WW1 POW's

[dekenai]

G'day all,

can anyone help with some titles of books, that concern the experiences of WW1 POW's--all nationalities. I read one (can't remember the title) of an Australian captured at Gallipoli. He and the other allied POW's help build the Berlin the Bagdad railway.

thanks in advance

Richard

[Jon Haslock]

The Lousier War, by W. A. Tucker,

The Escaping Club, by A. J. Evans.

[Doug Johnson]

A short list of books;

450 Miles to Freedom; Captain M.A.B Johnston and Captain K.D Yearsley; William Blackwood and Sons; Edinburgh and London; 1919. The story of eight men who successfully escaped from Yozgad.

A Knight of the Air; G F Knight; Arthur H Stockwell Ltd; London; Captured Nov 9th 1916; was at Cambrai where he escaped, recaptured and sent to Osnabrück of which there is a good description. Moved to Clausthal which is described. Mentions attempted escape of Cpt Nicholl, RFC and Lt Reid, RN. Mentions Col Bond, KOYLI and Colquhoun (Canadian). Moved again to Ströhen. Mentions Pte Cheeseman (orderly), Lt Downes, South Staffs, Cpt Woodhouse, Cpt Wilson, RFC, Cpt Scholtz and Lt Wookey. Escaped to Holland where he met Cpt Harrison, Royal Irish, Lt C F Templar, RFC and Lt J Insall VC, RFC, all previous occupants of Ströhen.

A POW’s Memoir of the First world War; The Other Ordeal; George Connes; Berg; Oxford and New York, 2004. Written as an antidote to Le Purgatoire

Airman’s Escape; Hermann Köhl; Bodley Head; Escaped from France to Switzerland after the war ended

Cage-Birds; H E Hervey; Penguin; 1940

Dear girl, I escaped: Experiences in the Great War 1914-18; Ann Warin (Ed); Redcliffe Press; Bristol; 1989. The story of Arthur Hillis, RFC. Shot down in March 1918 and taken prisoner. Was at Karlsruhe, Landshut, and Graudenz. He made one unsuccessful escape attempt.

Die Mannerinsel, F L Dunbar – Kalckreuth; Paul Lift Verlag; Leipzig; 1940 Relates to Alexandra Palace, Knockaloe and Douglas

Escape!; Cpt H C Armstrong (Ed); Robert M McBride & Company; New York; 1935 In the same format as Escapers all, A collection of prisoner of war escape stories presented by an editor who was also a prisoner of war and who made an escape attempt in Turkey. Stories are from Lt Anselme Marchal, a Frenchman who escaped from Magdeburg; Lt-Col E Noel, an Englishman who escaped from the Jungali Bolsheviks at Kasvin; Henry de Practomal, another Frenchman who escaped from Hohen-Aspern; Commander H G Stoker, English; attempted escape from Afion; Cpt H G Gilliland who escaped whilst in transit; Major a. d. Franz Maske, a German escaping from Siberia; Adjutant Charles A Collet, another Frenchman escaping from Giessen; Lt Col Thomas Walter White, an Australian escaping from Turkey to Russia; Lt Paul L Richard, French, escaping from Burg to Holland; Lt Harold B Willis, an American escaping from Villingen to Switzerland; and Cpt Coutisson, yet another Frenchman escaping from Holland where he had been interned.

Escape Fever; Geoffrey Parker Harding Sent to Karlshrue and then to Ströhen where he escaped with Lt Fitzgerald. Contains a plan of Ströhen.

Escapers All, J R Ackerley (Ed); Bodley Head; London; 1934 A series of accounts of escapes and attempted escapes. Some accounts published fully elsewhere. Stories are by Pte Harry Beaumont, H A Cartwright, Hugh Durnford, A J Evans, Duncan Grinnell-Milne, J L Hardy, M C C Harrison, E H Jones, Heinz H E Justus, E H Keeling, Helmut von Mücke, Ernest Pearce, Gunther Plüschow, Herman Tholens. and Lawrence A Wingfield. Contains plans of Burg camp and Magdeburg prison.

Escapes and Adventures; Wallace Ellison; W Blackwood and Sons; Edinburgh and London; 1929. Relates to Ruhleben and the Stadt Vogt prison in Berlin. A re-write, without censorship, of his earlier work

Golden Horn; Francis Yeats-Brown;

I Escape!; J L Hardy; Bodley Head; Escaped from Halle, Neu Brandenburg, Magdeburg and Ft Zorndorf before making a home run from Schweidnitz with Loder-Symmonds.

