Into Enemy Arms

Ditha Bruncel's detailed memory of living in Germany during the Second World War provides a rare, first-hand insight into the day-to-day struggle against Nazi oppression, when even small acts of defiance or resistance carried great personal risk.

In 1945, Ditha was living with her parents in the small town of Lossen, in Upper Silesia. Close Jewish friends had vanished, swastikas hung from every building, and neighbours were disappearing in the middle of the night. At the same time, more than one thousand, five hundred British and Commonwealth airmen were being marched out of Stalag Luft VII, a POW camp in Upper Silesia. Twenty three of these prisoners managed to escape from the marching column and by chance hobbled into Lossen. One amongst them, Warrant Officer Gordon Slowey, was the man Ditha was destined to meet and fall in love with.

This book tells the extraordinary story of Ditha and the escaped POWs she helped to save. Together, they embarked on a dangerous and daring flight out of Germany. As they faced exhaustion, hunger, extreme cold and the constant risk of discovery, Ditha and Gordon's love for one another intensified, and so did their determination to survive and escape together.

This book is based on Ditha's vivid recollections recorded by her nephew, Michael Hingston, in over a hundred hours of conversation between the two of them, as well as exhaustive research in archives to verify the facts.

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Halifax Down!: On the Run from the Gestapo 1944

On the night of 22/23rd April 1944 Tom Wingham was the bomb aimer in the crew of a 76 Squadron Halifax shot down while on the way to bomb Dusseldorf. Coming to in a tangle of parachute and harness straps he realised the precariousness of his situation and so, dazed and aching with a painful concussion and navigating by the stars alone, he quickly set off on his long and difficult journey home through occupied territory, constantly depending on the kindness of others who risked their lives to help keep him hidden. Tom made his way from Holland, at the hands of The Escape and was then passed via L'Armee Secrete, a London run organisation operating in the east of Belgium, but fell right into the path of the Gestapo. In a deadly game of hide and seek Tom evaded his captors long enough to witness the retreat of German soldiers as he stayed at the house of Madame Schoofs, which became a temporary German HQ.

In the 1980s Tom assisted a Dutch air historian with some research and this prompted him to look into the details of his own crash. What he uncovered not only shed more light on his own story but also those of his fellow crew members. He plotted approximately where each person landed that fateful night and slowly their incredible stories emerged. Added to his own experiences their accounts make "Halifax Down!" an extraordinary first hand insight into the experience of a heavy bomber crew shot down in World War Two.

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