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70th anniversary of the Great Escape.
This piece originally appeared on http://kristenalexanderauthor.blogspot.com.au on 5 April 2014.. It was published in a slightly different form, and entitled '"Remember Me": Australians in the Great...
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Thomas Barker Leigh: Australians in Stalag Luft III and the Great Escape
This piece originally appeared on kristenalexanderauthor.blogspot.com.au on 9 May 2014.Great Escaper Thomas Barker Leigh was a former ‘Trenchard Brat’; he joined the 32nd Entry at No. 1 School of...
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Kriegiedom occasionally has its good points. Australians celebrating...
This piece originally appeared on kristenalexanderauthor.blogspot.com.au on 22 December 2014. Al Hake had been thinking of his first Christmas in captivity months before it rolled around. After being...
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Great Escaper: Thomas Barker Leigh
This piece originally appeared on kristenalexanderauthor.blogspot.com.au on 30 October 2014.My research into the Australians of Stalag Luft III is going slowly but surely. Happily, since handing in the...
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TS Mercury Old Boy to be honoured. Great Escaper Thomas Barker Leigh.
The universe is a funny place, and coincidences abound. Some time late last year, I submitted a small piece about Australian Great Escaper Thomas Barker Leigh to The Mercury Magazine. The Journal of...
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Afternoon tea at Stalag Luft III
What a coincidence! Or a lovely piece of serendipity. One of the chaps I am looking at for my Stalag Luft III research is Charles Lark, formerly of 460 Squadron. I picked up Charlie's memoir A Lark on...
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Killing time in Stalag Luft III
Yesterday I had a fun session at the library trawling through Australian Red Cross newsletters and I came across this classic example of Stalag Luft III ingenuity: a jam tin clock. It apparently...
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Vale Alan Righetti. Former Kriegie from Stalag Luft III
As Australia commemorated the 70th anniversary of the end of Second World War, the Australian War Memorial’s director, Brendan Nelson stated that the generation thus honoured, and who are now leaving...
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Paul Gordon Royle: A Fortunate Life
Paul Gordon Royle: A Fortunate LifeWhen Australians hear the phrase, ‘a fortunate life’ our minds inevitably turn to the title of Albert Facey’s memoir. Published in 1981, it chronicles his early life...
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Alex Kerr: Shot Down. A Secret Diary of One POW’s Long March to Freedom.
Shot Down. A Secret Diary of One POW’s Long March to Freedom.Big Sky Publishing, June 2015, 199 pages ISBN: 9781925275179$24.99 Over the past decade or so, I’ve written about Australian pilots in the...
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Christmas in Stalag Luft III, Belaria, 1944
By December 1944, Stalag Luft III was overcrowded and prisoners, who had long relied on Red Cross parcels to supplement their poor rations from their Luftwaffe captors, were down to half a parcel, per...
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Book Review: A True Story of the Great Escape by Louise Williams
A True Story of the Great Escape. A young Australian POW in the most Audacious Breakout of WWIIAllen & Unwin, September 2015, 284 pages ISBN: 9781743313893$29.99Louise WilliamsPublished in...
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Another Book Review: A True Story of the Great Escape
When I read Louise Williams' A True Story of the Great Escape I did something I don't often do. I wrote two reviews. A short one which was published in Flightpath (and which appears on an early blog...
View ArticleDraft nominal roll: Australians in Stalag Luft III. Seeking feedback.
Nominal Roll. Australian airmen in Stalag Luft III: April 1942–January 1945One of the research tasks for my PhD thesis on Australian airmen in Stalag Luft III is to compile a nominal roll of all...
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ANZAC Day 1944
Anzac Day 1944 in SLIIIDuring the Solemn Requiem Mass held at St Mary’s Cathedral on 25 April 1944, Father O’ Brien told the congregation that ‘Today Australia is deep in thought as well as in sorrow...
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43 Years. Albert Hake: An Australian in the Great Escape.
43 Years. Albert Hake: An Australian in the Great Escape.Talk for Rotary Club of South Launceston, 26 May 2016. Approximately 340 Australian airmen were incarcerated in what is perhaps the most...
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POW movie-club-for-one: Danger Within
This isn’t a post about Australians in Stalag Luft III, but it does cover some of the universal aspects of the POW experience and so, it counts! It is well acknowledged that popular perceptions of...
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Australian compass makers ... and more
Trawling through the history of Stalag Luft III’s North Compound, I found this interesting snippet about Australian George Gray Russell of 457 Squadron RAAF.Russell worked closely with Albert Hake,...
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Charles Horace 'Digger' Fry
I'll be heading north again in a few weeks on another research trip. I tend to do a lot of prep before I interview family members and, as part of that process, I've put together a brief biog/profile of...
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POW movie-club-for-one: The Wooden Horse
Eric Williams, who in 1949 published a fictionalised account of his ingenious escape from Stalag Luft III’s East Compound along with Michael Codner and Oliver Philpot, penned the screenplay of The...
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