The Wooden Horse [Paperback]

Eric Williams (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0563369019 | ISBN-13: 978-0563369011 | Publication Date: June 1995

Published to coincide with a 6-part dramatized production on BBC Radio, this book tells the story one of the most ingenious and daring escapes of World War II. By concealing the entrance to a tunnel beneath a vaulting horse, three British officers were able to escape from a German prison camp.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Williams, a Royal Air Force bomber captain, was shot down over Germany in 1942 and imprisoned in Stalag-Luft III. He escaped after 10 months and, accompanied by a fellow RAF officer, made his way back to England. He relates his story in three distinct phases: the construction of a tunnel (its entrance camouflaged by a wooden vaulting horse in the exercise yard) and hiding the large quantities of sand he dug; the escape; and the journey on foot and by train to the port of Stettin, where Williams and his fellow escapee stowed away aboard a Danish ship, the Norensen. The story of the flight across Germany is particularly tense, as Williams relates how their clothing and fabricated travel papers became shabbier and more conspicuous. This classic escape-and-evasion story, an exciting read, was published in England in 1949. Williams died in 1983.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Product Details

• Paperback: 272 pages
• Publisher: BBC Pubns (June 1995)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0563369019
• ISBN-13: 978-0563369011
• Product Dimensions: 6.9 x 4.3 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 6.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (16 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,611,452 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars One of the best prison breakout novels of all time, July 8, 2000

By 

Roger McEvilly (the guilty bystander) (Sydney, NSW Australia) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Wooden Horse (Paperback)

Don't be put off by the recent "out of print" status, this book is a great true story of a prison breakout in WW2. You can also easily pick it up through Amazons second hand bookstores for a relatively cheap price.

Written by the escapee himself, it retains all its charm and spirit since it first received rave reviews in the late 1940s to early 1950s.

The breakout came from a novel, yet brilliant idea inspired by the Legend of the Trojan Horse- ie to use a gym vaulting horse as cover to hide an inmate who dug a tunnel to the nearest concentration camp fence. It succeeded, but I won't ruin the story with all the details, you will have to read it yourself! Rest assured the book is well written, and as it is told by one of the escapees himself it has a certain charm, readability and authenticity about it.

Getting out was just the first part, the escapees still had to travel across most of Germany to reach home, right amidst the heartlessness and desparation of WW2. I found the description of the lives of everyday German people within a major war as soulful, revealing and harrowing as the concentration camp itself.

A remarkable story, a great and uplifting novel, sure to inspire for many years to come. No mundane "political correctness" here, truthfully told and recorded with all the desperation, fear, and courageous spirit of many involved in the war-on both sides.

There was a film also made in the 1960s I think, which was almost as good as the book, but not quite. Of similar genre to The Wooden Horse is "the Great Escape", also made into a film, but the Wooden Horse is more realisitic and better done overall in my opinion.

Uplifts the spirit.

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Real-Life Trojan Horse Which Fooled the German Captors, December 10, 1999

By 

Jan Peczkis (Chicago, IL) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Wooden Horse (Paperback)

The original Trojan Horse contained soldiers in the process of sneaking into a city. This real-life WWII thriller describes a Trojan Horse used by Allied POWs to tunnel their way out of a German POW camp. While the horse was ostensibly being used for vaulting exercise, a small group of men dug a tunnel underneath. Eventually it led them to freedom. The Germans were completely fooled.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Real-Life Trojan Horse that Fooled the German Captors, February 3, 2008

By 

Jan Peczkis "Scholar and Thinker" (Chicago IL, USA) - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: The Wooden Horse (Paperback)

This amazing escape episode involved three men, and was not part of the much-publicized Great Escape, but took place from the same camp (Stalag Luft III). This review is an expansion of an earlier one that I had written.

The original Trojan Horse contained soldiers in the process of sneaking into a city. This real-life WWII thriller describes a Trojan Horse used by Allied POWs to tunnel their way out of a German POW camp. While the horse was ostensibly being used for vaulting exercise, a small group of men hidden within the horse dug a tunnel underneath. Eventually it led them to freedom. Years later, "Eric Williams" was surprised that a mere plywood box could have fooled the Germans for so long. Indeed, the Germans apparently never became suspicious of the fact that the horse was always placed at the identical location, and not far from the wire.

The idea was conceived out of the frustration of digging tunnels long distances from the huts to past the camp wire, and the Germans expecting the traps to originate from the huts and finding them. What if there was some way to get much closer to the wire, to dig a tunnel from there, and to conceal the trap from that unexpected location?

The Trojan Horse episode came to mind. It would be a long and laborious tunneling process, as only a few tunnelers and relatively small amounts of sand could be concealed within the horse per exercise session. Otherwise, the horse would be too heavy to be carried.

The vaulting horse was at first used without any tunnelers concealed in it. In fact, the vaulters purposely knocked it over a number of times so that the Germans would see nothing on the inside of it. The Germans were told that the vaulting stemmed from the English craze for exercise.

After innumerable episodes of vaulting and tunneling, the tunnel was past the wire. Three escapees went from inside the horse down the tunnel, and, after many hours, dug there way to freedom. All three made it safely to the Allied lines.