
Last week, Penguin sent me the mock-up of the cover to Human Game: The True Story of the ‘Great Escape’ Murders and the Hunt for the Gestapo Gunmen. I’m pleased with the end result and find the red color theme to be pretty striking. The faded swastika behind the main title adds a menacing touch to the overall presentation without being distracting. I hope it lures readers! The book hits stores in the US October 2, with a UK release date scheduled for early next year.
Human Game is the non-fiction sequel to the famous World War II story of The Great Escape, the book by Paul Brickhill that became the classic 1963 movie starring Steve McQueen and Richard Attenborough. The book and film (a personal favorite) detail the mass breakout of 76 Allied airmen from Stalag Luft III, a prison camp deep in the heart of Nazi Germany. What made the breakout famous was not merely the number of men involved, but the operation’s overall logistics. All escapees were supplied with German money, fake travel documents and identity papers, homemade compasses, maps, and rations. Outfits, ranging from business suits to German military uniforms, were tailored for every escapee. The men spent more than a year digging three escape tunnels. As I write in Human Game, this endeavor alone required . . .
“. . . the requisitioning of 1,219 knifes, 582 forks, 408 spoons, 246 water cans, 1,699 blankets, 192 bed covers, 161 pillow cases, 1,212 pillows, 655 straw mattresses, 34 chairs, the frames of 90 bunk beds, 3,424 towels, 10 single tables, 52 twenty-man tables, more than 1,200 bed bolsters, nearly 1,400 beaded battens, 76 benches, 1,000 feet of electrical wiring and 600 feet of rope. Four thousand bed boards were used to shore-up the tunnels. Lights wired into the camp’s electrical supply provided illumination underground; air pumps made of discarded kitbags, empty powdered-milk tins, wood-framing, wire mesh and tar paper supplied fresh air to those doing the digging.”
What the men accomplished was nothing short of amazing.
Of the 76 “Great Escapers,” only three made it back to England. Twenty-three were returned to various prison camps. The remaining 50 were rounded up by the Gestapo and executed. The movie ends with the condemned being shot en masse in a field by a German machine gunner. In reality, the men were taken in groups of twos and threes to isolated killing fields throughout the Reich and shot in the beck of the neck. The bodies were destroyed at local concentration camps and crematoriums. The movie always left me wondering who, exactly, was responsible for killing the escapees and what, if anything, became of them? In 2007, I decided to find out. Human Game is the result of three years of researching and writing.
In England, where I’m originally from, “The Great Escape” comes on every Christmas day—a strange, but enjoyable, tradition. I first watched it with my grandfather when I was a child, and it left an indelible impression. Second only to my grandfather’s wartime service in the Royal Air Force, “The Great Escape” launched my lifelong interest in the Second World War. Tales of ordinary people rising to meet extraordinary challenges have always fascinated me—and the investigation into the “Great Escape” murders is such a story.
Tasked with tracking down the Gestapo gunmen was a small team from the RAF’s Special Investigating Branch. The men, detectives in their civilian lives, arrived in Germany in September 1945—seventeen months after the killings—to pick up a trail long gone cold. The team would traverse a Germany divided amongst the American, British, French, and Russian occupiers, all of whom had their own agendas. Through sheer determination and crack investigative skills, the team brought 21 killers to justice in a hunt that spanned three years and pierced the darkest realms of Nazi fanaticism.
I hope readers, upon the book’s release, find the story as enthralling as I do!
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