An engrossing valediction to the tough, imaginative generation forged by the war.
A remarkable memoir of a British lad’s salad days flying bombers against the Nazis and then repeatedly escaping their prison camps.
Tunstall, who died in 2013, suggests that his debut might be the last of its kind: “To the best of my knowledge, there are fewer than half a dozen of us still alive who were in Colditz during the Second World War.” The author grew up simultaneously irreverent and patriotic, entranced by the early spirit of aviation. An RAF officer when war broke out, Tunstall yearned to fly fighters and participated in chaotic raids against German fuel production, piloting the primitive Hampden bomber. After navigational problems forced him to land on a Dutch beach in August 1940, he and his fellow soldiers were captured by German occupiers. The British prisoners maintained a cheerful defiance, following Tunstall’s training to become “as big a bloody nuisance as possible to the enemy” once a prisoner of war. Immediately, Tunstall became preoccupied by the determination to escape: “I had not [yet] learned that the best time to escape is usually as soon as possible.” Recaptured after two cunning attempts involving fabricated uniforms, Tunstall was sent to the notorious “punishment camp” Colditz Castle. Though considered escape-proof, the Nazis erred in consolidating the most recalcitrant Allied POWs in one place. As the war continued, MI9 increasingly aided the British POWs, smuggling in money and forged documents, while Tunstall audaciously sent them intelligence inside split photographs, via letters he was permitted to send to his fiancee. Tunstall portrays a brutal, surreal time with detailed recall and elegant, roguish humor, though he never loses sight of the larger stakes, noting how the Germans “seemed to wallow in the atmosphere of harsh oppression and hopelessness they had created.”
An engrossing valediction to the tough, imaginative generation forged by the war.Pub Date: Jan. 8, 2015
ISBN: 978-1468310559
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Overlook
Review Posted Online: Oct. 19, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2014
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
bookshelf
