Open Road To Faraway

The author describes briefly his early days in Lanarkshire and holidays with relatives near Cleish before war disrupts his studies. Shot down and injured while on a bombing mission on steelworks near Strassburg, he is eventually arrested and taken to the first of many POW camps: Dulag Luft. Compelled to escape Nazi POW camps by his longing for freedom and the Scottish moors, his story focuses on planning escapes, short-lived bouts of freedom and inevitable recapture, solitary confinement, thirst, hunger, brutality and occasional encounters with kindness. Finally caught up in the chaos and the destruction of the last months of the war, common sense prevails and for once he does not try to escape but awaits the arrival of the Americans and the hand-over of prisoners by the Russians at the River Elbe. Andrew Winton's fast-moving account would suit both adult and teenage readers.