Military Memoirs
1 total work
Captain Harry Roberts of REME was landed by glider at the Battle of Arnhem in September 1944. The moment he landed he came under fire and received a disabling bullet at the base of his spine and other injuries. This memoir is his distillation of his wartime diaries and incorporates information on his training, his capture at Arnhem and his subsequent experience as a POW incarcerated in the German countryside. The book shows all the chaos of war, the bitterness of defeat and the sheer will to live. As an officer and Prisoner of War Captain Roberts was reasonably well treated but this did not spare him from the vicissitudes of war witnessing, for instance, starved and broken women acting as slave labour for the Nazis. His account conveys the kaleidoscope of emotions that prisoners suffer and the debilitating effects of ever-present pangs of hunger.