A Toronto Second World War veteran recalls his time in a German prisoner of war camp in a new memoir called "Over the Wire: A Canadian Pilot's Memoir of War and Survival as a POW."
Andrew Carswell, 88, says his book details his time in the war, from enlistment in 1941 to finally being discharged in 1945.
"It's a story of a guy who got shot down on his fourth (plane) trip and didn't really do a heck of a lot on our side for the war but had an interesting time trying to get away from the Germans for the next two years."
Carswell says that for him, getting into the military was initially about getting out of class.
He said that any student at that time who wanted to go war work didn't have to write their exams, and he thought that was a good deal.
It didn't take long for the eager then-18-year-old to find himself in control of a number of aircraft, including the famous Lancaster bomber.
During his fourth flight over Germany, Carswell's plane was hit by enemy fire. With the plane's wing on fire, he ordered his entire crew to jump.
"We're going down like hell, 300 miles an hour straight to the ground, and I said ‘if you're not going to get out, I'm going to get out,'" he said.
Carswell said his parachute-equipped crew jumped out of the plane, but not everyone survived. Carswell landed in a tree and spent days wandering the German wilderness before stumbling across a farmhouse.
"I was pretty lucky. I didn't run into any rabid SS people who wanted to bayonet me first and ask questions later," he said. He was eventually sent to Stalaga 8B in Lamsdorf, Ober Silesia, which lies in present-day Poland.
His story includes various daring camp escapes and recaptures details of a forced march across Germany.
Carswell said he first wrote the book two decades ago, but wasn't able to find a publisher because the market was already saturated with war-time stories. With less veterans around today, publishers finally felt the time was right to publish his experience.
With files from CTV Toronto's Naomi Parness.
