I adore books about gadgets. When I was but a little child I owned all the books from that 'American Boys' Handy Book' series, regardless of the fact that I am not a boy, and I would read them over and over again even though I never built a single thing out of them. This is an exciting escape story, yes, but to me the chief pleasure lay in the descriptions of all the little gadgets them men made in order to escape. They worked like maniacs and made more out of what they had than even MacGuyver would have known to make. They were astonishing. The book is astonishing. It's not written with any kind of genius or, really, any unusual skill, but it is plain and engrossing and the man sure knows how to communicate the energy of the experience to his readers.

The only part which didn't absolutely enthrall me was the ending, where he took several chapters to explain the ultimate fates of all the escapees and the ultimate fates of those Nazis who provided them with their ultimate fates. I suppose it gave him a sense of closure, but he frequently refers to prisoners or Nazis whom he has not yet brought up before, and it gets mighty confusing when he decides to tell us all that escapee Smithy Joe or whoever was killed by Mr. Schitzel and then to go on to explain how, in a brilliant detective move, they caught Mr. Schitzel two years later and had him executed-- because likely as not the author has not yet referred to either Mr. Joe or Mr. Schitzel and the reader has had no idea that they even existed. It gets tiring to have these names and tedious facts thrown in your face over and over. But the rest of the book is fantastic. ( )

As a fan of the movie, I had high hopes for the book, and I was certainly not let down. I wanted to know more of the details behind the digging of the tunnel; all the details that despite clocking in at 3 hours, the movie couldn't get into as it was focused on the many character stories. For example, the cans used for lighting and scooping dirt in the tunnels were called Klim cans. These were cans of powdered milk sent to prisoners by the Red Cross (Klim is Milk backwards). Or the theater stage the prisoners had for putting on plays, underneath which was a growing volume of tunnel dirt. It's those kind of details that will always make books, especially a firsthand account by someone who was there, a matchless medium in which to tell the story, no matter how much excitement Steve McQueen can bring to the screen. ( )

Once again my dastardly hunches and whims found me in another page of books about War time. This time around it was a rather funny story based on true events that occurred during WWII in a POW camp for pilots. In the midst of this book is a rather interesting story about people and their interaction. Some of the most interesting pieces is how some people who are guards are depicted as people helping laughing and talking to their captors with the utmost respect. There are part of the Nazi army yet, instead of being evil some of these men come across as simple people caught up in a wide web of deciet and destruction. Many times they feel guilt as to what happens and genuine anguish especially in the end when many of the escaped prisoners are killed. It is a point where the fun and games of escape stop being so fun.
It explains that part of the Geneva Convention holds that prisoners trying to escape shouldn't be punished. If they escape over the wire or get caught in the act they is some punishment involved specifically if they are caught in the act. Some funny moments occur as people get caught after their escape and their captors kind of laugh and apologize for catching them. They genuinely feel bad hoping that the person would have gotten away. Everything seem gentlemanly and polite. That is till the end of the book when so many of them escape that half of them are killed on the whim of a madman. A chilling moment comes when a man sits in an office looking through commenting "too young" on some men and silently putting others in one pile. It is amazing how a little factory is created to manufacture parts, machinery, suits, compasses, identity papers and plathura of things needed for escape. These men create an entire assortment of plans and procedures for every little movement. If anything it is an amazing book about people working together and how war can still be civil. This isn't the greatest book i have ever read or is it particularly well written. This is a goo book about what happens after the battle is done. ( )

Brickhill wrote three classic books about real-life adventures from World War II, and this is--for my money--the best. It chronicles the inner workings of the biggest and most famous POW-camp breakout ever organized: three tunnels, dug simultaneously out of a supposedly escape-proof camp in the heart of Germany. Brickhill was a prisoner in the camp and a (very minor) player in the escape organization, and his story has an undeniable feel of authenticity as a result. The details that you (may) remember from the Hollywood version--stolen bed boards for tunnel shoring, electric lighting systems and wooden "railways" underground, forgers' and tailors' shops concealed in prison huts--are all described in detail here, since (no matter how implausible they may sound) they were all real. Written in the 1950s for a popular audience, Brickhill's books don't have the "heft" or the analytical edge of modern military histories by (say) Rick Atkinson or John Keegan, but they are absolutely unbeatable as inspiring true stories of courage and ingenuity. ( )