Four Fifty Miles To Freedom

Four-Fifty Miles to Freedom is a novel by Kenneth Darlaston Yearsley. It details the hardships and obstacles that eight men must overcome, after having escaped from a WWI prison camp.

Excerpt from Four-Fifty Miles to Freedom Four-fifty Miles to Freedom When the order's "Up and at 'em" and the blood beats through your head, When the dead are falling round you by the score, And when all you think and all you feel and all you see is red, Then thank God you're not a prisoner of war. When you're fighting in the desert where the heat waves never stop, And you've never known what thirst has been before, Though you'd sell your soul for water and you know there's not a drop, Then thank God you're not a prisoner of war. We've been handed down a birthright which the bards of ages sing, From the days of Agincourt and long before, That a Briton owns no master save his God and save his king, But you find a third when prisoner of war. It's a feeling right inside you, and it never lets you go, That you haven't been allowed to pay your score: You may still be hale and hearty, but you re missing all the show. What offers for the job? Prisoner of war. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

When you've halted after marching till you feel you do not care What may happen, for you can't march any more, And the order comes to "Fall in" and to march you know not where, Then thank God you're not a prisoner of war. When you're fighting in the trenches ankle-deep in mud and slush, With the north wind cutting through you keen and raw, While the second hand ticks slowly till it's time to make the rush, Then thank God you're not a prisoner of war. When the order's "Up and at 'em" and the blood beats through your head, When the dead are falling round you by the score, And when all you think and all you feel and all you see is red, Then thank God you're not a prisoner of war. When you're fighting in the desert where the heat waves never stop, And you've never known what thirst has been before, Though you'd sell your soul for water and you know there's not a drop, Then thank God you're not a prisoner of war. We've been handed down a birthright which the bards of ages sing, From the days of Agincourt and long before, That a Briton owns no master save his God and save his king, But you find a third when prisoner of war. It's a feeling right inside you, and it never lets you go, That you haven't been allowed to pay your score: You may still be hale and hearty, but you're missing all the show. What offers for the job? Prisoner of war. M. A. B. J. Written in Kastamoni, 1916.

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1919 edition. Excerpt: ... CHAPTER IV. YOZGAD CAMP. With our arrival at Yozgad was renewed many an old friendship, dating back to the earlier days of the campaign in Mesopotamia; for, like ourselves, the majority of the eighty officers whom we found there were victims of the siege of Kut-el-Amara. A few days later about twenty officers of the original camp were transferred to Afion-Kara-Hissar, leaving us now a combined total of roughly 100 officers and 60 orderlies. The "camp" occupied six detached houses, divided into two groups of three houses each, the one on the western, the other near the south-western limits of the town. With a single exception each house stood in its own grounds, which comprised something under an acre of garden apiece. These were in most cases planted with fruit trees, and in all cases surrounded by high stone walls. The first comers had by April 1918 converted these previously unkempt areas into flourishing vegetable gardens. For our safe custody there were on the average two sentries over each house; these had their sentry-boxes in the garden or at the entrance to the enclosure wall. There was also a post on the four-hundred-yard length of road which connected the two groups of houses. As had been our impression on arrival, the town of Yozgad could by no manner of means be called picturesque. It is squalidly built on the steep slopes of a narrow valley, surrounded on all sides by bare and rugged hills. The larger houses, it is true, have a few fruit trees in their gardens, and tall poplars line the river bank; the country around, however, is destitute of trees except for a small pine wood on the high ridge south of the town. The camp was both higher and less accessible than any other in Turkey; for Yozgad stands some 4500 feet above...