Great Escapes

A couple of weeks ago I noted the passing of Hamish Forbes, a British POW who was captured at the beginning of WWII and did not stop trying to escape until the end of the war. The Times of London has now posted some more on the lives of the great escape artists to be features in its obituaries. A sample:

Major Jim Almonds

In September 1942 Almonds was captured on the outskirts of Benghazi. He was shipped to Italy and put in a camp near Taranto. In a carefully rehearsed plan, he and three other prisoners working in the Red Cross food parcels store overcame, bound and gagged their three Italian guards and escaped from the camp through an upper window of the store. They remained free for two weeks but felt compelled to give themselves up when one of the group became so ill with pneumonia that they feared he would die. Almonds was sent to a separate camp and held in solitary confinement for several months, during which time he occupied himself by designing and building a boat entirely in his mind.

Absolutely fascinating reads, all of them.