In England Kriegsgefangenen; Major a. D Bruno Schmidt-Reder; George Bath, Berlin, 1916

In the Hands of the Enemy; Benjamin G. O'Rorke; Longmans Green and Co; London; 1916 The Rev O’Rourke was taken prisoner at Landrecies in 1914. Taken to Fort Brückenkopf at Torgau then moved to Burg and finally Magdeburg before he was released. Apart from descriptions of the camps there is a detailed plan of Ft Brückenkopf showing the places where the various nationalities were housed in 1914. Fellow prisoners are named throughout, both officers and orderlies. There is also a plan of the battlefield at Landrecies made by Cpt the Hon Keppel of the Coldstream Guards.

Kriegsgefangenenlager Oswesty Westlager; Contains a plan of the camp and a camp diary from November 1918 to November 1919

My Experiences as a German Prisoner; L J Austin; John Austin Society; 1990. John Austin joined the Red Cross at the outbreak of war. Went across to Belgium on the 16th August 1914 and was taken prisoner shortly afterwards. He was sent to Cologne military prison and then to Torgau, Burg and Magdeburg before being repatriated.

Notre Evasion D’Allemagne; M Charrier; Lucon 1935 An escape from Meschede.

Outwitting the Hun; Lt Pat O’Brien; Harper and Brothers, New York and London, 1918 An American flying with the RFC, shot down and escaped to Holland.

Prisoner of War; Edwin Erich Dwinger; Alfred A Knope; New York, 1930 Dwinger was a young Subaltern wounded and taken prisoner on the Russian front.

Prisoner of War; Andre Warnod; Captured in 1914. Sent to Merseberg. Repatriated in 1915 (medical orderly)

Recollections of a Prisoner of War; Cpt. The Hon. Godfrey Phillimore, M.C.; From the National Review; 1925 Phillimore was wounded and taken prisoner at Beaumont Hamel in April 1916. He was first in Gütersloh until March 1917 and then moved to Crefeld before Freiburg and finally to Schwarmstedt. He nearly escaped from Gütersloh by tunnel but they were moved as it neared completion. At Crefeld another tunnel was almost complete before he was moved to Freiburg. He was out for several weeks from Freiburg before recapture and finally made an escape from Schwarmstedt as far as Austria before being recaptured, though he was not returned to Germany. The tunnel from Gütersloh was described by Harvey in “Comrades in Captivity”.

Sixteen Months in four German Prisons; Henry C Mahoney; Sampson Low, Marston & Co., Ltd. London and Edinburgh 1917 Relates to Sennelager, Ruhleben

The Amazing Cruise of the German Raider Wolf; Captain A Donaldson; New Century Press Pty Limited; Sydney 1941.

The Cruise of the Raider Wolf; Roy Alexander; Noontide Press; USA 1991.

The Escaping Club; A J Evans; Bodley Head; 1938

The Lousier War by William Albert Tucker; 1974 Taken prisoner during the 1918 spring offensive, Tucker was employed behind the lines until the end of the war.

The Prisoners of Mainz; Alec Waugh; Chapman and Hall; London; 1919 Available on the Internet

The Road to En-Dor; E H Jones & C W Hill; Bodley Head; 1920

The Tunnellers of Holzminden; H G Durnford; Cambridge University Press; London; 1920

Three Years a Prisoner in Germany; Maj J C Thorn; Cowan and Brookhouse; Vancouver; 1919. Taken prisoner in April 1915 he was sent to Bischofswerda where he was involved with the attempted escape of Cpt Scudamore. As a punishment he was sent to Ft Zorndorf at Custrin and then to Augustabad from where he escaped dressed as a widow. Recaptured he was sent to Fort IX at Ingolstadt and then back to Ft Zorndorf. He was then transferred to Holzminden where he escaped again. Recaptured again he was then sent to Ströhen where he made another failed attempt. Transferred again, this time to Clausthal. He was finally exchanged to Holland.

Time stood still. My Internment in England, 1915-18; Paul Cohen Portheim; E P Dutton and C o; New York; 1932

Tommy at Gommecourt; Thomas James Higgins; Churnet Valley Books; Staffordshire; 2005 Captured in 1917, he was taken to Dülmen, Soltau, Elbingerode, Ronneberg, Hameln, Munster, Kohlenbissen, Ottersberg and Drentwede.

