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Finished reading THE WOODEN HORSE by Eric Williams. I had attempted to read this novel 52 years ago when I was a teenager but abandoned it after a few pages. When 13 inmates recently escaped from the Lusignan prison by tunnelling, I remembered THE WOODEN HORSE and borrowed the e-book version from Toronto Public Library. I approached the story with a lifetime of experiences and a fair knowledge of prison systems gained from reading and two personal visits to prisons in Cuba and Guyana in 1989.

THE WOODEN HORSE is based on the real-life successful escape by three Second World War British prisoners-of-war who had been captured in Germany. Eric Williams, an airman whose bomber was shot down, was one of the trio. They built a wooden vaulting horse, placed it at a certain spot in the prison compound every day ostensibly for physical exercises, and dug a 150-foot tunnel outwards to freedom within a few months. That escape from prison was an ordeal but the greater ordeal was to get out of Germany and German-occupied European countries and return to Britain. 

While reading this gripping novel I wondered how many other prisoners it had inspired after publication in wartime and peace time.

FM
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