First Light

 Wellum, Geoffrey. First Light. New York : Viking 2002. Print.

First Sentences:

There are some days in the early spring when the weather is such that, no matter where you are, either in town or countryside, England is at her best and it's good to be alive. I notice that it is just such a day as I emerge from the underground at Holborn, turn left, and walk down Kingsway....I am seventeen and a half years old and, I suspect, a rather precocious young man. It was some six months ago when I first wrote to the Air Ministry...and very much wanted to fly an aeroplans, so could they give me a job, please?

Description:

I've only been up in a small plane a couple of times, but the thrill and freedom of soaring in the air made a lasting impression. So I was captivated by the very personal memoirs of World War II RAF airman Geoffrey Wellum in this memoir First Light. 

 

In this compelling stream-of-consciousness book, Wellum details his adventures learning to fly for the RAF and then entering numerous combat and escort missions during the War...all starting at the ripe old age of 17 1/2 years old. (He lied about his age and got into the RAF, even though he had no knowledge of planes or how to fly). One month after entering RAF training, England entered the War, making Wellum's flight instruction more intense and rushed (and real).

 

Wellum and his fellow students are rushed into action before completing their training. Aerial combat exercises were never undertaken. Nevertheless, he is assigned to the newly-formed 92nd Squadron and, at 18, is by far the youngest pilot. Unlike the older, veteran 92nd squadron pilots, Wellum has no dog-fighting experience, much to the consternation of his commanding officer who feels Wellum will be useless for the foreseeable future. 

 

Wellum is shown for the first time a new Spitfire plane, much different from the bi-wing planes of his training and, with no instruction, told to take it up to get used to it. What follows is a harrowing take-off, flying, and landing sequences that Wellum feels are so bad they will bump him out of further training and the RAF completely. His first night landing is so far off course that he clips a landing tower and takes off one of his Spitfire's wings. 

 

And we readers are with him in the cockpit throughout these and all his future flights as he clearly, if nervously, narrates his thoughts, fears, and unwillingness to give up. We are with him post-missions in the officers' mess and local pubs where friendships are sealed and recently-departed comrades remembered. 

 

We are all young, all paddling the same canoe, and as the evening progresses [at the local bar] the certain knowledge that few, if any, of us will survive to see the end of the war bind us even closer together....the thought of the possibility of being killed is not unduly worrying or upsetting. One just ignores it. Each is convinced that it cannot possibly happen to him. 

 

Wellum and the 92nd Squadron begin flying missions to defend England from attacking German planes. Two, even three sorties are required each day, all of them exhausting, tense, and death-defying. We readers experience what such fighting, terror, confidence, and survival tractics a pilot experiences during these encounters. 

 

And Wellum loses his friends and fellow squadron companions on a regular basis. Sometimes they are seen being shot down; others simply fail to return from a mission. And still the flying missions continue.

 

As the War begins to turn, Wellum' squadron is assigned to escort huge British supply convoys across the Channel from England to France, providing air cover and dog-fighting with any German planes which try to attack these ships. Sometimes the loss of these British boats and their contents signal a huge setback to the troops in France, while others that Wellum helps slip through enemy fighters provide relief that bolsters the Allies' war effort. Longer and longer distances to each flight are required as Allied forces push deeper into France, requiring air support for all troop movement even all the way to Malta.

 

The narration is breath-taking in its clarity of each flying situation and how Wellum responds. Sometimes he almost panics, sometimes he gets lucky, and sometimes he draws on extraordinary calm skills to see him through the flight and back to base.

 

I was fully engrossed in this man and his adventures aloft, constantly reminding myself that he was only a teenager taking on these incredibly taxing, dangerous missions. Fortunately, Wellum took copious notes daily of his missions and thoughts, so his accounts of life in the RAF are highly detailed and personable, reflecting his and other pilot feelings about fighting the enemy in the sky:

Coupled with fear, I now also feel a sense of anger. What right has this German to fly his snotty little aeroplane over our England and try to kill me? Who invited him?....The bloody arrogance of it! Well, you'll not shoot me down you black-crossed sod. 

For anyone interested in flying, World War II dog-fighting, and aviation training along with the teamwork and execution of aerial missions, First Light is your book. Highly recommended. 

