Prisoner Of War And Peace

Millions of servicemen of the belligerent powers were taken prisoner during World War II. Until recently, the popular image of these men has been framed by tales of heroic escape or immense suffering at the hands of malevolent captors. For the vast majority, however, the reality was very different. Their history, both during and after the War, has largely been ignored in the grand narratives of the conflict. This collection brings together new scholarship, largely based on sources from previously unavailable Eastern European or Japanese archives. Authors highlight a number of important comparatives. Whereas for the British and Americans held by the Germans and Japanese, the end of the war meant a swift repatriation and demobilization, for the Germans, it heralded the beginning of an imprisonment that, for some, lasted until 1956. These and many more moving stories are revealed here for the first time.

The author recounts the horror and hope of his experiences as a prisoner of war in World War II Europe.

A Canadian medical officer and prisoner of war returns from the Second World War a hero — and a very different man. In August 1941, John Reid, a young Canadian doctor, volunteered to join the Royal Canadian Army Medical Corps with four friends from medical school. After five weeks of officer training in Ottawa, Reid took an optional two-week course in tropical medicine, a choice which sealed his fate. Assigned to “C” Force, the two Canadian battalions sent to reinforce “semi-tropical” Hong Kong, he was among those captured when the calamitous Battle of Hong Kong ended on Christmas Day. After a year in Hong Kong prison camps, Reid was chosen as the only officer to accompany 663 Canadian POWs sent to Japan to work as slave labourers. His efforts over the next two and a half years to lead, treat, and protect his men were heroic. He survived the war, but finding a peace of his own took ten tumultuous years, with casualties of a different sort. He would never be the same.

American discussions of the Vietnam War tend to gloss over the period from 1972 to the final North Vietnamese offensive in 1975. But on the battlefields, these were brutal times for America's South Vietnamese allies combined with a period of intense diplomatic negotiations conducted under the increasing reality that America had abandoned them. In Peace and Prisoners of War, written in "real-time" as events occurred, Phan Nhat Nam provides a unique window into the harsh combat that followed America's withdrawal and the hopelessness of South Vietnam's attempt to stave off an eventual communist victory. Few others could have written this book. Phan Nhat Nam saw the war for years as a combat soldier in one of South Vietnam's most respected airborne divisions, then as the country's most respected war reporter, and for fourteen years after the war as a prisoner in Hanoi's infamous "re-education" camps, including eight years in solitary confinement. In the war's aftermath anonymity became his fate both inside Vietnam and here in America. But now one of his important works is available, enhanced by an introduction by Senator James Webb, one of the most decorated Marines in the Vietnam War. Webb describes this revealing work as "an unvarnished observation frozen in time, devoid of spin or false retrospective wisdom." Phan's reporting makes clear the sense of doom that foretold the tragic events to come, on the battlefields and in the frustration of negotiating with an implacable enemy while abandoned by its foremost ally. Readers will find this book both enlightening and disturbing, its observations until now overlooked in most histories of the Vietnam War.

Reproduction of the original: War and Peace by Leo Tolstoi

Many Allied POWs in the Pacific theater of World War II suffered terribly. But abuse wasn't a matter of Japanese policy, as is commonly assumed. Sarah Kovner shows poorly trained guards and rogue commanders inflicted the most horrific damage. Camps close to centers of imperial power tended to be less violent, and many POWs died from friendly fire.

We were at twenty-five thousand feet about 125 miles from our takeoff base back at Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. The cockpit instrument panel looked like something you might have seen at an arcade. The red fire lights for the right side engines were flashing, the RPM gauges were spinning, the hydraulic overheat lights down by my right leg were illuminated, the oil pressure gauges for the two right engines were rolling back towards zero, and the fuel quantity indicators were falling fast. We had only five parachutes on board and there were twelve of us. A true story, William Hanson relates his life as a pilot and the one major event in his life that brought down his career. The events found in this book bring to question the facts that surround the case of his court martial. Was the accidental offense enough to bring to a military trial? Were there forces at work to prevent Bil Hanson from ever explaining his side fully and fairly? Find all the facts in this book and see a different perspective of the events that unfolded. See for yourself the different perspectives of the Saudi Arabian accident that would forever change the life of a young and upcoming pilot.