To Ruhleben – and Back; Geoffrey Pyke; Collins Library; New York; Reprint, originally published 1916

Within Four Walls; M C C Harrison and H A Cartwright; Edward Arnold and Co;

The following are available on the internet;

13 Days, The Chronicle of an Escape from a German Prison; John Alan Lyde Caunter; G Bell and sons; London; 1918;

A Guest of the Kaiser; The Plain Story of a Lucky Soldier; Arthur Gibbons

A Kut Prisoner; Harry C W Bishop

A Prisoner in Turkey; John Still

A Regimental Surgeon in War and Prison; Cpt Robert V Dobley

Englishman Kamerad; Cpt Gilbert Nobbs

Five Months in a German Raider; F G Trayes

In Brigands Hands and Turkish Prisons; A Forder

In German Hands, The diary of a Severely Wounded Prisoner; Charles Hennebois; Heinemann; London; 1916

Into the Jaws of Death; Jack O’Brien

My Escape from Donnington Hall; Gunther Plüschow; Bodley Head London; 1922

My German Prisons: being the experiences of an officer during two and a half years as a prisoner of war Horace Gray Gilliland

Out of the Jaws of Hunland; Fred Mcullan and Jack Evans

Ten Months on a German Raider; Captain John Stanley Cameron

The Kaisers Guest; Frank Cecil MacDonald

The Memoirs of a Swine in the Land of Kulture; Benjamin Muse

Three times and Out as told by Pte M C Simmonds; Nellie McClung; Thomas Allen; Toronto; 1918

Wounded and a Prisoner of War; An Exchanged Officer

Doug

[Jon Haslock]

Blimey! I'd like to see what you call a long list!

[Doug Johnson]

These make the list a longer one . These I do not have easy access to;

A Spanish Prisoner in a German Camp; Valentin Torras; Hodder and Stoughton; London; 1917

An Escaper’s Log; Duncan Grinnell-Milne; Bodley Head;

Behind the German Lines, A Narrative on the Everyday Life of an American; Ralph E Ellinwood

Black Bread and Barbed Wire; Michael Moynihan

Captured, Sixteen Months a Prisoner of War; J Harvey Douglas; Goodchild and Stewart; Toronto; 1918

Comrades in Captivity; F W Harvey; Sidgwick and Jackson Ltd, London; 1920

Escaping from Germany; Edward Page; Andrew Melrose; London; 1919

Fourteen Months a Prisoner of War; Captain A E Dent; 1919

Guests of the Unspeakable; T W White; Little Hills Press; 1990

In Kultured Kaptivity, Life and Death in Germany’s Prison Camps; Ivan Rossiter

In the Hand of the Huns; Being the Reminiscences of a Civilian Prisoner of War, 1914 – 1915; Simpkin and Marshall; London; 1919

In Franzosischer Holle Kriegsgefangen in Dahomey; Karl Fischer; 1918

Kriegsgefangener auf Gibraltar und der Insel Man, Tagebuch eines Amerikaner; Charles L Hartmann

Le Purgatoire; Thierry Sandre;

My Three Years in a German Prison; Henri-Severin Béland

Prisoner five one eleven; Donald H Laird; Ontario Press, Toronto;

Round the Corner; Percy Brown

The Dandy Hun; K Maglic

The First Springbok Prisoner in Germany; E Doitish;

The Memoirs of a Swine in the Land of Kultur or, How it felt to be a Prisoner of War; Ben Muse; 1919

The Ruhleben Prison Camp: A record of Nineteen Months’ Internment; Israel Cohen; Methuen and Co 1917

The Secrets of a Kuttite; Cpt E O Mousley

The Story of a Prisoner of War; Arthur Green

To Kiel on the German Raider Wolf and After; A H F Clarke

Doug

[Al Parsons]

Thank you, Doug. I just bookmarked this thread for future reference. Excellent stuff.

[Davidwhitman]

Hi Richard

The book you read may have been "Lost Anzacs" by George kerr (grandson of George Kerr Australian POW). George Kerr was captured at Gallipoli and later interned at Belemedik working on the Berlin to Baghdad railway.

Another Australian POW was Lieutenant Luscombe who was captured at Gallipoli. He wrote a book in the 1970's called The Story of Harold Earl.

Regards

David

[dekenai]

Thanks David

thats the one! a good read

cheers

RDC

PS thanks to others for their submissions---have l the time to read them all?

any from the list that stand out?

[ColinY43]

see also:

http://ruhleben.tripod.com/id11.html

and of course: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fred_Pentland

- he would have known how to beat Barcelona - his team did 13-2!

Colin

[Jon th14]

Richard Van Emden's book, Prisoners of the Kaiser is being reprinted in paperback. Its due at the end of the month and is available for pre-order for £7 on the Pen & Sword site.

http://www.pen-and-sword.co.uk/?product_id=1915

[armistice]

The following books (English language titles - all mentioned above) are freely available for download at the Internet Archive found under the keyword "World War, 1914-1918 -- Prisoners of war". Link: HERE

In the hand of the Huns, being the reminiscences of a British Civil Prisoner of War, 1914-1915

Interned in Germany - Mahoney, Henry Charles

My three years in a German prison - Béland, Henri

Prisoner of war - Warnod, André

"The quality of Mercy" : how British prisoners of war were taken to Germany in 1914 - Howard, Keble

To Ruhleben and back, a great adventure in three phases - Pyke, Geoffrey

My experiences as a German prisoner - Austin, Lorimer John

My German prisons : being the experiences of an officer during two and a half years as a prisoner of war - Gilliland, H. G. (Horace Gray)

The history of Ruhleben : a record of British organisation in a prison camp in Germany - Powell, Joseph

In brigands' hands and Turkish prisons, 1914-1918 - Forder, A. (Archibald)

My escape from Donington Hall : preceded by an account of the siege of Kiao-Chow in 1915 - Plüschow, Gunther

[Ken S.]

