Survivor of the Long March ─ Five Years As a Pow 1940-1945

Nothing prepares a man for war and Private Charles Waite, of the Queen's Royal Regiment, was ill prepared when his convoy took a wrong turn near Abbeville and met 400 German soldiers and half a dozen tanks. "The day I was captured, I had a rifle but no ammunition." He lost his freedom that day in May 1940 and didn't regain it until April 1945 when he was rescued by Americans near Berlin, having walked 1,600km from East Prussia. Charles writes about his five lost years: the terrible things he saw and suffered. His story includes the terrible Long March, when 80,000 British POWs were forced to trek miles through a vicious winter. Thousands died. There are no memoirs of that terrible trek—except this one.

Charles Waite is now over 90 years old and has finally decided to tell his harrowing story, with the help of Dee La Vardera, the author of seven books and countless articles for such publications as the Guardian.