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Need title of this book (about Troy)



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MahPitom




 
 
    
 

Post Thu, Apr 03 2008, 5:54 pm
Okay this is a loooooooooooooooong shot. About 17 years ago I was a guest at a cousin in Israel. I was bored, so they gave me some English literature books to read, they were great. Apparently, their father once signed up for a course or something.

Inside, there was a captivating story of a group of British soldiers that were captured by the Germans. They pretended to exercise every day outside, jumping over a wooden structure. In the meantime, 2 men were hidden underneath digging a tunnel. They did this every day until the tunnel was complete and then 4 people escaped, alerted the authorities of their whereabouts and the whole camp was saved. It’s a true story. They called themselves the Trojans because the wooden structure was their ‘horse’ and they used the story of Troy as their plan.

I am dying to read that again, and dh would love it. I took out every book with Troy in the title, from the library. Nada.

I remember it was called Troy and the Trojans.
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yo'ma




 
 
    
 

Post Thu, Apr 03 2008, 6:22 pm
I think you might be talking about The Great Escape by Paul Brickhill. I checked and this is the only thing that resembles anything that you said.
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justanothermother




 
 
    
 

Post Thu, Apr 03 2008, 6:34 pm
"The Wooden Horse" by Eric Williams
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justanothermother




 
 
    
 

Post Thu, Apr 03 2008, 6:36 pm
You made it sound so interesting, I was thinking of buying it. I found this link on Amazon http://www.amazon.com/WOODEN-H.....53037
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MahPitom




 
 
    
 

Post Thu, Apr 03 2008, 6:49 pm
Oh my goodness, this is a dream come true! I figured with all the intellectuals here, somebody is going to help me out. The responses are beyond my wildest imagination. Now, I will go out and by that book and check if there’s a movie too . DH WILL LOVE THIS

Here’s the story:

This true story is set in Stalag Luft III—the same POW camp where the real events depicted in the film The Great Escape took place—and involved Williams, Michael Codner and Oliver Philpot, all inmates of the camp.
The prisoners were faced with the problem of digging an escape tunnel despite the accommodation huts, within which the tunnel entrance could be concealed, being a considerable distance from the perimeter fence. They came up with an ingenious way of digging the tunnel with its entrance located in the middle of an open area relatively near the perimeter fence and using a vaulting horse (constructed largely from plywood from Canadian Red Cross parcels) to cover the entrance.
Each day they carried the horse out to the same spot, with a man hidden inside. The prisoners would then begin a gymnastic exercise using the vaulting horse, while the concealed man dug down below the horse. At the finish of the exercises the digger would place a wooden board, cut to fit the aperture, in the hole and fill in the top with dry dirt kept for the purpose - dirt taken from anywhere else in the tunnel might be wetter and hence give away the activities.
Eventually, as the tunnel lengthened, two men were hidden inside the horse while a larger group of men exercised, the two men continuing the tunnel digging. At the end of the day they would again conceal the tunnel entrance and hide inside the horse while it was carried back to their hut. They also had to devise a method of disposing of the earth coming out of the tunnel. For the final breakout Codner hid in the tunnel during an Appel, before three men were carried over in the horse: the third to replace the tunnel trap.
All three made it to neutral Sweden. Williams and Codner travelled together, whilst Philpot travelled alone. Philpot, posing as a Norwegian margarine manufacturer and travelling by train via Danzig (now Gdansk), was the first to make it to neutral territory.
The film was shot in a low-key style, fairly soon after the war, with a limited budget and a cast including many amateur actors. It contributed to establishing the genre of British prisoner of war escape films. Some details from Williams's book were not used in the film, e.g. the escaped POWs discussing the possibility of visiting potentially neutral "whorehouses" in Germany. (The idea was abandoned because of fear that it might be a trap, not out of prudishness.)
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