Cultural Writing. Memoir. Chas Mayhead was one of the millions of young British lads of the '30s who went into the military happily, hoping for an escpae from his working class neighborhood. Chas was assigned to the Middle East, and within a year, he was separated from his company in the desert and captured by the Germans. He was held as a prisoner in North Africa, shipped in a cargo vessel across the Mediterranean, and sent to a prison camp in Northern Italy. He escaped across the Alps toward Switzerland, was re-captured just outside the Swiss border, was shipped to a POW camp in Germany, and escaped again near the end of the war. In this book, Chas describes life as a prisoner during that nightmarish period of world history.