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The Barbed-Wire University: The Real Lives of Prisoners of War WW2 Midge Gillies

Condition:
Good
In good used condition. Please see the pictures.
Price:
AU $35.95
ApproximatelyEUR 21.97
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Located in: Melrose Park, SA, Australia
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eBay item number:166098183459
Last updated on 06 Feb, 2024 11:49:07 GMTView all revisionsView all revisions

Item specifics

Condition
Good
A book that has been read, but is in good condition. Minimal damage to the book cover eg. scuff marks, but no holes or tears. If this is a hard cover, the dust jacket may be missing. Binding has minimal wear. The majority of pages are undamaged with some creasing or tearing, and pencil underlining of text, but this is minimal. No highlighting of text, no writing in the margins, and no missing pages. See the seller’s listing for full details and description of any imperfections. See all condition definitionsopens in a new window or tab
Seller notes
“In good used condition. Please see the pictures.”
ISBN
9781845136291
Publication Year
2011
Type
Textbook
Format
Hardcover
Language
English
Publication Name
The Barbed-Wire University: the Real Lives of Prisoners of War in the Second World War
Item Height
234mm
Author
Midge Gillies
Publisher
Aurum Press
Item Width
153mm
Subject
Government, History
Number of Pages
512 Pages

About this product

Product Information

Feature films have created the stereotype of the Second World War prisoner of war. He is the spruce, stiff-upper-lipped Alec Guinness in The Bridge on the River Kwai, or Steve McQueen's cunning and opportunist Cooler King' in The Great Escape, the all-American motorbike hero. If he is imprisoned in Europe it will have to be in the forbidding North German Schloss of Colditz or the tunnel-riddled Stalag Luft III. But, as Midge Gillies shows in this groundbreaking work of social history, the true experiences of nearly half a million Allied servicemen held captive during the Second World War were nothing like the Hollywood myth and infinitely more extraordinary. The real lives of POWs saw them respond to the tedium of a German stalag or the brutality of a Japanese camp with the most amazing ingenuity and creativity. They staged glittering shows, concerts and elaborate sporting fixtures, made exquisite ornaments even, amid the terrible privations of the Thailand-Burma railway, improvised daring surgical techniques to save their fellow men's lives. Whatever skills or hobbies they took with them to captivity they managed to continue and adapt to the extent of laying out a 9-hole golf course between the huts of one German camp. They took up crafts and pastimes using materials they found around them: even the string from a Red Cross food parcel was used to make cricket balls, football nets and wigs for theatrical performances. Men studied, attended lectures, learned languages, sat for qualifications and exams, on such a scale that one camp was nicknamed The Barbed-Wire University'. A number of books written by POWs in captivity are still in print today. And often the years in captivity proved a turning-point in their lives, as the new interests and skills they took out of the camp enabled them to embark on a post-war career in which they would succeed at the highest level whether actors like Clive Dunn and Denholm Elliott, artists like Sir Terry Frost and Ronald Searle, or the birdwatchers who studied rooks and jackdaws beyond the perimeter wire in distant parts of the German Reich and went on to run the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds. Drawing on letters home, diaries and interviews with redoubtable survivors now into their nineties, Midge Gillies recreates the daily lives of a truly remarkable group of men. It is a story by turns thrilling, funny, desperate and moving, but never less than inspirational.

Product Identifiers

Publisher
Aurum Press
ISBN-13
9781845136291
eBay Product ID (ePID)
105480195

Product Key Features

Author
Midge Gillies
Publication Name
The Barbed-Wire University: the Real Lives of Prisoners of War in the Second World War
Format
Hardcover
Language
English
Subject
Government, History
Publication Year
2011
Type
Textbook
Number of Pages
512 Pages

Dimensions

Item Height
234mm
Item Width
153mm

Additional Product Features

Title_Author
Midge Gillies
Country/Region of Manufacture
United Kingdom

Item description from the seller

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