WAR HEROES They were men who dared to take on the enemy and return home after being captured by them
From page 01 CHANDIGARH: The moment reports of IAF wing commander Abhinandan Varthaman’s capture by Pakistan after an aerial dogfight surfaced friends and colleagues began swapping gruesome tales, each more stomach-churning than the next, of what happened to those who survived combat only to become prisoners of war.
■ MEN OF VALOUR: Brig Pritam Singh (second from left) and Air Commodore ‘Baba’ Mehar Singh to his left during the first landing of Poonch in 1947.
Trapped in enemy territory, unsure of their fate, prisoners of war have had dramatic tales to tell. Is it any wonder then that Faith Johnston’s Four Miles of Freedom: Escape from a Pakistani PoW Camp is in demand?
Ajay Arora, proprietor, of Capital Book Depot, in Sector 17, says the book is must-read for those interested in the subject.
The novel is a riveting account of Flight Lieutenant Dilip Parulkar’s attempt to escape from a POW camp in Rawalpindi in 1972. Parulkar, who was shot down over Pakistan during the 1971 Indo-Pak war incredibly tried to return to India along with Malvinder Singh Grewal and Harish Sinhji.
Proprietor of the Browser recommends Brigadier Jasbir Singh’s Escape from Singapore. The novel is another nail-biting account of his father Capt (later Brig) Balbir Singh’s escape from a Japanese PoW camp in Singapore during World War II along with Capt (later Brig) Pritam Singhand Capt (later Col) GS Parab. The intrepid officers, weak with disease and exhaustion, meticulously planned their escape and made their way to India through Malaysia, Thailand and Burma (now Myanmar) over a span of six months. Many of their comrades died in the camp due to torture and bayoneting.
Straying a bit far from home, The Great Escape by Paul Brickhill, is among the most legendary escape story, which provides an intriguing account of the mass breakout from a German prisoner of war camp in 1944. It is a moving tale of how 600 men work as one in the faced with torture and death. Another take on the mass escape is provided by Eric Williams in the The Wooden Horse.
In The Railway Man, Eric Lomax, provides an account of being forced to build the Thai-Burma Railway for the Japanese. The story brings out the resilience of the human spirit that even when faced with starvation and ‘waterboarding’ did not break.