Prisoners of War

Arthur Charles Evans was born in 1916 in the Wirral, Cheshire. The first years of his employment were at Lever Bros, soapworks at Port Sunlight, and then with the New Zealand Shipping Company. One voyage to Australia and then another to New Zealand convinced him he was not meant to be a sailor. To further his ambition to become a policeman, he enlisted in the Irish Guards in 1936. In May 1940, he was wounded and taken prisoner in Boulogne and spent the remainder of the war in prison camps in Upper Silesia. He returned to England in May 1945 and upon demobilisation, joined the Kent County Constabulary. Whilst still a Police Constable, and from 1956-1967 he was the General Secretary of the Police Federation for England and Wales, and it was in this capacity that he was appointed C.B.E. He was married to his wife Freda for 62 years, and they have 3 daughters. He retired aged 65, and spent much of his time gardening, bowling and cooking in his Kent home, and in later years caring for Freda. In March 2010, both Arthur and Freda moved into a local nursing home and where sadly Arthur passed away 3 days short of his 95th birthday. Freda remains in the good care of the nursing home.

Profit from the sale of this book will be donated to The British Red Cross at the expressed wish of Arthur in the days before he died. He never forgot their role in his survival during his imprisonment.

Named one of the Washington Post Book World's Best Books of 2009, The Least Worst Place offers a gripping narrative account of the first one hundred days of Guantanamo. Greenberg, one of America's leading experts on the Bush Administration's policies on terrorism, tells the story through a group of career officers who tried--and ultimately failed--to stymie the Pentagon's desire to implement harsh new policies in Guantanamo and bypass the Geneva Conventions. Peopled with genuine heroes and villains, this narrative of the earliest days of the post-9/11 era centers on the conflicts between Gitmo-based Marine officers intent on upholding the Geneva Accords and an intelligence unit set up under the Pentagon's aegis. The latter ultimately won out, replacing transparency with secrecy, military protocol with violations of basic operation procedures, and humane and legal detainee treatment with harsh interrogation methods and torture. Greenberg's riveting account puts a human face on this little-known story, revealing how America first lost its moral bearings in the wake of 9/11.

Hailed by The New York Times Book Review as a "grippingly told" story of "power and relevance," here is the true, untold account of the first American women to prove their mettle under combat conditions. Later, during three years of brutal captivity at the hands of the Japanese, they also demonstrated their ability to survive. Filled with the thoughts and impressions of the women who lived it, "every page of this history is fascinating" (The Washington Post).

We Band of Angels

In the fall of 1941, the Philippines was a gardenia-scented paradise for the American Army and Navy nurses stationed there. War was a distant rumor, life a routine of easy shifts and evenings of dinner and dancing under the stars. On December 8 all that changed, as Japanese bombs rained on American bases in Luzon, and the women's paradise became a fiery hell. Caught in the raging battle, the nurses set up field hospitals in the jungles of Bataan and the tunnels of Corregidor, where they saw the most devastating injuries of war, and suffered the terrors of shells and shrapnel.

But the worst was yet to come. As Bataan and Corregidor fell, a few nurses escaped, but most were herded into internment camps enduring three years of fear and starvation. Once liberated, they returned to an America that at first celebrated them, but later refused to honor their leaders with the medals they clearly deserved. Here, in letters, diaries, and firsthand accounts, is the story of what really happened during those dark days, woven together in a compelling saga of women in war.

"After the battle, we picked up a German soldier who had been wounded," said Arnold Brown, who was a company commander in the 90th Infantry Division during World War II. "He had been shot in the leg with a .50-caliber bullet, and he had laid out overnight in this freezing, subzero weather. Both his arms and both of his legs were frozen stiff as a board. He begged us to shoot him. ..."
Brown's is one of nine narratives drawn from oral history interviews conducted by Aaron Elson, founder of the World War II Oral History web site @tankbooks.com and author of "Tanks for the Memories." Each story is as compelling and dramatic as it is a small but important piece of history.
"I couldn't do it," Brown went on. "I asked for a volunteer. Even if he survived, he'd have to have both arms and both legs amputated, and this could have been a mercy killing. But these battle hardened soldiers that had been fighting the Germans a few minutes before would not volunteer. One soldier, out of sympathy for the suffering and bravery of this soldier, lit a cigarette and held it to his lips. Another soldier brought him a hot cup of coffee and held it so he could get coffee until we got the litter jeep up there and sent him to the rear."
This collection also includes three accounts of the tragic Kassel Mission bombing raid of Sept. 27, 1944, on which 25 B-24 Liberators of the 445th Bomb Group were shot down in a single battle, resulting in the highest one-day losses for a single bomb group in 8th Air Force history.

Loet Velmans was 17 when the Germans invaded his native Holland in 1940.Almost immediately, he and his family decided to escape to London, which they did on board the Dutch Coast Guard cutter, Seaman's Hope.Deciding theyt would be safer in the Far East, the family sailed to the Dutch East Indies-now Indonesia-where Loet joined the Dutch army.In March 1942, the Japanese invaded the archipelago, conquered it in a week, and made prisoners of the local Dutch soldiers.For the next three and a half years Loet and his fellow POW's were sent to slave labor camps to build a railroad through the dense jungle on the Burmese-Thailand border, to invade and conquer India.Some 200,000 POW's and slave laborers died in building this Railroad of Death.Loet, though suffering from malaria, dysentery, malnutrition, and unspeakable maltreatment, never gave up hope...and survived.Fifty-seven years later he returned to revisit the place where he should have died and where he had buried his closest friend.From that emotional visit came this stunning memoir.

In February 1966, Dieter Dengler was shot down over “neutral” Laos in territory controlled by Pathet Lao guerrillas and North Vietnamese regulars. After his capture, the German-born Dengler proved to be no ordinary prisoner. Already a legend in the navy for his unique escape skills, which he had demonstrated during survival training in the California desert, he found himself caught in a desperate situation, imprisoned by the enemy and by the jungle itself. Dengler's heroic impulse was to free not only himself but also other POWs—American, Thai, and Chinese—some of whom had been held for years. In a surreal scene of brotherhood and celebration, Dengler, nearly six months after being shot down, returned to his ship in the Gulf of Tonkin—emaciated and ravaged with tropical maladies, but alive and free.

Bruce Henderson served with Dengler aboard USS Ranger. In this gripping book, he tells the complete story for the first time, drawing on personal interviews with the intrepid pilot, his squadron mates, and his friends and family, as well as military archival materials—some never before made public—and letters and journals. Henderson's riveting account demonstrates why Dengler's story of unending optimism, innate courage, loyalty, and survival against overwhelming odds remains for his fellow flyers and shipmates the best and brightest memory of their generation's war.