Australia’s Greatest Escapes

AUSTRALIAN MILITARY

A collection of stories about the most dangerous aspect of the Australian prisoner of war experience – escape. Here is all the adventure, suspense and courage of ordinary Australians who defied their captors; men who tunnelled to freedom, crawled by night through stinking drains, rappelled down stone walls using knotted bedsheets or clawed a passage beneath barbed wire in a desperate bid to flee their captors. They were willing to risk death in order to overcome almost impossible odds in the loneliest war of all — the fight for the right to be free. And they represent in spades the noble qualities of boldness, resourcefulness, cunning, determination and mateship we have come to know, expect and appreciate about our Australian service men and women under adversity.

• xi, 352 pages, 16 unnumbered pages of plates : black and white illustrations, portraits ; 24 cm #310524
• First published in Australia in 1994 as ‘Freedom or death: Australia’s greatest escape stories from two world wars’.
• Escaped prisoners of war — Australia
• Prisoner-of-war escapes
• Escapes
• World War, 1939-1945 — Prisoners and prisons
• World War, 1914-1918 — Prisoners and prisons
• Prisoners of war — Australia
• Concentration camp escapes
• Warfare & Defence
• Australian