Helle-Biblio

Books on prison camps, daring escapes and life with the Resistance abound. Pat Spooner’s story is different and more compelling in one important respect. It recounts the gripping and dramatic rescue of two senior British generals (one a VC) and an air vice marshal from occupied Italy by the author and his companion who had themselves both escaped from an Italian PoW camp.

This book covers a range of wartime exploits from operating behind Japanese lines in Burma and Malaya to laying secret dumps on remote islands in the Bay of Bengal for the benefit of RAF aircrew unable to reach their base.

At the war’s end, Pat Spooner, a 25-year-old lieutenant colonel, commanded a war crimes investigation unit in Java and Burma. He describes his personal experiences of the intensive efforts to track down and bring to justice the perpetrators of some of the foulest crimes ever committed by Man. Then, as a senior staff officer (Assistant Adjutant General) he spent a further twelve months controlling the nerve center, in Singapore, of the entire war crimes organization in Southeast Asia involving 18 investigation units.