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The Soldier Who Came Back
Northern Poland, 1940: at the Nazi war camp Stalag XX-A, two men struck up an unlikely friendship which led to one of the most remarkable wartime escape stories ever told. Antony Coulthard was the privately educated son of wealthy parents with a degree in modern languages from Oxford. Fred Foster, the son of a bricklayer, had left school at 14. This mismatched young pair hatched a plan to disguise themselves and simply walk out of the camp, board a train, and head straight into the heart of Nazi Germany. This audacious plan involved 18 months of undercover work, including Antony spending 3 hours each evening teaching Fred German. They set off for the Swiss border via Germany, but when they reached the border town of Lake Constance, with Switzerland within their reach, Antony crossed over into freedom, while Fred’s luck ran out. What happened to them both next is both heartbreaking and inspiring.
300 pages, Paperback
Published March 1, 2019
4 people are currently reading
58 people want to read
About the author
Alan Clark
128 books21 followersAlan Clark was an English Conservative MP, historian and diarist.
Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name. See this thread for more information.
Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name. See this thread for more information.
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Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews
July 30, 2023
four tissues
August 6, 2024
The best story of WW2 I have ever read about. I would recommend this to everyone. A story of survival, loyalty and courage.
August 13, 2025
This is better than it should have been.
To understand why you have to know that this volume is a personal narrative of Fred Foster's daring escape between the younger Foster's narration of his father's life before and after the war. Family history projects are usually pretty bad, if only because of the urge to make one's ancestor out to be historically significant in some way. Maybe it's because of the quality of Foster's co-author, maybe it's Foster's natural modesty, or perhaps it's the self-effacing autobiography that the book is framed around, but this bit of family history skewers any pretensions to significance. It's quite modest actually, making the escape seem an almost casual affair rather than the audacious adventure it was. Clearly, the escape plan failing also mutes the tone.
Anyway, that Fred Foster and his crazy plan requiring fluency in German (fluency that he never obtained) as a key component convinced Coulthard tells you a lot about Coulthard. Yet the crazy plan worked right up to the Swiss border. Crazy like a fox I guess?
One aspect of the prison narrative that particularly interested me were the conditions in the camp. When you see a prisoner of war film it's almost always officer's quarters (the significant exception being Stalag 17), but the rules and condition that Foster describes in his enlisted men prison camp are exactly those shown in the Great Escape, where the entire population were officers. I was properly shocked by how closely the rules in these film treatments adhere to those of a true prison camp narrative.
The book end pieces are less interesting really, the front piece being biographies of Foster's father and Coulthard up to the start of his father's telling of the escape story, the back piece being what I suspect what really motivated Foster to issue this book. See, the research process not only opened Foster's eyes to his father's past, but also gave him a mission: to locate and memorialize lost soldier's graves. It was something he clearly believed in and was good at, so that put a nice bit of closure to this narrative.
All around a remarkable history that deserves to be recognized.
To understand why you have to know that this volume is a personal narrative of Fred Foster's daring escape between the younger Foster's narration of his father's life before and after the war. Family history projects are usually pretty bad, if only because of the urge to make one's ancestor out to be historically significant in some way. Maybe it's because of the quality of Foster's co-author, maybe it's Foster's natural modesty, or perhaps it's the self-effacing autobiography that the book is framed around, but this bit of family history skewers any pretensions to significance. It's quite modest actually, making the escape seem an almost casual affair rather than the audacious adventure it was. Clearly, the escape plan failing also mutes the tone.
Anyway, that Fred Foster and his crazy plan requiring fluency in German (fluency that he never obtained) as a key component convinced Coulthard tells you a lot about Coulthard. Yet the crazy plan worked right up to the Swiss border. Crazy like a fox I guess?
One aspect of the prison narrative that particularly interested me were the conditions in the camp. When you see a prisoner of war film it's almost always officer's quarters (the significant exception being Stalag 17), but the rules and condition that Foster describes in his enlisted men prison camp are exactly those shown in the Great Escape, where the entire population were officers. I was properly shocked by how closely the rules in these film treatments adhere to those of a true prison camp narrative.
The book end pieces are less interesting really, the front piece being biographies of Foster's father and Coulthard up to the start of his father's telling of the escape story, the back piece being what I suspect what really motivated Foster to issue this book. See, the research process not only opened Foster's eyes to his father's past, but also gave him a mission: to locate and memorialize lost soldier's graves. It was something he clearly believed in and was good at, so that put a nice bit of closure to this narrative.
All around a remarkable history that deserves to be recognized.
July 10, 2020
This book (ghost-written by Alan Clark) is based around Steve Foster's research into how his father, Fred Foster, along with another soldier, Antony Coulthard, made a bid to escape from a prisoner of war camp during World War II.
Foster talks extensively at the start and the end about how he researched the book's subject matter, in a way that put me in mind of other historical books such as Laurent Binet's HHhH and Tim Butcher's The Trigger and the result gives a detailed picture of both soldiers, as well as the reality of wartime and the conditions in the prisoner of war camp. The book also felt educational, particularly the bits on how it was impossible to trust anyone (at one point, the book tells of how an innocent-looking old lady turned out to be a gestapo spy).
The middle section, which tells of the escape bid, is all taken from Fred Foster's journal, and gives the reader a great opportunity to get "into his head".
I was glad I took the trouble to read this book, because I felt like I'd learned a lot from it.
Foster talks extensively at the start and the end about how he researched the book's subject matter, in a way that put me in mind of other historical books such as Laurent Binet's HHhH and Tim Butcher's The Trigger and the result gives a detailed picture of both soldiers, as well as the reality of wartime and the conditions in the prisoner of war camp. The book also felt educational, particularly the bits on how it was impossible to trust anyone (at one point, the book tells of how an innocent-looking old lady turned out to be a gestapo spy).
The middle section, which tells of the escape bid, is all taken from Fred Foster's journal, and gives the reader a great opportunity to get "into his head".
I was glad I took the trouble to read this book, because I felt like I'd learned a lot from it.
October 27, 2020
Sacrifice and honour, the story of 2 friends escaping a concentration camp. Trial and tribulation all the way to the moment when a choice that changes everything has to be made in the blink of an eye : life or death - freedom or capture. It is about friendship and love too. It was difficult to put down.
January 7, 2024
4 Stars. The book got off to a fairly slow start and at times during the beginning some of the history given wasn’t fully relevant to the story of Fred and Anthony but was more generic background information, however once the story really got going it was fascinating and difficult to put down. A great story about 2 great hero’s from WW2.
August 4, 2019
An incredible story which is presented as an engaging narrative. There is a lot of emotion in the words on the page. Overall, an interesting read.
October 7, 2019
Absolutely brilliant an amazing story of heroism and adversity.
November 1, 2019
Amazing telling of a true story.
January 31, 2020
Gripping World War 2 tale based on real events. A page turner if ever there was one.
June 1, 2020
An exceptional book about the lives of Fred Foster and Anthony Coulthard. I struggled to put this down, the narrative seamlessly flows throughout the book. A fine tribute indeed to the soldiers.
November 1, 2020
Brilliant book and research carried out by Steve foster on his dad Fred,
February 24, 2021
One of the most fascinating untold escape tales from WW2 written by his own son. This book takes you on an adventure from beginning to end. Worthy of a film!
December 14, 2025
The Soldier Who Came Back invites readers to contemplate resilience and the human capacity to rebuild after devastation. It is a book that offers no easy answers but instead opens up a space for reflection on sacrifice, identity, and the long road to recovery. Those interested in character-driven, emotionally resonant stories about the human cost of war will find this book especially meaningful
Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews