Canadian Wartime Prison Escapes: Courage and Daring Behind Enemy Lines.

Sidney Allinson is a Victoria-based communications consultant, Canadian
news correspondent for Britain’s The Army Quarterly and Defence, and
author of The Bantams: The Untold Story of World War I.

Allied prisoners held in enemy captivity during two world wars had a hard time of it; dreary confinement behind barbed wire, scant food, and brutality. All POWs yearned to escape, yet relatively few managed to. Those who did get away needed extraordinary bravery, ingenuity, and just plain good luck not to be recaptured or shot on sight. This book by Edmonton historian Peter Conrad—subtitled “Courage and Daring Behind Enemy Lines”—tells inspiring stories of brave Canadians who made their way to freedom despite dangerous odds.

Conrad distinguishes between “escapees,” who broke out of prison camps, and “evaders,” those who were trapped behind enemy lines but not captured. Most of the latter were aircrew who landed in enemy-occupied territory after surviving the crash of their aircraft.

Only the first chapter is set during World War I, when POWs knew escape was virtually impossible, because of the front line trenches that stretched from the Swiss Alps to the Belgian coast. Despite that barrier, 99 Canadian soldiers did escape successfully, only one of whom was a commissioned officer.

World War II resulted in the imprisonment of many POWs from a variety of nations, including some Canadians who eventually escaped. The author did a remarkable job of tracing scores of these men and recording their individual adventures. Every one of their experiences reads more like wartime thriller novels than real-life accounts of astonishingly determined warriors and the civilian men and women who risked their lives to help.

Canadians played an important role in the gallant but tragic epic of the Great Escape by 73 Allied airmen who tunnelled out of Stalag Luft III camp in Germany. Sadly, they were soon recaptured, and 50 of them were murdered by the Gestapo on Hitler’s personal orders. Less well-known are the other stories told here of escapes from POW camps in Italy, Eastern Europe, and the Orient. Lamentably, the book does not include any maps or illustrations, which could have given the reader an even clearer understanding of these epic escapes.