Barbed-Wire Blues: A Blinded Musician’s Memoir of Wartime Captivity 1940–1943

Description

As the author, a young Army bandsman lies wounded at the Battle of Corinth, he is shot between the eyes at point blank range. Miraculously he survives but is blinded. In a makeshift hospital a young Greek volunteer saves his life with slices of boiled egg. Captured Allied medics later restore the sight in one eye. In this moving and entertaining memoir Bernard describes daily life in POW camps in Greece and Germany. He established a theatrical group and an orchestra who perform to fellow POWs and their German guards. A superb raconteur, as well as a gifted musician, the author’s anecdotes are memorably amusing. Bernard was repatriated via Sweden in late 1943. While blinded in one eye and seriously wounded, the author was told by his New Zealand doctor, fellow POW and musician John Borrie, "When nothing else will do, music will always lift one up." Barbed Wire Blues’ inspirational, ever optimistic tone will surely have the same effect on its readers. Cover Book Title Copyright Contents Chapter One The End of the Beginning Chapter Two Tidying the Desert Chapter Three A Rotten Shot Chapter Four A Grecian Girl Chapter Five Red-Letter Days Chapter Six Blind Spot Chapter Seven Thanks for the Memory Chapter Eight The Father of Muddles Chapter Nine Barbed-Wire Blues Chapter Ten We Leave Athens Plate section Chapter Eleven Golf Professional, Forsooth Chapter Twelve This is the News Chapter Thirteen What To Do All Day Chapter Fourteen Camp Concert Chapter Fifteen Christmas Past Chapter Sixteen Ins and Outs Chapter Seventeen DSO Chapter Eighteen Look After Your Organ! Chapter Nineteen More Ins and Outs Chapter Twenty The Dover Road Chapter Twenty-One Repatriation, November 1943 Chapter Twenty-Two On English Soil Postscript Appendix Bibliography Select Index Back Cover