Often, after take-off and on the climb up, especially if we are top cover at 25,000 or more, a wonderful remote feeling of unreality seems to come over me. It's almost like a drug. Complete freedom from earthly worries or fears for the battle that will almost certainly develop after we cross the French coast. I just can't be bothered to get scared any more....I find it an environment of great beauty. It brings on a happiness and, almost, I look forward to the next operation before the one I'm on is finished. It's like getting your second wind.

  

[If this book interests you, be sure to check out:]

 Dahl, Roald. Going Solo

The children's book author relates his adventures learning to fly in World War II and later entering combat missions in Africa and Greece. Riveting as he takes you right into the cockpit with him and tells you his thoughts throughout each step in his aviation and combat experiences. (Previously reviewed here.)

 Happy reading.

Fred

[P.S. Click here to browse over 500 more book recommendations by subject or title and read the introduction to The First Sentence Reader.]

Over to You

Dahl, Roald. Over to You. London : Reynal & Hitchcock. 1946. Print.

First Sentences:

Oh, God, how I am frightened. Now that I am alone I don't have to hide it; I don't have to hide anything any longer. I can let my face go because no one can see me; because there's twenty-one thousand feet between me and them and because now that it's happening again I couldn't pretend any more even if I wanted to. 

Description:

Having recently read Roald Dahl's memoir, Going Solo about his World War II experiences flying for the RAF, I fell in love with his spare, honest writings about his thrilling adventures, and definitely wanted to read much more from him. Luckily among his numerous books for children, I found his Over to You, made up of ten more stories about the men who piloted Hurricane fighter planes in WWII in the desert.

 

These narrations were probably based on the people, locations, and situations from Dahl's own experiences. They certainly seemed, to me, to be realistic. But even if these tales were entirely fictionalized, each one rang true because they focused on the men themselves, not just the situations they faced, real and imagined. We lucky readers can see up close what these pilots were thinking. What were their plans? How did they to occupy their down time? What were their relationships with the local people near their air bases and with the enemy fighters?

 

Here's some examples of the captivating stories contained in Over to You: 

• A pilot, after four years of flying missions, is overcome with dread about having to fly again, a terror that seizes his every moment before and during his time in the air until he comes into combat at which time all his fear dissipates;

• Pilots save and adopt of very young girl whose family had been killed in enemy strafing of her tiny village;

• Pilots on an off-day decide to free several ordinary women who have been forced into prostitution;

• Crew and friends await the return from a mission of their fellow pilot. But when he eventually lands safely two days later, they find he has no memory of the time that has passed since he flew off;

•  A mother senses when her son is on a mission and feels she is in the cockpit with him.

• A pilot returns from a mission, quietly has a drink by himself in the airport bar, and only after much convincing by fellow pilots does he admit he had seen five enemy planes on his mission and shot them all down.

All these tales are narrated in Dahl's crisp prose. Each sentence conveys a picture of the feelings of the men, their situations, and their surroundings. Even their planes come to life under Dahl's words:

Our two Hurricanes were standing a few yards away, each with that patient, smug look which fighter planes have when the engine is not turning, and beyond them the thin black strip of the sloped down towards the beaches and towards the sea. 

 Dahl portrays the non-combatant civilians with the same intimacy:

It's always the same. As the bombers move south across the country at night, the people who hear them become strangely silent. For those women whose men are with the planes, the moment is not an easy on to bear.

There you have it. It's a quietly passionate book full of fully-rounded, interesting people with questions, observations, bravery, and fears about the War, their surroundings, other people, and their own position in all of it. Each story, to me, was a gem written in precise prose, detailed enough that I felt I knew and even understood every individual character. What more could any reader ask for in a book? Highly recommended.  

 

[If this book interests you, be sure to check out:] 

Roald Dahl. Going Solo.

Memoir of Roald Dahl's flying experiences with the RAF during World War II. Superb writing and adventures in every chapter. (Previously reviewed here.)

Happy reading.

 

Fred

[P.S. Click here to browse over 500 more book recommendations by subject or title and read the introduction to The First Sentence Reader.]

Daikon

Hawley, Samuel. Daikon. New York : Avid Reader 2025. Print.

First Sentences:

Major Edward T. Houseman left his barracks tent at 8th Avenue and 125th Street -- the Columbia University district -- and headed down the crushed coral roadway in the direction of Times Square. It was eleven o"clock at night and a half-moon was rising, painting the island bluish gray. He passed a row of Quonset huts on his left, backed by miles of runways for the B-29s.


