The seeds of inspiration to write this book were first planted in Barbara in the 1980s when her father, Albert Wallace, casually shared the contents of an old file folder he had discovered amongst his mother’s belongings after she passed away. It was a treasure trove dating back to World War II: fragile letters that Albert, her only son, had written home while he was a prisoner of war in Hitler’s Germany; official Air Force telegrams and correspondence that variously reported Albert as MISSING, then as a POW, and finally LIBERATED; dog-eared black and white snapshots that begged identification of people, time and place.

Barbara was hooked, and realizing that she knew only the highlights of Albert’s wartime story, naively undertook to fill in the gaps, to what end even she didn’t know. Her research into World War II, 419 squadron and the RCAF, the British Commonwealth Air Training Plan, Stalag Luft III, prisoners of war  and The Great Escape took on a life of its own. Years later, this book was born.