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Synopsis
(HARDBACK) Russell Margerison writes of the dangerous but strangely unreal world of the air gunner, sitting high in the turret of a bomber over Europe, wrapped in several layers of clothes and awed by the destructive beauty of the scene below. His role was to keep a look out for enemy fighters and to take a shot at them if they gave him the chance. After many raids, Margerison’s plane was shot down. Weeks on the run with the Belgian underground were followed by many months of captivity in German. He describes the events of January 1945 when for eighteen days nearly 1500 prisoners were marched through blizzards to another camp, surviving on an inch of soup a day. A few months later, the prisoners’ new camp was liberated by the Russians, but the author’s adventures were not yet over. When Russell Margerison came home to Lancashire, he was still six months short of his twenty-first birthday. This second edition includes a sequel telling of his return, 59 years after he was shot down, to visit the Belgians who risked everything to help him. ”A minor classic of the Other Ranks' war.” — Daily Mail ”He describes himself as an ordinary working-class lad from Lancashire, but there was nothing ordinary about the courage he and his comrades displayed night after night over occupied Europe . . This is a fascinating wartime memoir that deserves a wide readership.” — Mail on Sunday ”Amid the plain prose, he produces arresting images. A stricken bomber “reared up till it was standing on its tail, as if having received an uppercut from Popeye”; another “shuddered violently, like a dog which had just emerged from water”. Margerison's account of his own behaviour - which, when he was starving and desperate, was not always selfless - is similarly unaffected. His candour increases one's admiration for him.” — The Guardian Visit author's website: www.boysatwar.co.uk/book.html
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