Description:

It's rare for me to find a book that completely satisfies all my criteria for a great book: strong characters, captivating plot, challenging setting, and wonderful writing. Daikon by Samuel Hawley is my most recent find. I'm so happy to share it with you.

 

Each of these four elements in Daikon (plot, characters, writing, setting) force you to keep going, paragraph after paragraph. You simply must find out what's going to happen next, what choices will the characters make, what obstacles, frustrations, triumphs, and dangers will they next face, what the outcomes will be, and how wil they and their world be affected. It's kind of like forcing yourself to watch a thriller movie from behind your fingers placed over your eyes. You have to find out, but you fear what you might see/read. In Daicon, it not a bloody scene you anticipate; it's the on-the-edge-of-your-chair outcome, whatever it might be, to every situation on every page.

 

Here's the scenario and a very brief intro to whet your interest. In the waning days of World War II, Japan's cities and population have been devastated by continual American and Allied bombings. Many in the Japanese government as well as among the people, are ready to surrender. Others, however, feel giving in would be the ultimate in humiliation and are prepared to rally a pro-Japan resurgence with similarly-minded people, including some military, even if it means overthrowing the Emperor and his government.

 

Through an accident, days before the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, an American plane crashes in Japan. It was on a mission to drop the first nuclear bomb on a Japanese city, the premier display of the bomb's power. After the American plane crash, this bomb falls into the hands of the Japanese. However, they are uncertain exactly what this odd-looking device actually is and what its use might be.

 

So how do the Japanese unwrap its secrets? Are there even any scientists left in their devastated country who might be able to decode this weapon? And ultimately what do the finders of this tool plan to do with it before Japan crumbles and surrenders?

 

The rest of the story focuses on the Japanese people involved with these challenges: a scientist, his wife, the army commander, and a lowly navy enlisted man. Together and separately, they embody Japan's dreams, skills, and dedication. What keeps you reading is trying to discover the outcome created by these people on the lost American bomb and possibly the War itself?

 

That's what will keep you up long into the night.

 

As you might sense, this is a special book, completely gripping on every level. You just cannot walk away from these fascinating, often ordinary, but committed characters as they face challenge after challenge.

 

Get it. Read it. And savor the storytelling skills of Samuel Hawley. Highest recommendation. 

[If this book interests you, be sure to check out:]

 Conaway, Janes. American Prometheus 

Highly-detailed history of the United States' Manhattan Project, which was tasked to secretly develop, test, and make available, in a very short time span, an atomic weapon before the Germans do.

 Happy reading.

Fred

Click here to browse over 470 more book recommendations by subject or title (and read the introduction to The First Sentence Reader).

 

Soaring to Glory

Handleman, Philip. Soaring to Glory: A Tuskegee Airman's Firsthand Account of World War II. Washington DC: Regnery History 2019. Print.

First Sentences:

Harry Stewart was five thousand feet over the Luftwaffe base at Wels, Germany. His flight's element had been reduced to seven planes when the eighth was disabled by mechanical problems. Still, they would be more than a match for the four German fighters they called out below. 

Description:

I knew virtually nothing about the Tuskegee Airmen except that they were a reknown all-Black division of the Air Force fighting in World War II. Then, I somehow stumbled upon Philip Handleman's Soaring to Glory: A Tuskegee Airman's Firsthand Account of World War II. and I was hooked on their story of bravery, perseverance, flying skills, and especially dealing with racism in the air and on the ground.

 

Lt. Col. Harry T. Stewart Jr, is the subject of this biography, one of the last surviving airman from this squadron. Author Handleman, through interviews, articles, research, and personal contact with Stewart, ably tells this rich history from the first Black aviators, through the formation of the Tuskegee squadron, (the 332nd Red Tails), and post-war lives of these men up to the present day. 

 

It's such a rich, obstacle-laden history as Black men look to the skies and flying for the thrill as well as the escape from the prejudice they faced on the ground.

[They] saw the sky as a medium inherently devoid of the artificial barriers erected by one class of men to block another. The law of the air, their thinking held, is fair and equitable; it applies uniformly without exception to all people regardless of race, color, creed, gender, ethnicity, ancestry, and national origin -- for it is not man's law but nature's law.

