Crawl to Freedom

During World War One, over 4,000 Australian servicemen were taken prisoner. Yet the prisoner of war experiences of the Anzacs are frequently forgotten, treated as mere footnotes in the proliferation of the literature of Australian military history. Where individual stories have been told, they are often from the perspective of life as a POW. It could be assumed that the Australian POWs of WWI passed quietly into captivity. The opposite was in fact the case.

Many of the Anzacs attempted escape, with over 40 successfully making their way to England or across the battlefields of Western Europe to allied lines – to ultimately score home-runs! Crawl to Freedom is a collection of stories of those successful home-runs. From enlistment to capture, the journeys and efforts of the escapees are forensically explored as the Anzacs fight for their freedom. The astonishing stories tell of mateship, courage, and determination in the face of adversity; these soldiers succeeded in overcoming their hardships to fulfil their ingenious endeavours to escape.

Crawl to Freedom combines meticulous research with a forensic analysis to tell these astonishing stories of daring, perseverance, and endurance ... stories crying out to be told for over 100 years!