A Leap in the Dark: A Welsh Airman's Adventures in Occupied Europe

by J.A.Davies (Author)

• Used

  Hardcover
  1993

  $7.73

  Following reunions with the courageous Dutch families - from Protestant farmers in the north to Catholic industrialists in the south - who sheltered him during World War II, the author recounts their story and his own wartime experiences. As a Special Duty Officer with 101 Squadron, Davies baled out when his Lancaster bomber was shot down on a mission to Leipzig, and found himself on the Dutch side of the German border. In occupied Friesland he was provided with a forged passport and, as Arthur Doek , an assistant accountant, he was handed from one family to another until he reached Brabant in the south. With a new Belgian passport, as Emile Petelain , he now had to cross the heavily-guarded frontier into Belgium, only to be betrayed by a double agent in Antwerp. Davies goes on to describe his capture and imprisonment in Antwerp, Brussels and Poland, his forced march in sub-zero temperatures through Upper Silesia, further imprisonment until liberated by the Russians, and eventual return home - in a Lancaster.