Notable Black fliers included aerial display barnstormer Bessie Coleman who went to France in 1921 for training as no US programs would accept a Black woman; James Banning and Thomas Allen who flew transcontinental in 1932; Chauncey Spencer and Dale White flew a two-seater biplane in 1939 from Chicago to Washington DC to publicize the cause of Black aviation.

 

Young Harry Stewart grew up in 1930s New York watching the airship balloons, biplanes, and test airplanes from the nearby base, as well as working on model airplane kits and watching films featuring WWI dogfights. Told by a school counselor that  "Colored people aren't accepted as airline pilots," he later found an article in 1941 (as the War clouds hovering) that said "the Army would start to train an all-Negro flying unit: the 99th Pursuit Squadron. He dropped out of school when he was accepted into the program, only a few days before he was to report for his draft induction.

 

Soaring to Glory carefully follows Stewart through his pilot training and eventual World War II missions. Hardly any military personnel or brass welcomed them:

Major General Edwin J. House of the 12th Air Support Command...claimed that the consensus among his fellow officers and medical professionals was 'that the negro type has not the proper reflexes to make a first-class fighter pilot.'

Author Handleman also notes that:

An earlier 1925 Army War College memorandum asserted that blacks are 'by nature subservient' and 'mentally inferior.'

The Tuskegee Airmen and Stewart were motivated to prove these bigots wrong. During one of his 42 combat flights, Stewart shot down three German planes. The Squadron later handily won a national military aerial competition that highlighted flying, shooting, and bombing skills. 

Returning to the US after the War was a return to the same world of prejudice and closed doors. His 332nd Fighter Group Squadron was stationed in Lockbourne Air Force Base outside of Columbus, Ohio, the first air base not under the supervision of white officers. 

During one flight in that period, Stewart was forced to bail out of his danaged plane, landing in the backwoods of Appalachia (Butcher Hollow, to be exact, home of Loretta Lynn). There he found kind mountain people who cleaned his wounds, gave him moonshine to ease the pain, and helped get him to a doctor. Fifty-seven years later he returned to see his old friends still living there and serve as Grand Marshall of the Van Lear Town Celebration parade.

 

After leaving the military, Stewart found commercial airlines such as Pan Am and TWA, while advertising for former military airmen, told him there were no openings him as a pilot. At Pan Am, he was told by their personnel manager:

"Mr Stewart, I'm sure you can understand our position. Just imagine what passengers would think if during a flight they saw a Negro step out of the cockpit and walk down the aisle in a pilot's uniform."

But the book is about Stewart's dreams, his striving, surviving, and triumphing in the face of incredible odds. From US segregation and bigoted people to German fighter pilots to closed-off jobs, Stewart kept working, going to night school for an engineering degree, and achieving success in major corporations in his undying efforts to carve a life for himself and his family. He was even presented, along with the other Tuskegee Airmen, the Congressional Gold Medal, ironically shaking the congratulatory hand of Senator Robert Byrd, a former KKK member.

 

It is a book full of history, both shameful and glorious, revealed through the life of one determined man and his race. Terrifically written, Soaring to Glory has interesting stories and information about our country and its pilots on every page. 

The joy and skills involved in military flying, the danger of the missions, and the camaraderie of these Black pilots reveal what a vital role these men played during the War. Not to be missed.

 

[If this book interests you, be sure to check out:] 

  

Dahl, Roald. Going Solo.   

Early diary entries and commentary from the author Roald Dahl on his World War I aviation career during a time when flying a plane was as dangerous as facing an enemy pilot. Brilliantly written. (Previously reviewed here.)

Happy reading.

Fred

Click here to browse over 470 more book recommendations by subject or title (and read the introduction to The First Sentencen Reader).

 

The Navajo Code Talkers

Paul, Doris A. The Navajo Code Talkers. Pittsburgh: Dorrance 19739. Print.

First Sentences:

Every syllable of my message came through. Sometimes we had to crawl, had to run, had to lie partly submerged in a swamp or in a lagoon, or in the dead heat, pinned under fire. But there was no problem. We transmitted our messages under any and all conditions.

Description:

I've always been fascinated by (but not good at solving) codes. I enviously noted that over the years dedicated amateurs and professional code-breakers have broken all sorts of impossible secret messages. All codes, that is, except one: the Navajo code utilized by America during World War II.

