"I was on a train, and a German soldier began shouting at me and poking me in the ribs with his machine gun. I just thought that was it, the game was up." More than any conflict in history, World War II occasioned bold and heroic escapes: Downed airman Bob Frost was smuggled out of France and over the Pyrenees, while POW Len Harley went on the run in Italy, surviving months in hiding and then a hazardous climb over the Abruzzo Mountains with Germans on his heels. Mixing new research, interviews with survivors, and his own experience of walking the freedom trails, Monty Halls brings the past to life in this dramatic and gripping slice of military history, recounting stories of the SAS caught behind enemy lines for 40 days, and the British and Australian men who orchestrated the largest successful Allied escape of the entire war.