Over 800 Indian soldiers escaped in May 1944 from German Stalag 315 (Prisoner of War camp) in Épinal on the river Mosel in north-eastern France. This book chronicles their as-yet untold, incredible story of the most successful escape of World War II. Their story did not get written about or celebrated in eighty years despite being much bigger than the 24 March 1944 escape of 76 Allied officers from of Stalag Luft III memorialized in the classic film Great Escape because, says the author, their ‘faces were brown, not white’; ‘they were not officers’.
This is the second book by Professor Ghee Bowman of the University of Exeter; the first was titled Indian Contingent: The Forgotten Muslim Soldiers of Dunkirk (2020). It is divided into two parts. Part I provides the background in three chapters; Part II is the story of Épinal in 12 chapters.