Life Behind Barbed Wire [book]

My copy of Life Behind Barbed Wire arrived and I went through the pictures and text comparing it with my father's POW diary and he could have been writing the captions for many of the pictures. The things he talked about in his diary were hard to make a mental picture of until you see it in a photo, like the little stoves they made from scraps that had a blower so they would use less fuel to cook their food. One part that got to me was the author talked about getting a ride on a horse drawn wagon because he was getting too weak to walk any further during the march between POW camps and my father talked about trying to catch a ride on a horse drawn wagon, but wasn't able to because there was no more room. I don"t know how many wagons there were, but they could have been talking about the same one. My father also talked about being liberated by the Russians on April 22, 1945 and there were a number of photos of the liberation in the book so I could see how happy they were and not just imagine it.

As far as reviewing the book, it was interesting and showed a lot of pictures of how the POW's passed their time with hobbies, playing music and putting on plays. It also showed that the non-coms were treated, in some cases, better than the enlisted men as far as receiving Red Cross packages, attention by the Red Cross, the YMCA etc. Even so, it was no picnic.

Thanks Connie for pointing me toward this book. It was well worth it for me.

Frank Grant