Escape From Colditz Author:P. R. Reid "Just about the best of the many escape books of World War II," commented Time when P.R. Reids's The Colditz Story was published. Here, in one volume, is a reissue of The Colditz Story, Reid's personal memoir until his own escape in 1942, and Men of Colditz, the story ... more »of the prisoners he left behind.
Colditz prisoners were the elite, the "bad boys" who had escaped from other camps and had been recaptured. The Germans considered Colditz Castle escape-proof. An imposing Medieval fortress built on a cliff, the castle was moated and surrounded by palisades of barbed wire on the edge of vast precipices, the castle's stone walls were flooded with spotlights every night. The guard garrison outnumbered the prisoners at all times.
Bold, imaginative men like P.R. Reid, English escape officer until his own "homerun" in 1942, kept a steady stream of internees on the escape route. In four and a half years there were over three hundred escape attempts from Colditz, and, while relatively few reached the safety of Allied territory, the miracle was that any succeeded.
Escape from Colditz is a tribute to the courage and ingenuity of the men who lived the story. Moreover, it demonstrates that truth is sometimes not only stranger than fiction, but much more exciting.« less