Under the Wire: The World War II Adventures of a Legendary Escape Artist and "Cooler King"
Readers may be familiar with Stalag Luft III as the German prison camp that was the setting of the movieThe Great Escape. Ash was a real-life prisoner there during World War II, and he spent most of his time there trying to escape. He was a "cooler king," a real-life version of the Steve McQueen character in the film: someone who alternated between planning escapes and whiling away the hours in solitary confinement after the various schemes failed. But, for Ash, unlike his fictional counterparts, life was not a lighthearted adventure. His entry into Occupied France was via an airplane crash, he was tortured by the Gestapo, he watched his friends and fellow prisoners gunned down while attempting their own breakouts. Like Paul Brickhill'sGreat Escape(the book on which the movie was loosely based) and other WWII lemme-outta-here stories, this memoir is full of excitement and drama. Fans of escape literature will eat it up.David PittCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved