with Messiaen, the pianist at the premiere." Alex Ross, The New Yorker "This book offers a wealth of new information about the circumstances under which the Quartet was created. Based on original interviews with the performers, witnesses to the premiere, and documents from the prison camp, this first comprehensive history of the Quartet's composition and premiere held my interest from beginning to end. . . . For the End of Time touches on many things: faith, friendship, creativity, grace in a time of despair, and the uncommon human alliances that wartime engenders." Arnold Steinhardt, Chamber Music"The clarification of the order of composition of the movements is just one of the minor but cumulatively significant ways in which Rischin modifies the widely accepted account of the events at Stalag VIII A. . . . For the End of Time is a thorough and readable piece of investigative journalism that clarifies some important points about the Quartet's genesis." Michael Downes, Times Literary Supplement The premiere of Olivier Messiaen's Quartet for the End of Time on January 15, 1941, has been called one of the great stories of twentieth-century music. Composed while Messiaen (1908 1992) was imprisoned by the Nazis in Stalag VIII A, the work was performed under the most trying of circumstances: the temperature, inferior instruments, and the general conditions of life in a POW camp.Based on testimonies by the musicians and their families, witnesses to the premiere, former prisoners, and on documents from Stalag VIII A, For the End of Time examines the events that led to the Quartet's composition, the composer's interpretive preferences, and the musicians' problems in execution and how they affected the premiere and subsequent performances. Rebecca Rischin explores the musicians' life in the prison camp, their relationships with each other and with the German camp officials, and their intriguing fortunes before and after the momentous premiere. This paperback edition features supplementary texts and information previously unavailable to the author about the Quartet's premiere, Vichy and the composer, the Paris premiere, a recording featuring Messiaen as performer, and an updated bibliography and discography."

During the winter of 1863-1864, 1,200 Union officers lived in squalor and semi-starvation in Richmond's Libby Prison, known as "The Bastille of the South." On February 9, 109 of those officers wriggled through a fifty-five-foot tunnel to freedom. After an all-out Rebel manhunt, survivors reached Washington, and their testimony spurred far-reaching investigations into the treatment of Union prisoners.

"Libby Prison Breakout" tells the largely unknown story of the most important escape of the Civil War from a Confederate prison, one that ultimately increased the North's and South's willingness to use prisoners in waging "total war."

'When you are suspended by a rope you can recover, but every time I see a rope I remember. If the light goes out unexpectedly in a room, I am back in my cell.' Binyam Mohamed, Prisoner #1458. For eight years the American naval base at Guantanamo Bay on Cuba has been home to hundreds of men, all Muslim, all detained in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks on suspicion of varying degrees of complicity or intent to carry out acts of terror against American interests. Labelled 'the worst of the worst', most of these men were guilty of nothing more than being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Many fell prey to a US military policy of paying bounty money for anyone the Pakistani secret service, border guards or village leaders on both sides of the blurred Afghan-Pakistan border considered a possible or potential 'suspect', thereby becoming currency in the newly defined 'War on Terror'. Held in legal limbo for years and repeatedly interrogated, almost all have been released without charge and only a very few have been tried in the special military commissions set up for the purpose. Guantanamo: If the light goes out illustrates three experiences of home: at Guantanamo naval base, home to the American community; in the camp complex where the detainees have been held; and in the homes where former detainees, never charged with any crime, find themselves trying to rebuild lives. These notions of home are brought together in an unsettling narrative, which evokes the process of disorientation central to the Guantanamo interrogation and incarceration techniques. It also explores the legacy of disturbance such experiences have in the minds and memories of these men.

Ravensbruck was a labour camp within German borders, not far from Berlin. In the beginning it was, by camp standards, a ""better"" camp, designed for indoctrination and industrial production, but by the end of the war it was just another overcrowded locus of horror complete with gas chamber. The result is a fascinating case study of how women of different nationalities and social backgrounds coped for years with lack of food and basic sanitation, illnesses, prejudices and death by carving out their own cultural life. Morrison's reconstruction of the dynamics of camp life presents a vivid picture for today's readers, highlighting the experiences of many individuals, such as the story of one of Ravensbruck's first inmates, an upper-class woman who arrived in her own car and soon found herself standing completely naked in a group of women for seven hours to undergo a humiliating medical examination in front of laughing SS officers. But the women developed all kinds of survival skills, many of which stand as a monument to the human spirit. Bonds of friendship and the creation of ""camp families"" helped alleviate the miseries of camp routine, as did a highly sophisticated educational system developed by Polish inmates. Women artists from several countries provided a further cultural dimension from crafts to poetry, theatre, music and drawings. As the war progressed, camp life deteriorated. More and more victims were concentrated in Ravensbruck, and the Nazis installed a gas chamber. About 140,000 Ravensbruck inmates did not survive the war. In 1945 life in Ravensbruck came to an abrupt end with a dramatic and macabre death march, in which many inmates perished and Nazis, clad as inmates, tried to escape the Russian troops.