SOLDIER ESCAPING

New Zealand Listener, Volume 26, Issue 656, 1 February 1952, Page 10

SOLDIER ESCAPING

DARE TO BE FREE, by W. B. Thomas; Allan Wingate. English price, 12/6.

(Reviewed by

Guthrie

Wilson

the writer of personal- reminiscences — of most factual documents -are of a_ different order from those required in the creative writer. Whereas the latter must fashion the illusion of reality from the power of his imagination, the variety of his experience and his private well of sympathy, perception and understanding, all that is required of the autobiographer is that he, as a writer, should prove adequate to the events he wishes to relate. Dare to be Free is part, of the personal story of Major W. B. Thomas, D.S.O., M.C. and bar, U.S.A. Silver Star, a battalion commander in the New Zealand Division during the last war. No» New Zealander who served in the Middle East will disagree with the contention made by Geoffrey Cox in The Road to Trieste that "Thomas was probably the New Zealand soldier of this war who most closely resembled the Freyberg of the last war." It would be difficult to devise higher commendation. And what a tale Thomas has to tell! The book opens with the German airborne invasion of Crete. The reader fights beside Thomas in attack and in qualities demanded from ‘frustrating retreat. In the cnd comes the suicidal affair at Galatos in which the author receives severe wounds. Captured by the enemy, he is removed to a German military hospital in Athens, where his frequent attempts to escape -despite an unhealed thigh wound--te-sult in his being sent to a camp for incorrigibles at Salonika. But Salonika’s wire cannot contain Thomas, who breaks out and strikes south for the razct-back

. peninsula dominated by Mt. Athos. Here for nearly a year he lives among the monks who populate the 21 monasteries of the Holy Mountain, a theocracy of ten thousand, where no woman, no female animal, is allowed to dwell. But all the time Thomas is seeking the means to rejoin the division. . . Throughout the pages of his book the author displays a personality that is immensely attractive. Courageous, honourable, quick with laughter, he reveals at times an appealing ingenuousness, But the book is not all Thomas. Far from it. One meets with Yannos, Gregorio (and Gregorio’s lovely daughter), Costos Momorgos, 'Chrystosomos, Trudi and many others-Greeks of goodwill, men and women-who extended the author aid without hope of repayment, and with peril to themselves. Major Thomas has a true story to tell -which is almost bizarre in its improbability. Has he, as a writer, proved adequate to the task of telling it? The reading public has consumed avidly escape tales which have not been _well written, Thomas is an unpretentious writer. But his style is simple and lucid, his dialogue is colloquial, his humour comes over to the reader. I enjoyed Dare to be Free more than any other escape story of World War II. I have tread, not only because this book surpasses others in the variety and interest of the adventures which befell its author, but also because it is well and satisfyihgly written.