“We had passed through a nightmare experience of what can happen, in any country,” observed Royal Air Force Pilot Officer B.A. “Jimmy” James at the end of World War II, “when the forces of totalitarianism prevail.” To be sure, James' Second World War II experience, especially as a prisoner of war (POW) beginning in June 1940, was a veritable nightmare, from which he made no less than a remarkable twelve escape attempts, including the “Great Escape” of March 1944. James' recollections of his wartime captivity and escape attempts, published originally in 1983, is an enthralling account of courage, determination, and innovation.

Shot down while flying a Wellington on a bombing mission over the Netherlands in June 1940, James parachuted to earth - and German captivity. He was first incarcerated at Stalag Luft I north of Berlin, and James chronicles the daily routine, diet, and activities of the officer POW. The worst enemies of the POWs, in addition to the Germans, hunger, cold, and fear, were uncertainty and monotony. To alleviate boredom and as a means of doing one's duty to extend the war effort, POWs frequently participated in escape activities. James became an energetic and enthusiastic tunneler. The officers' compound at Stalag Luft I was honeycombed with some forty-five tunnels in April 1942, when he and his comrades were moved to a new camp, Stalag Luft III, at Sagan, Silesia.....more

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“Kill them, Lieutenant. Don't take any prisoners,” exhorted the bedraggled engineer officer to the new replacements, “Don't take any prisoners!” US Army Second Lieutenant A. Preston Price, also newly arrived in the European Theatre of Operations, was in charge of that platoon of wide-eyed replacements. Within hours on that bleak day of December 23, 1944, they were on their way to the “front” and assigned to units to help blunt the German onslaught in the Battle of the Bulge. Price was assigned to the 1st Infantry Division, the “Big Red One”, and this riveting account, The Last Kilometre: Marching to Victory in Europe with the Big Red One, 1944-1945 (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2002; 224 pp., illustrations, maps, index, $24.95 hardcover) chronicles his combat service from Belgium during the Bulge to V-E Day and the end of the war in Czechoslovakia.

Price was immediately thrown into the maelstrom of combat as an 81 mm mortar forward observer in the 3rd Battalion, 26th Infantry Regiment. After learning the procedures of observing and calling for fire in his sector near the Elsenborn Ridge, Belgium, Price settled into a routine where “the days blend into one long period of misery alternating with excitement and boredom.” He also participated in a number of dismounted infantry attacks, frequently plodding through deep snow while bracketed by exploding enemy artillery shells, finally piercing the dragon's teeth of the Siegfried Line and entering Germany. At that point, near the end of January 1945, the 1st Infantry Division was relieved by the 99th Infantry Division and moved to a rest area in Belgium...more

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