POW: Diary of a Prisoner of War
David Nell
ISBN 0-9540734-3-6
Price £9.99 paperback
New for 2004
David Nell was
taken prisoner in North Africa on 28 June 1942. Although he was almost illiterate until his teens, he was keen to
learn, and read widely to achieve it. Later, as a prisoner of war, he used this
diary to continue this process. He kept the diary throughout his prison-camp life, until his eventual
release in April 1945, and it is remarkably well written.
What emerges from this immensely moving and personal account is far different from the picture suggested by the movies. It tells of poor conditions and deprivation, and the hopes, fears and preoccupations of those many prisoners in Germany and Italy, and something of the lives of those who guarded them. Yet it is also a story of great triumph, and of love – that of a distant fiancée and her young man.
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