Escape Artists

The Escape Artists: A Band of Daredevil Pilots and the Greatest Prison Break of the Great War- Neal Bascomb
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Release Date: September 18, 2018

Rating:
📚📚📚📚📚

Synopsis: In the winter trenches and flak-filled skies of World War I, soldiers and pilots alike might avoid death, only to find themselves imprisoned in Germany’s archipelago of POW camps, often in abominable conditions. The most infamous was Holzminden, a land-locked Alcatraz of sorts that housed the most troublesome, escape-prone prisoners. Its commandant was a boorish, hate-filled tyrant named Karl Niemeyer who swore that none should ever leave.

Desperate to break out of “Hellminden” and return to the fight, a group of Allied prisoners led by ace pilot (and former Army sapper) David Gray hatch an elaborate escape plan. Their plot demands a risky feat of engineering as well as a bevy of disguises, forged documents, fake walls, and steely resolve. Once beyond the watch towers and round-the-clock patrols, Gray and almost a dozen of his half-starved fellow prisoners must then make a heroic 150 mile dash through enemy-occupied territory towards free Holland.

Drawing on never-before-seen memoirs and letters, Neal Bascomb brings this narrative to cinematic life, amid the twilight of the British Empire and the darkest, most savage hours of the fight against Germany. At turns tragic, funny, inspirational, and nail-biting suspenseful, this is the little-known story of the biggest POW breakout of the Great War.  

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The Escape Artists tells the true story of a number of prisoners of war during World War I (mostly British pilots) and their attempts to escape German POW camps and into the safety of neutral Holland.  The book is well-written, well-researched, and thrilling from start to finish.  While most people have at least vaguely heard of the Great Escape of World War II (or at least know it was a movie), how many of us know about the POW camps of the first World War?  Did you know that many of the WW II pilots were taught by their first war counterparts?  Pilots who made it back to England helped prepare young men going into the second war by sharing their experiences in the camps and sharing the methods they used- or knew others used- to break out.

Bascomb's descriptions of the early fighter planes are terrifying- the fragility of these early planes meant it was a brave person willing to go up in them.  The POW camps sound like they would drive even the strongest to insanity.  I was surprised to learn how much of the treatment of POWs in the first war was still being negotiated between countries as the war progressed.  The various escape plans designed by the prisoners were often something you would expect out of a movie- from disguises as German officers or women to chutes out of windows to tunnels under the camps, complete with carefully forged papers.  For every failed escape attempt there was a lesson learned, leading to the final success of the POWs who escaped from Holzminden- considered a land-locked Alcatraz where Germans sent the most escape prone prisoners in the belief that it was escape proof.  

The Escape Artists is by turns humorous and tragic, inspirational and full of edge-of-your-seat suspense.  A wonderful and much needed look into this lesser known aspect of World War I.  A riveting, well-written, carefully researched, must read for history buffs!