In case anyone is interested:

Prisoner Five-One-Eleven

Also I have a small collection of German captivity narratives, in particular relating to imprisonment in Russia/Siberia, which I could list if anyone would find it of use.

[Guest tutor360]

Love the list of books that is to well rounded i cant help but feel your the person who might be able to help me. Strohen Prison in World War One. I cant find a map of it. Nor Guterslogh. If you have a copy or know where i can get one please please contact me. This goes to anyone else who might be reading and has the layout of Strohen and Guterslogh prisons in Germany 1916-1917.

[Doug Johnson]

Missed this posting,

There are plans of Strohen in Within Four Walls by Harrison and Cartwright and Escape Fever by Harding. I have not found a plan of Gütersloh as yet. Gütersloh was apparently built as a sanitorium.

The full list of plans I have found so far is as follows;

Germany

Officers’;

Burg (Within Four Walls & Escapers All)

Clausthal (The Escaping Club)

Holzminden (officers) (The Tunnelers of Holzminden)

Ingolstadt (Ft IX)(The Escaping Club)

Magdeburg Prison (Within four Walls & Escapers All)

Ströhen (Within Four Walls & Escape Fever)

Torgau (Ft Brückenkopf) (Within Four Walls & In The Hands of the Enemy)

Mens’ Camps

Dulmen (Prisoners of the Kaiser)

Doberitz (WO161)

Zeist (Cecile’s site)

Civilian

Ruhleben (My Visit to Ruhleben & The Ruhleben Prison Camp)

Britain

Douglas (Die Mannerinsel)

Le Havre (Kriegsgefangenenlager Oswestry Westlager)

Oswestry West (Kriegsgefangenenlager Oswestry Westlager)

Stobs (Prisoners of War in British Hands during WWI; A study of their history, the camps and their mails)

Doug

[James A Pratt III]

For Central powers POWs in Russia see: "Prisoners of War and the Great War Captivity on the Eastern Front" Alon Rachaminov & "Among the Prisoners of War in Russia and Siberia" Elsa Branstorm

[David_Blanchard]

also 'The Further Side of No Mans Land' by VWWS Purcell

[Black Maria]

Three that I don't think have appeared =

'They also served ' by Cecil Thomas ( London Regt ) Hurst & Blacket 1939

Three Years on Active Service and Eight months a Prisoner of War ( S.L.I ) by Henry Arthur Foley Private Pub 1920

Behind Both Lines by Hugh Kingsmill ( Royal Naval Division) Morley & Mitchell 1930

[Black Maria]

'My Escape from Donington Hall ' is being reprinted by Pen & Sword Books in February 2015.

[Black Maria]

On 05/03/2010 at 09:58, Doug Johnson said:

Missed this posting,

There are plans of Strohen in Within Four Walls by Harrison and Cartwright and Escape Fever by Harding. I have not found a plan of Gütersloh as yet. Gütersloh was apparently built as a sanitorium.

 

There is a plan of Gutersloh in Harvey's ' Comrades in Captivity '.  

[Black Maria]

I've been working my way through my P.O.W memoirs ( all British officers and Western Front so far ) , i'm on my eighteenth at the moment with quite a few more to go . 

At the moment if i had to recommend only one it would be 'An Escaper's Log' by Duncan Grinnell-Milne , my least favourite have been those by prisoners who had no

desire to escape , for example 'Behind Both Lines' by Hugh Kingsmill (Lunn) .

 

[Dust Jacket Collector]

6 hours ago, Black Maria said:

I've been working my way through my P.O.W memoirs ( all British officers and Western Front so far ) , i'm on my eighteenth at the moment with quite a few more to go . 

At the moment if i had to recommend only one it would be 'An Escaper's Log' by Duncan Grinnell-Milne , my least favourite have been those by prisoners who had no

desire to escape , for example 'Behind Both Lines' by Hugh Kingsmill (Lunn) .

 

Great dust jacket though!

[Black Maria]

33 minutes ago, Dust Jacket Collector said:

Great dust jacket though!

 

Yes , ironically one of my favourite jackets on what i must admit was rather a dull book .