Review of SURVIVAL by Mary McIntyre
I’m privileged and pleased that Mary McIntyre has reviewed SURVIVAL on her website, SidebarWriting. What follows is the beginning of her review. Please go to Mary’s site to read the rest.
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Prisoner of Stalag Luft III
Stalag Luft III was a WWII German POW camp for officers made famous by the 1960s movie, The Great Escape, starring Steve McQueen.
I met Ontario author, Barbara Trendos, in 2010 at a Writers’ Retreat in Arizona. She has since written and published her book about her father’s war experience with the RCAF and ultimate incarceration as a POW in Stalag Luft III, titled, Survival: My Father’s War as an Air Force Gunner and POW, published by Stone’s Throw Publication.
Trendos’ book reminds us that the newly-trained fliers from Canada’s RCAF training schools were merely boys, some in their late teens, but most in their early 20s, eventually flying under Royal Air Force Command in Britain. Training diverse, quick and intense. They were green, away from home and eager to “do their bit” for king and country. And at times, they were afraid.
Imagine your plane being strafed and going down over enemy territory. Never having an opportunity to actually jump from a plane by parachute before, you are poised on the edge of an open, burning plane, mustering your nerve to jump into complete darkness at 12,00o feet. Famously the Air Force lost many of their young fliers in that frightening situation.
Writing in My Father’s Voice: Honouring His Wartime Experience (Part 1 of 2)
Thank you to Allyson Latta for permission to reprint this essay, which was first published Wednesday, May 25, 2011 on her website for writers, Memories into Story, www.allysonlatta.com.
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It was one night over thirty years ago when Dad first brought out that plain, beat-up file folder. Although I can’t recall what prompted him to do so, I clearly remember sitting on the shag carpet at the foot of his easy chair in front of the fireplace in our family room. The file was full of telegrams, war correspondence, and all the letters and Postkartes he’d written to Grandma from the prison camp. They were handwritten in pencil, the letters on long skinny, flimsy stationery with Kriegsgefangenenpost (Prisoner of War Post) printed at the top, each beginning “Dear Ma” and faintly postmarked 1943 or 1944, some with sections blacked out by a zealous Gepruft (censor), many worn through on the fold lines.
Fragile pieces of history.
Writing in My Father’s Voice: Honouring His Wartime Experience (Part 2 of 2)
Thank you to Allyson Latta for permission to reprint this essay, which was first published Saturday, May 28th, 2011 on her website for writers, Memories into Story, www.allysonlatta.com.
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My idea of writing a mock journal turned out to be not so far beyond the realm of possibility. The Canadian YMCA had distributed log books, like the one Johnny kept, to help Canadian PoWs fill time, cope, and record the day-to-day routine of an utterly un-routine life experience. Dad surprised me when he told me that he too had kept a log book; however, he’d left it behind when the men were marched from the camp on foot in January 1945. For Dad, practical then as he is now, it was a matter of squeezing the most out of the precious space in his backpack: it was the log book, or chocolate and smokes. There was no contest.
