Neal Bascomb, a New York Times best-selling author, delivers the spellbinding story of the downed Allied airmen who masterminded the remarkably courageous - and ingenious - breakout from Germany's most devilish POW camp.In the winter trenches and flak-filled skies of World War I, soldiers and pilots alike might avoid death only to find themselves imprisoned in Germany's archipelago of POW camps, often in abominable conditions.

The most infamous was Holzminden, a landlocked Alcatraz of sorts that housed the most troublesome, escape-prone prisoners.