The COLDITZ STORY

With Colditz FDC & handwritten letter both signed by

Major P.R. ‘Pat’ Reid 

Published by Hodder & Stoughton. First edition, second impression July 1952 (first published in July 1952).  288 pages with illustrations by John Watton.

A Fine condition hardback book, clean and bright with no previous owner marks in a near Fine condition unclipped dustjacket.  A really smart first edition. The RAF Escaping Society cover is postmarked Colditz 1971 and has an insert about the RAFES. It is in VG condition with a few marks. The letter, on Reid’s personal stationary is dated 24 March 1975.

‘The Colditz Story’ tells of the author’s early escape activities which qualified him for ‘the bad boy’s camp’ and then this becomes a first hand account of the escape attempts from the fortress culminating in the author’s own superb ‘home run’ in 1942.

The author Pat Reid, was the first British Escape Officer.  No one was better placed to write this incredible story.  The men imprisoned in Colditz; British, Dutch, Polish and French were an elite, the ‘bad boys’ who had a history of escaping from at least one POW camp and had been recaptured.  The seemingly impregnable medieval fortress built on a cliff edge, moated, wired, floodlit, with more guards than prisoners was the German’s answer to these problem prisoners.  Yet there were over 300 escape attempts at Colditz in the four and a half years of its war history.

This is probably the best of all the WWII POW escape stories and as such it is a very collectable classic book enhanced by the signed cover and letter.