Foreign Shores - A True Story

Foreign Shores is the true story of Theodor Terhorst, a former German soldier held as a prisoner-of-war in England. Growing up in a small village in Nazi Germany, Theodor, like many other impressionable boys of his age, was a willing participant in the rallies and events organized by the Hitler Youth.

Called up in 1944 at the age of seventeen, he underwent training as a member of a Fallschirmjager (parachute) regiment before being posted to northern France. Wounded in heavy fighting during the allied invasion of Normandy, Theodor was evacuated to Guernsey in the Channel Islands where, after recovering from his wounds, he was subjected to the horror of gradual starvation. Eventually captured when the islands were liberated, he was shipped back to England as a prisoner-of-war. Weak and emaciated after his ordeal, he was hospitalized and given a special diet to gain weight before being sent to a POW camp in Shropshire.

By the end of 1945 with hostilities over, prisoners were allowed to work outside the camps, but many were prevented from returning to Germany in contravention of the Geneva Convention. Theodor was one of those and sent to work as a labourer on a nearby farm where he met and fell in love with the farmer’s eldest daughter.

Some years later Theodor returned to his homeland to try and settle down, but his experience was an unhappy one. Convinced that he is resented by many people for his healthy young family, his prosperity and even for the simple fact that he is still alive, he returns to England where he spends the remainder of his life, developing a sense of belonging and love for the land against which he had once fought.

Available from:
Troubador Publishing

Wartorn: 1861-2010, Exploring Combat and Post-Traumatic Stress - HBO Documentary

American Civil War doctors called it hysteria, melancholia and insanity. During the First World War it was known as shell-shock. By World War II, it became combat fatigue. Today, it is clinically known as post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), a crippling anxiety that results from exposure to life-threatening situations such as combat.

The HBO special Wartorn 1861-2010 brings attention to the invisible wounds of war. Drawing on personal stories of American soldiers whose lives and psyches were torn asunder by the horrors of battle and PTSD, the documentary chronicles the lingering effects of combat stress and post-traumatic stress on military personnel and their families throughout American history, from the Civil War through today’s conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. The HBO Documentary Films presentation debuts on Thursday November 11th, only on HBO in the US.

The documentary shares stories through soldiers’ revealing letters and journals; photographs and combat footage.

“Combat fatigue” was considered a character flaw in World War II. In a famous story, Gen. George S. Patton slapped a soldier hospitalized with nervous exhaustion, ordering “that yellow SOB” back to the front. It took 50 years for WWII vets to be diagnosed with PTSD. Today, in the documentary, a group opens up publicly about their traumas for the first time. Al Maher, who was a Lieutenant in the Army Air Corps, laments the toll his war experience took on his family life – he became abusive and took to drinking. As a result, he has not spoken to his sons in 25 years. Abner Greenberg, a corporal in the Marines who lost two best friends in Iwo Jima, kept his wartime traumas pent up and never shared them with his children until he joined a PTSD group and discovered what was wrong with him. Former Army sergeant Bill Thomas remembers shooting four Germans, and being moved when the sole survivor showed him a family photo. “How do you explain the horrors?” Greenberg asks. “It consumes you.”

For more information visit the HBO site.

Lost Between Worlds - A World War II Journey of Survival

Lost Between Worlds is based on a journal written between 1940 and 1945, by Edward H Herzbaum, when he was in his twenties. It is a first-hand account of his horrendous wartime experiences, both physical and psychological, that has just been published for the first time by his daughter: the journal had been lying in a suitcase for 65 years until it was discovered
and translated.

The book spans a period of history from the German invasion of Poland in 1939 to the end of the Italian Campaign in 1945. It recounts how Edward was arrested and interned by the Germans but escaped. He travelled to eastern Poland to avoid being recaptured, but there he was arrested by the Russians and deported to a Gulag, where he suffered starvation, brutality and horrific working and living conditions.

After Germany's attack on Russia, Edward and the other Polish prisoners were amnestied and released to join a newly-formed Polish army, under British command. They travelled through Middle Asia, Iraq, Iran, British Palestine and Egypt, eventually fighting in the Italian Campaign.

Edward writes at times with humour and irony and at other times with desperation, about his arduous journey and the awful psychological after-effects of the experiences which he and the other Poles had endured. The loss of family, friends and country and the feelings of loneliness at finding themselves completely displaced from their 'old world', with no knowledge of what their 'new world' might look like, even if they survived the war.

Edward Herzbaum, born in 1920 to Polish Jewish parents, was educated in Poland. During WWII he was arrested and escaped from both the Germans and Russians and then fought in the Polish Army. In 1946 he settled in the UK and became an architect. He died in 1967.

Available from:
Troubador Publishing

Aterrem em Portugal! - Landed in Portugal

“Aterrem em Portugal” was published in November 2008. It contains the history of dozens of landings from Allied and Axis planes that happened in Portugal during World War II. With the country lying between the routes that linked the United Kingdom to the operational theatres in the Mediterranean, Middle East, Africa and others there were over one hundred emergency landings during the six years of conflict.

