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The Forgotten: Canadian POWs, Escapers and Evaders In Europe, 1939-1945
Unforgettable tales of heroism, bravery and escape—the remarkable true stories of Canadian soldiers and civilians lost behind enemy lines during the Second World War.
The Forgotten tells the story of more than 10,000 Canadian servicemen, merchant mariners and civilians for whom the war ended in surrender, capture, imprisonment or escape, as seen through the eyes of a group of men who struggled to survive in Hitler's Europe. Among them were Private Stan Darch, who had already survived the cauldron of Dieppe; Sergeant Edward Carter-Edwards, who endured the hell of Buchenwald; RCAF Sergeant Ian MacDonald, who was on the run before being betrayed to the Gestapo and spent six weeks in the notorious Fresnes Prison in Paris; as well as seventeen civilian priests and brothers who were captured at sea. To survive the horrid conditions in the stalags across Europe and the hunger marches through the freezing winter of 1944–45, these otherwise ordinary Canadians required extraordinary valour and commitment to the Allied cause--and to each other.
Nathan M. Greenfield, author of the Governor General's Award finalist The Damned, shares the never-before-told stories of these forgotten Canadians in thrilling and often heartbreaking detail in a book that will haunt readers for a long time to come.
The Forgotten tells the story of more than 10,000 Canadian servicemen, merchant mariners and civilians for whom the war ended in surrender, capture, imprisonment or escape, as seen through the eyes of a group of men who struggled to survive in Hitler's Europe. Among them were Private Stan Darch, who had already survived the cauldron of Dieppe; Sergeant Edward Carter-Edwards, who endured the hell of Buchenwald; RCAF Sergeant Ian MacDonald, who was on the run before being betrayed to the Gestapo and spent six weeks in the notorious Fresnes Prison in Paris; as well as seventeen civilian priests and brothers who were captured at sea. To survive the horrid conditions in the stalags across Europe and the hunger marches through the freezing winter of 1944–45, these otherwise ordinary Canadians required extraordinary valour and commitment to the Allied cause--and to each other.
Nathan M. Greenfield, author of the Governor General's Award finalist The Damned, shares the never-before-told stories of these forgotten Canadians in thrilling and often heartbreaking detail in a book that will haunt readers for a long time to come.
496 pages, Kindle Edition
First published October 15, 2013
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About the author
Nathan M. Greenfield
10 books7 followersNATHAN M. GREENFIELD, PhD, is the Canadian correspondent for The Times Educational Supplement and is a contributor to Maclean’s, Canadian Geographic and The Times Literary Supplement. He is the author of The Damned, which was a finalist for the Governor General’s Award for Non-Fiction; Baptism of Fire, which was a finalist for the Edna Staebler Award for Creative Non-Fiction; and the widely praised The Battle of the St. Lawrence. Greenfield lives in Ottawa.
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January 23, 2022
The individual stories themselves offer a glimpse into the lives of POWs during WW II, and the book might be worth reading just for that. However, the way the author chose to present those stories (in chronological snapshots rather than simply following each prisoner's experience beginning to end) makes it difficult to follow and distracts greatly from the reader gaining a true appreciation of the horrors of POW camps and the heroism involved in simply surviving. In short, what could have been a fascinating read about true Canadian heroes became a mishmash of disjointed anecdotes.
Displaying 1 of 1 review