A Gallant Company: The Men of the Great Escape

Rating:
Summary: A great story, told well.
Review: A welcome addition to the escape literature family. The focus is on the events within the Luft Stalag III itself, but there are quick sketches of the men's lives before the war, captures, and early escape attempts (althought this makes it sadder since one knows what's coming). The only weakness is a lack of footnotes, or bibliography.

Rating:
Summary: Another excellent addition to the genre
Review: For those who are fans of the "prison escape" genre, this book is an excellent addition to the growing number of books which cover that most famous of mass escapes, the March 1944 "great escape" from Stalag Luft III.

If, like myself, you have read and loved Paul Brickhill's "The Great Escape", but found yourself wanting more and deeper information, this book is a goldmine.

During the prelude and epilog sections of the Brickhill book, the reader is teased with brief glimpses of people, places and events which are relevent to the main story, but which are (necessarily) not examined in detail. Some examples include the many early escape attempts by some of the Great Escape principals, the other prison camps in the Luftwaffe system, and the stories of most of the actual escapers themselves.

"A Gallant Company" addresses all these issues. The reader gets to know each and every remarkable man who went through that tunnel, what circumstances brought them into the war, what role they played in the escape organization, and their fate following the escape. Individually and collectively, their story is an extraordinary one. Jonathan Vance's telling of it is engrossing and highly readable.

This is not a book for the reader who is unfamiliar with the basic story, however. I would strongly recommend a read through the Brickhill book first -- a rewarding experience in itself. (Note: please, don't assume that the movie version is enough to cover this ground! A *fine* film, but a highly fictionalized adaptation!).

Taken together with "The Great Escape" and Arthur Durand's excellent "Stalag Luft III - The Secret Story", Jonathan Vance's "A Gallant Company" provides as complete a picture as any escape story fan could possibly want.

A minor quibble - I couldn't locate a source or citations section in this book. Where did Vance's wealth of information come from? I assume from personal interviews with camp survivors and family members, and many of the same sources named in the Durand book.

Rating:
Summary: Another excellent addition to the genre
Review: For those who are fans of the "prison escape" genre, this book is an excellent addition to the growing number of books which cover that most famous of mass escapes, the March 1944 "great escape" from Stalag Luft III.

If, like myself, you have read and loved Paul Brickhill's "The Great Escape", but found yourself wanting more and deeper information, this book is a goldmine.

During the prelude and epilog sections of the Brickhill book, the reader is teased with brief glimpses of people, places and events which are relevent to the main story, but which are (necessarily) not examined in detail. Some examples include the many early escape attempts by some of the Great Escape principals, the other prison camps in the Luftwaffe system, and the stories of most of the actual escapers themselves.

"A Gallant Company" addresses all these issues. The reader gets to know each and every remarkable man who went through that tunnel, what circumstances brought them into the war, what role they played in the escape organization, and their fate following the escape. Individually and collectively, their story is an extraordinary one. Jonathan Vance's telling of it is engrossing and highly readable.

This is not a book for the reader who is unfamiliar with the basic story, however. I would strongly recommend a read through the Brickhill book first -- a rewarding experience in itself. (Note: please, don't assume that the movie version is enough to cover this ground! A *fine* film, but a highly fictionalized adaptation!).

Taken together with "The Great Escape" and Arthur Durand's excellent "Stalag Luft III - The Secret Story", Jonathan Vance's "A Gallant Company" provides as complete a picture as any escape story fan could possibly want.

A minor quibble - I couldn't locate a source or citations section in this book. Where did Vance's wealth of information come from? I assume from personal interviews with camp survivors and family members, and many of the same sources named in the Durand book.

Rating:
Summary: The Great Escape -Just Who Were the Fifty?
Review: This book gives a background to each of the Fifty RAF and Allied officers who was murdered by the Gestapo on re-capture from Operation 200, post-war named The Great Escape. It is well researched and goes into great detail. At times it is rather poignant, especially when a survivor of Stalag Luft 3 visits the parents of one of the Fifty after the war. Jonathan Vance has a very readable style and it is an excellent book for people like me to want to know more about the central characters in a true war story, where they came from and what happened to them after the war, etc. All this is in this book.

A Gallant Company: The Men of the Great Escape must be regarded as a companion book to Paul Brickhill's The Great Escape.

Rating:
Summary: The Great Escape -Just Who Were the Fifty?
Review: This book gives a background to each of the Fifty RAF and Allied officers who was murdered by the Gestapo on re-capture from Operation 200, post-war named The Great Escape. It is well researched and goes into great detail. At times it is rather poignant, especially when a survivor of Stalag Luft 3 visits the parents of one of the Fifty after the war. Jonathan Vance has a very readable style and it is an excellent book for people like me to want to know more about the central characters in a true war story, where they came from and what happened to them after the war, etc. All this is in this book.

A Gallant Company: The Men of the Great Escape must be regarded as a companion book to Paul Brickhill's The Great Escape.