Book description
The last untold story of the First World War: the fortunes and fates of 170,000 British soldiers captured by the enemy.
On capture, British officers and men were routinely told by the Germans 'For you the war is over'. Nothing could be further from the truth. British Prisoners of War…
Why read it?
1 author picked The War Behind the Wire as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?
I read this book to make sure that I captured the experiences of returning PoWs accurately, neither downplaying their suffering nor missing its essential elements.
John Lewis-Stempel’s superb book is full of diary entries and letters from British PoWs detailing their harsh, barren lives in prison camps. I knew little about this topic before reading and was shocked at the way privates were routinely used as slave labour while officers were often treated to a sit-down dinner by their captors.
The passages covering the return of veterans from the PoW camps were particularly moving, as I learned that many of…
From Tesni's list on the home front, the war front and, on life as a PoW during World War One.
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