Doris A. Paul's The Navajo Code Talkers is the definitive history of this unbreakable code and the men who created and successfully employed it to disguise military messages during World War II. Extensive interviews with the Navajo Code Talkers gives this narrative a deeply personal account of each man's commitment to the program. reflecting the intense, maybe desperate need for this new code to work and help win the War.

Author Paul notes this all began inn June, 1940, when the Navajo nation, in an edict from their Tribal Council at Window Rock, expressed their commitment to "aid and defend our Government and its institutions against all subversive and armed conflict." Soon after that time, the official US call to arms went out. 

Navajo men appeared at their agencies, carrying old muskets and hunting rifles, asking where they could fight the enemy. Many were turned away, heartbroken and humiliated that they could not fight because they could not speak English.

But those who did speak English were recruited to counteract the Japanese proclivity to break any English code. During close fighting, messages containing vital information about positions of troops, coordination of attack times, and battle news had to be delivered quickly, with no time for transcription of complex codes. A simple, unbreakable, easily transported code was needed.

Previously, Choctaws had been employed briefly during World War I to simply relay messages via telephone to stymie German interception. Later, members of the Comanches, Creek, Choctaw, Menominee, Chippewa, and Hopi nations were used as communicators, but in the limited capacity of speaking only their own language. What was needed was an untranslatable Native American language, updated with newly-created terms for military items like "tank," "machine gun," "barrage," etc.

The Navajo language was suggested as the perfect platform:

The Navajo tongue is an extremely difficult language to master, and should a non-Navajo (particularly German or Japanese) learn to speak it, counterfeiting its sounds would be almost impossible.

Twenty-nine Navajo men were recruited from reservation schools and trained by the Marines for a pilot program. For some, this was their first time off the reservation. Firsthand accounts from interviews with the original Navajo Code Talkers revealed the challenges, expectations, and actual dangers to their jobs:

We wrung our minds dry trying to figure out words that would be usable, that would not be too long, and that could be easily memorized. After all, in the heat of battle, the code talker would have no time to take out a chart and look up vocabulary for an urgent message.

A sample alphabet and terms are reproduced in the book, containing examples like:

"Gini" (literally "Chicken Hawk") is the Navajo word created for "Dive Bomber" 

"Be-al-doh-cid-da-hi" (sitting gun) = "Mortar" 

"Joy-sho" (buzzard) = "Bomber"  

"Lo-tso" (whale) = "Battleship"

"Toh-yil-kal" (Much Water) = "River" 

"Tsisi-be-wol-doni" (bird shooter) = "Anti-Aircraft" 

The Code Talkers worked eight hours a day with walkie-talkies under field conditions. They had to remember this new vocabulary, speak into the 80-pound radio sets, and quickly, accurately translate incoming messages. After training, code talkers were utilized to request medical supplies, coordinate troop movements, and relay operational orders.

I found the recollections of surviving code talkers incredibly interesting for painting a picture of life in war in which they contributed such a vital part. There was real pride in each individual's narration, conveying a deep sense of accomplishment as well as humor in their voices. These men were important elements at Iwo Jima and Guadalcanal, New Guinea, Okinawa, the Solomon Islands, and many more war zone battlefields. For me, the Navajo code-breakers' recollections of the roles they played and the situations they faced brought an up-close image of each man and the war alive. 

I recommend this for readers interested in the lives and contributions to our country by Native Americans, the development of a unique code, and World War II as told by those men who were there. 

[If this book interests you, be sure to check out:] 

McKay, Sinclair. The Secret Lives of Codebreakers: The Men and Women Who Cracked the Enigma Code at Bletchley Park. 

For the first time, the an in-depth look people behind the super-secret operation that broke the Enigma code and shortened the war by two years, saving millions of lived. (previously reviewed here.) 

Hodges, Andrew. Alan Turing: The Enigma.   

The man and his team who cracked the German Enigma code in World War II to change the course of the War.

Happy reading.

 

Fred 

Click here to browse over 435 more book recommendations by subject or title

(and read the introduction to The First Sentence Reader).

We Die Alone

 Howarth, David. We Die Alone. Guilford, CT: Lyons Press 1955. Print.

First Sentences:

Even at the end of March, on the Arctic coast of northern Norway, there is no sign of spring. 

