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The Wooden Horse, by Eric Williams
Mar. 31st, 2012 11:39 amThe Wooden Horse is a 1949 novel by Eric Williams which I read as part of my current obsession with POW stories and WWI/WWII stories in general. It's a very lightly fictionalized revision of Williams's earlier memoir about his escape from Stalag Luft III (where the mass breakout known as "the great escape" later took place).
As is often the case with POW narratives, truth is a good deal stranger than pure fiction would ever dare to be. Williams and two companions escaped by tunnelling, but in order to make faster progress and lessen the chances of being caught, they wanted to start the tunnel as close as possible to the wire. So they came up with the Trojan Horse-inspired idea of building a vaulting horse, hollow inside, in which a man could hide and work on the tunnel while other prisoners vaulted. The tunnel opening was disguised with boards and a layer of dirt.
Astonishingly, it worked, and the three men escaped in October 1943. They split up, with Williams and his friend Michael Codner taking one route and Oliver Philpot taking another, but they all managed to get to Sweden and were reunited there before returning to England.
As far as I know, the novel fictionalizes very little but the names: Eric Williams becomes "Peter," Michael Codner is "John," and Oliver Philpot is "Phil." The first half describes coming up with the plan and digging the tunnel, the second half focuses on Peter and John's escape to the German port of Stettin, where they find passage to Denmark and then to Sweden.
I got my copy of the book from Paperback Swap, and unfortunately I didn't realize that I was getting the "special edition for teen-agers." I assume there's some bowdlerization, perhaps some simplification of language and so on, but what's left is still really interesting and I wanted to talk about it. I'm hoping to get a copy of the real book soon and compare the two.
( Click here to read more about the book )
As is often the case with POW narratives, truth is a good deal stranger than pure fiction would ever dare to be. Williams and two companions escaped by tunnelling, but in order to make faster progress and lessen the chances of being caught, they wanted to start the tunnel as close as possible to the wire. So they came up with the Trojan Horse-inspired idea of building a vaulting horse, hollow inside, in which a man could hide and work on the tunnel while other prisoners vaulted. The tunnel opening was disguised with boards and a layer of dirt.
Astonishingly, it worked, and the three men escaped in October 1943. They split up, with Williams and his friend Michael Codner taking one route and Oliver Philpot taking another, but they all managed to get to Sweden and were reunited there before returning to England.
As far as I know, the novel fictionalizes very little but the names: Eric Williams becomes "Peter," Michael Codner is "John," and Oliver Philpot is "Phil." The first half describes coming up with the plan and digging the tunnel, the second half focuses on Peter and John's escape to the German port of Stettin, where they find passage to Denmark and then to Sweden.
I got my copy of the book from Paperback Swap, and unfortunately I didn't realize that I was getting the "special edition for teen-agers." I assume there's some bowdlerization, perhaps some simplification of language and so on, but what's left is still really interesting and I wanted to talk about it. I'm hoping to get a copy of the real book soon and compare the two.
( Click here to read more about the book )
