Books > History > World history > From 1900 > Second World War
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Great Escaper - A young POW in the most audacious breakout of WWII (Paperback)
Loot Price: R260
Discovery Miles 2 600
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Great Escaper - A young POW in the most audacious breakout of WWII (Paperback)
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List price R316
Loot Price R260
Discovery Miles 2 600
You Save R56 (18%)
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John 'Willy' Williams was a medical student and passionate surfer
turned Squadron Leader and Second World War ace. In the Australian
tradition, he insisted on fighting his war in non-regulation attire
and led his squadron into air combat over Libya and Egypt dressed
in sandals and shorts. Shot down in the Western Desert in 1942, he
ended up a POW in Stalag Luft III near the German-Polish border.
John was among the seventy-six POWs who tunnelled their way out of
the supposedly escape-proof camp under the Germans' noses in what
later became famous as the Great Escape. John and former schoolmate
Reg 'Rusty' Keirath, together with two other POWs, made it to
Czechoslovakia and were captured by the Gestapo. Hitler was so
enraged by the Great Escape that he personally ordered the secret
execution of fifty of the seventy-three captured men, in flagrant
violation of the Geneva Convention. John, Rusty and their two
friends were driven by the Gestapo deep into the forest near the
town of Most and shot; John was just twenty-four years old. Despite
the later war crimes investigation into the Great Escape murders,
no one was ever brought to justice for the murders of the Most
Four. John's niece Louise Williams has pieced together his life,
from his upbringing in the Depression to his exploits in the air
and the missing details of the tragic escape. It is a powerful and
intimate story of one of the most dramatic episodes of World War
II.
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