 

By then, the polar winter night is over....There is nothing green at all: no flowers or grass, and no buds on the stunted trees.


Description:

As we drift into the fall months of cooler temperatures, of warmer jackets, and maybe a few snowflakes, it's a bit shocking to read a true story revolving around really, and I mean REALLY COLD weather. David Howarth's We Die Alone: A WW II Epic of Escape and Endurance

is exacly such a gripping, historical adventure set in the frigid temperatures of northern Norway. But be warned. When you read this book, it's best to have on warm clothes and a hot drink nearby, preferably sitting in front of a roaring fire with a cozy blanket wrapped around you.

During World War II in 1943, twelve Norwegian resistance fighters embarked on a mission of sabatoge in the northernmost part of Norway, an isolated outpost controlled by the Nazis and vital to their control of sea routes. The saboteurs' goal was to blow up key Nazi munitions depots and organize Norwegian resistance in that area. 

Unfortunately, the men were betrayed and eleven of the Norwegians were killed upon reaching their target.

But one man escaped, Jan Baalsrud, by running across frozen fields that night partially barefoot (he'd lost a shoe when jumping from their boat into the sub-freezing water). On top of that, he was hobbled by a bleeding foot where one of his toes had been shot off. 

To avoid capture, he had to swim (again in the sub-freezing water) from their target on an island to the mainland of Norway, then set out on foot (deep snow, no shoe, bleeding toe, remember?) for dry clothing, shelter, food, and help to reach safety in a bordering neutral country. 

And so begins his journey of months filled with isolated countryside, high mountains, deep snow, German patrols, an avalanche, and, of course, the unrelenting, freezing temperatures.

In the valley bottom were frozen lakes where the going was hard and smooth; but between them the snow lay very deep, and it covered a mass of boulders, and there he could not tell as he took each step whether his foot would fall upon rock or ice, or a snow crust which would support him, or whether it would plunge down hip deep into the crevices below.

For the escaping Baalsrudven, finding any form of help was difficult and dangerous for all involved. Anyone he contacted could be a Nazi supporter or at least an informer. The few local Norwegians in the area had to protect their families and lives, since assisting a Nazi fugitive was punishable by death to the entire family, slaughter of all livestock, and destruction of the farmland. 

 

Yet many gladly helped him. Word had slowly spread through the desolate countryside that one man had escaped the Nazi sabeteur killings. Through this grapevine, Baalsrud became a secret hero to the quiet Norwegian farmers, a symbol of their national pride, strength, and resistance to the occupying Nazis. And so they helped in small, but vitally important ways, especially when several times Baalsrud was on the verge of death.

As one Norwegian farmer reflected:

At last it was something which he and only he could possibly do. If he could never do anything else to help in the war, he would have this to look back on now; and he meant to look back on it with satisfaction, and not with shame. He thanked God for sending him this chance to prove his courage....[He told Baalsrud] "If I live, you will live, and if they kill you I will have died to protect you."

Challenge after challenge presented itself to Baalsrud. Wearing only grimy rags of frozen clothes, starving, and suffereing from painful injuries and frostbite, Baalsrud continually astonishes us readers with his perserverence. Example after example of his courage, will, and seemingly endless supply of optimism drives this adventure tale forward, forcing readers to bundle up and continue following Baalsrud to his ultimate journey's end. Absolutely highly recommended.

[P.S. There is also a film called, The Twelfth Man (available on DVD and Amazon Prime) that is a breathtaking representative of the book, especially in portraying myriad of challenges and undying perserverence of Baalsrud ... and the unbearable, unrelenting cold.]

Happy reading. 

Fred

Other book recommendations
About The First Sentence Reader blog

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If this book interests you, be sure to check out:

Rawicz, Slavomir. The Long Walk: The True Story of a Trek to Freedom.   

Incredible true story detailing the author's 1941 capture, prison life and eventual escape from a Soviet labor camp in Siberia. His route took him through China, Tibet, the Gobi Desert, and India, all while experiencing desperate cold, hunger, thirst, and fear of recapture. 

The Volunteer

Fairweather, Jack. The Volunteer: One Man', An Underground Army, and the Secret Mission to Destroy Auschwitz. New York: HarperCollins 2019. Print

First Sentences:

Witold Pilecki volunteered to be imprisoned in Auschwitz. 

