Eat, Read, and Be Mommy

Alrighty, folks–review #2!

I received Neal Bascomb’s The Grand Escape: The Greatest Prison Breakout of the 20th Century in a box of youth nonfiction that I entered to win; it’s been sitting and waiting for my life to allow for nonfiction-level concentration ever since. A week or so ago, however, it came up under ‘new audiobooks’ on my Libby app, and so I snapped it up and listened to it forthwith. And what a tale, seriously–Allied officers tunneling to escape an infamous WWI prison camp in Germany. (I had never heard of their escape and flight to Holland, and I can’t be the only one.) Bascomb’s account is well researched and compelling, drawing on both published and unpublished records of the people involved; as a reader, however, I did have to remind myself periodically that this all happened BEFORE the Holocaust. The POWs in Holzminden did endure poor food, bad treatment, and months in solitary confinement as punishment for a range of offenses; on the other hand, enlisted prisoners served as orderlies to 5 officers apiece, making their beds and tea, polishing their boots, emptying their ashtrays, and serving meals. Holzminden was certainly not a Nazi concentration camp; on the other hand, it was a miserable place for the Allied POWs to be, and at that point in history there was no Bergen-Belsen to compare it to. All in all, The Grand Escape is a compelling tale of brave men risking everything to escape a place they found intolerable, which makes for a gripping and satisfying read. I’m looking forward to checking out some of Bascomb’s other books.