About a dozen airmen from the Commonwealth and from USA that where in Portugal between 1941 and 1945, were interviewed for the book. From others, already deceased, it was possible to include information from diaries that family members still posses.

Several Portuguese witnesses also recount their versions about what they saw and lived during those years when war surrounded the country. It was also possible to put together documents from Portuguese, British, Americans, Australians and German archives.

Note that the book Aterrem em Portugal is in Portuguese. However, the fascinating website contains a large amount of information in English, including a list of all the planes that crashed in Portugal during the war.

Available from:
The Author - Carlos Guerreiro

Albanian Escape - The True Story of U.S. Army Nurses behind Enemy Lines

On November 8, 1943, U.S. Army nurse Agnes Jensen stepped out of a cold rain in Catania, Sicily, into a C-53 transport plane. But she and twelve other nurses never arrived in Bari, Italy, where they were to transport wounded soldiers to hospitals farther from the front lines. A violent storm and pursuit by German Messerschmitts led to a crash landing in a remote part of Albania, leaving the nurses, their team of medics, and the flight crew stranded in Nazi-occupied territory.

What followed was a dangerous nine-week game of hide-and-seek with the enemy, a situation President Roosevelt monitored daily. Albanian partisans aided the stranded Americans in the search for a British Intelligence Mission, and the group began a long and hazardous journey to the Adriatic coast. During the following weeks, they crossed Albania's second highest mountain in a blizzard, were strafed by German planes, managed to flee a town moments before it was bombed, and watched helplessly as an attempt to airlift them out was foiled by Nazi forces.

Albanian Escape is the suspense-filled story of the only group of Army flight nurses to have spent any length of time in occupied territory during World War II. The nurses and flight crew endured frigid weather, survived on little food, and literally wore out their shoes trekking across the rugged countryside. Thrust into a perilous situation and determined to survive, these women found courage and strength in each other and in the kindness of Albanians and guerrillas who hid them from the Germans.

Available from:
University Press of Kentucky

The Grey Wolves of Eriboll

The surrender of the German U-boat fleet at the end of World War II was perhaps the principal event in the war's endgame which signified to the British people that peace really had arrived. It is little known that the majority of the surrenders of U-boats on active west-European sea patrols in May 1945 were supervised in Loch Eriboll, an isolated sea loch on Scotland's far north-westernmost coast

With an estimated 160 U-boats on active patrol at the end of the war, it was imperative that these boats were made aware of the capitulation of German armed forces, that they accepted the surrender arrangements and then proceeded, surfaced, to designated British ports.

Loch Eriboll's attraction as the reception port was its isolation and its safe, deep-water anchorage - ideal for the arrival of armed U-boats that might still be intent on one last show of defiance. News of the momentous event was heavily censored - nothing appeared in the local press. Thirty-three U-boats, their officers and men surrendered between 10th and 22nd May 1945. The boats were arrested, boarded and disarmed; in some cases this vital exercise was completed by the simple expedient of lobbing ammunition, explosives and torpedo pistols overboard.

Each U-boat has been positively identified and detailed information provided including contemporary photographs, boat or flotilla emblem, together with the coordinates of where each boat was eventually destroyed in the north Atlantic. However, not all were destroyed by the Allies, some were retained by the British, American, Russian or French navies as spoils of war but the vast majority were lost accidentally or scrapped with the passage of time.

The Grey Wolves of Eriboll includes a wealth of historical insights including the German Surrender Document; detailed descriptions of the construction, service careers and circumstances of each surrendered U-boat; details of the frigates that supervised the surrenders; Operation Deadlight (a hasty plan to ensure the U-boats could not again be used aggressively) and contemporary newspaper reports.

Available from:
Whittles Publishing

Air Sea Rescue During the Siege of Malta: An eyewitness account of life with HSL107 1941-43

Air Sea Rescue During the Siege of Malta provides one of few available eyewitness tales about the often overlooked role of the Air / Sea Rescue teams during World War II. Focussing on High Speed Launch HSL107 which rescued close to 100 pilots during the siege of Malta, this tale is a personal account by Bill Jackson, a crew member of HSL 107.

While everyone around them was hell-bent on death and destruction, the crews of the Air / Sea Rescue Units were dedicated to the survival of both friend and foe alike. They carried out their job with little recognition and with great heroism. Battling the elements, often in appalling sea conditions, and under near-constant air attack from a most determined enemy, the units shared the privations endured by the islanders, coming close to starvation as the Axis forces inched toward invasion.

This book shares with the reader the elation of successful rescues, the exhilaration of the High Speed Launch at full throttle, and the determination of the Units to turn out at all hours in all weathers to go to the aid of both Allied and Axis pilots.

Bill Jackson was born and raised in Workington, Cumbria. He attended RAF Cranwell No 1 Electrical and Wireless School and was posted to Malta as a Wireless Operator Mechanic (WOM) with crew of HSL 107, the 'Old Lady' of Malta. Bill was repatriated in Sept 1943. He sadly died in late 2009, before this account was published.

Available from:
Troubador Publishing