Description:

Can there be a more chilling, compelling first sentence than this opening to Jack Fairweather's true history recounted in The Volunteer: One Man', An Underground Army, and the Secret Mission to Destroy Auschwitz?

This first sentence  is the ultimate baited hook to keep any reader reading. Who was this man, Witold Pilecki? What possessed him to voluntarily enter Auschwitz during World War II? What did he hope to accomplish? What happened to him? Did his plans succeed? All are important questions that pull readers deeper and deeper into this true account from history.

A few answers here. Witold Pilecki was a Polish farmer, a member of the Polish reserves who fought the Nazis after the invasion of their homeland in 1939. After the Polish army and people had been subdued and the country occupied, Pilecki joined a small underground resistance force. He and his team watched as the Nazis began to enforce Hitler's  emergency decree for the "indefinite detention or protective custody" of "real or imagined" enemies, including Catholics, Jews, and ethnic Germans.

The resistance noticed that neighbors were taken to a mysterious "labor camp" and rarely returned. That camp was Auschwitz, built in 1940 to hold these Polish "dissidents." Little information about this new camp was known at that time, and certainly no details were allowed to trickle to the outside world. So Pilecki's resistance group agreed it was vital to publicize what was going on inside Auschwitz to the Allied nations, hoping those troops would be shocked enough to bomb it as the heart of the Nazi cleansing movement, freeing the Polish people imprisoned there. Pilecki volunteered to enter Auschwitz to secure the information needed.

Once inside Auschwitz (it proved easy for Pilecki, a Polish man, to be captured), his plan was to recruit a resistance force inside the concentration camp, gather information, disrupt activities, and write accounts that could be smuggled to his fellow resistance fighters outside to be carried to embassies in the Allied countries.

And, of course, to somehow survive, and, if possible, escape to rejoin his Polish fighters.

The harrowing details Fairweather reveals of life in Auschwitz were taken from the recently recovered reports from Pilecki. Starvation, random selection of prisoners to be casually shot, gassings, mass burials, and other brutalities have probably never been more shockingly presented. I won't enumerate them here, but trust me much of the book is incredibly shocking as seen through Pilecki's eyes. It was incredibly depressing to read again and again of man's callous inhumanity to man.

Let none of you imagine that he will ever leave this place alive....The rations have been calculated so that you will only survive six weeks. Anyone who lives longer must be stealing, and anyone stealing will be sent to the penal company, where you won't live very long. -- [opening greeting from the camp commandant, SS-Obersturmfuhrer Fritz Seidler]

Pilecki's reports were painstakingly written and then somehow smuggled out of the camp and on to England to be read by Churchill, Roosevelt and others. These reports detailed the hourly atrocities, the evolution of Auschwitz from a labor camp to a highly-systematic mass killing site, and the potential value of an Allied bombing raid. But Pilecki's accounts were ignored and shelved for various political reasons, leaving Pilecki inside hell to wait for the Allied bombers that were not coming.

This is an important, historic book full of bravery as well as atrocities from the reality that was Auschwitz. Witold Pilecki is about the most courageous, fearless, patient man imaginable. His untiring devotion to the Polish cause and to destroy Auschwitz, his cleverness and leadership that inspire hope and pride among fellow prisoners is incredibly heartening. Despite all the Nazi horror depicted, the ignorance, the brutality, this is Pilecki's story and that of the people of Poland trying to survive and keep their country alive.

After all this sadness and loss of faith in man's nature, I felt the need to read Maya Angelou's poem of hope, "A Brave and Startling Truth." I needed to restore my faith that humans are not completely cruel and heartless, that there is good in us that will survive even the most atrocious of people and events. The poem is attached below in hopes that it will counterbalance the shock of the events of this powerful book and reinforce the reality that good people like Witold Pilecki will triumph over evil.

A Brave and Startling Truth - by Maya Angelou

Happy reading. 

Fred

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If this book interests you, be sure to check out:

Hillenbrand, Laura. Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption.   

True story of track star Louis Zamperini as he is shot down during World War II, drifted for weeks in a life raft, only to be "rescues" by enemy  Japanese who place him in a brutal prisoner-of-war camp. Shocking and inspiring in Zamperini's stoic resolve to survive whatever the world throws at him. Brilliantly written.