WAITING MEN
THE LONG ROAD HOME, by Adrian Vincent; Allen and Unwin, English price 15/-. THIS, the author says, is the story of the "average" prisoner of war, if there is such a man, captured by the Germans in France in 1940, and resolved to make the best of things and to wait as patiently as he can for the war to end. Escaping plays no part in it, except for brief interludes outside the wire to seek the consolation of Polish girl friends; Gestapo searches are the only excitement and there are no heroics. It is a drab record: of hunger, boredom, and disease in German stalags and working parties; of the "softening" of guards and venal Kommandants by gifts and blackmail; of the taming of bullying overseers in Polish coal mines and cement works; of petty prisoners’ squabbles over food and cigarettes. But, drab as it now seems, this is how our prisoners lived, surviving only through their skill in the prison-camp arts of making their lives as comfortable as possible by any means at hand. Mr. Vincent had five years of it and kept a daily journal to refresh his memory. He hac an easv stvie and writes without
self-pity or ‘introspection.
W.A.
G.
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New Zealand Listener, Volume 35, Issue 894, 21 September 1956, Page 14
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207WAITING MEN New Zealand Listener, Volume 35, Issue 894, 21 September 1956, Page 14
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