War Behind the Wire : Australian Prisoners of War

Stories of Australian men and women who have been prisoners of war.

More than 34,000 Australian men and women have so far ended up in captivity - over 100 in the Boer War, more than 4,000 in WWI, just 30 during the Korean War, none in Vietnam, and most of all, WWII, 30,560. Of the total number of Australian deaths during WWII, nearly thirty per cent, one in every three, were prisoners. In War Behind the Wire, Michael Caulfield presents stories from the Australians at War Film Archive that follows the stories of the POWs from capture to eventual liberation. The book ranges across all the wars, from the men and women trapped under the ruthless Japanese regime, to the forgotten POWs of the Germans and the Italians, captured in Greece, or Crete, or Libya or Syria, or those who simply fell from the skies somewhere over occupied Europe. It ventures into the experiences of those who were taken by ambush in the scrubby hills and ranges of Korea and even encompasses the tales of civilian prisoners, caught up in war by tragic accident.