Book description
Nothing prepares a man for war and Private Charles Waite, of the
Queen's Royal Regiment, was ill-prepared when his convoy took a wrong
turning near Abbeville and met 400 German soldiers and half a dozen
tanks. "The day I was captured, I had a rifle but no
ammunition." He lost his freedom that day in may 1940 and didn't
regain it until April 1945 when he was rescued by Americans near
Berlin, having walked 1,600 kms from East Prussia. Silent for seventy
years, Charles writes about his five lost years: the terrible things
he saw and suffered; his forced work in a stone quarry and on farms;
his period in solitary confinement for sabotage; and his long journey
home in one of the worst winters on record, across the frozen river
Elbe, to Berlin and liberation. His story is also about friendship, of
physical and mental resilience and of compassion for everyone who
suffered. Part of that story includes the terrible Long March, or
Black March, when 80,000 British PoWs were forced to trek through a
vicious winter westwards across Poland, Czechosolvakia and Germany as
the Soviets approached. Thousands died. There are simply no memoirs of
that terrible trek - except this one. So moved was ex-hostage Terry
Waite on meeting Charles that he immediately offered to write a
foreword to this book.
Charles Waite is no over 90 years old and has finally decided to
tell his harrowing story after 70 years, with the help of author,
journalist and friend, Dee La Vardera.
Dee La Vardera is the author of seven books and countless articles
for publications as diverse as The Guardian, Farmer's Weekly and The
Lady. She has painstakingly recorded Charles's experiences.
