St Valery The Impossible Odds edited by Bill Innes

St Valery The Impossible Odds

Edited by Bill Innes

Birlinn, 2007, ISBN 9781843410393, black & white plates, paperback

Near Fine Condition, crease to spine, cover edges slightly bumped.

'Of the countless volumes about the Second World War, many of them dealing with the experiences of prisoners of war, relatively few were written by private soldiers, far less those who could take a poet's perspective on the experience.  Two of the main contributors to this book, Angus Campbell from Lewis and Donald John MacDonald from South Uist, were both traditional Gaelic bards.  Their work has been translated from their native language and reflects both the richness of the vocabulary they had acquired through the Gaelic oral tradition and their individual gifts as natural story-tellers born out of that tradition.  These vivid accounts bring alive the chaos and horror of war and the grim deprivation of the camps and forced marches which so many endured.  Yet these personal stories resound with the spirit, humour and sense of comradeship which enabled men to fight on in desperate situations and refuse to be cowed by their captors.'