1400 Mile Walk

[TeeDee]

I don't know if this has been posted elsewhere but figure it may be of interest to some here.



http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-36000111

In 1945 Anatol and Wiktor Iwanowski escaped from a prisoner-of-war camp in Kaluga, Russia, and travelled more than 2,200 kilometres (1,400 miles) on foot, across fields, through forests, valleys and rivers to make it back to Poland.
As fugitives, they walked only at night and lived on what they could find.
Three months later they were reunited with their family in Wroclaw.
The journey was recreated by Anatol's grandson, Michal, in 2013.
Using a rough map found in his great uncle's diary, he went back to document the perilous route - through Russia, Belarus, Lithuania and Poland.
The images are now the subject of a new book, Clear of People.
Dan Damon spoke to Michal Iwanowski about the project and his family's story.

 

[Wayne]

Thanks for posting. I hadn't heard this story. Deserves to be told.

 

[Drain Bamaged]

It makes you wonder how many similar stories there are out there that are just not told.....My own grandfather (mums dad) was merchant navy during WW2 and was torpedoed and sunk three times in the four years that he was on Minesweepers, when he was asked about it his reply basically was "I got sunk three times but I did manage to salvage the ships bell off the Lord Beaconsfield" and as far as he was concerned that was it, story told. After he died we discovered quite a lot of photo's of the various crews he had served with, letters of praise from his captains, mentions from RN personnel, photo's and details of a German destroyer that was abandoned and they salvaged after the Germans attempted to scuttle it, masses of notes and letters some received from my Grandmother and some written by him and never sent (or not allowed to send) I really wished I had pushed him at the time to tell me about it but to him it was just something that happened and best forgot or got over.

D.B.

 

[woof]

That generation didn't want to talk about it, my own dad being one. All I managed to find out over the years, was he had a reserved occupation, left home in Nottingham on the train to London & joined the guards(Welsh) but lied about his age(he was 17)had his 18th in the front line in Italy.
They went away did a job that needed doing, most came home & just carried on with life, keeping their thought experiences & nightmares to themselves.

Rob