Anita Leslie

Train to Nowhere (eBook, PDF)

One Woman's World War II, Ambulance Driver, Reporter, Liberator

• Format: PDF

Produktbeschreibung

ONE OF HAY FESTIVAL'S 100 BEST BOOKS WRITTEN BY WOMEN IN THE LAST 100 YEARS.

'The most gripping piece of war reportage I have ever read. What a writer! Her observations, mixed with dry humour and compassion, place her at the heart of the conflict and somehow apart from it, as a good historian should be. Remarkable.' Joanna Lumley

Train to Nowhere is a memoir of war seen through the sardonic eyes of Anita Leslie, a funny and vivacious young woman who reports on her experiences with a dry humour, finding the absurd alongside the tragic.

Daughter of a Baronet and first cousin once removed to Winston Churchill, Lelsie joined the Mechanized Transport Corps as a fully trained mechanic and ambulance driver during World War II, serving in Libya, Syria, Palestine, Italy, France and Germany. Ahead of her time, Anita bemoans 'first-rate women subordinate to second-rate men', and, as the British Army forbade women from serving at the front, joined the Free French Forces in order to do what she felt was her duty.

Writing letters in Hitler's recently vacated office and marching in the Victory parade contrast with observations of seeing friends murdered and a mother avenging her son by coldly shooting a prisoner of war. Unflinching and unsentimental, Train to Nowhere is a memoir of Anita's war, one that, long after it was written, remains poignant and relevant.

Produktdetails

• Verlag: Bloomsbury UK eBooks
• Seitenzahl: 336
• Erscheinungstermin: 24. August 2017
• Englisch
• ISBN-13: 9781448216857
• Artikelnr.: 48804987

Autorenporträt

Anita Leslie (1914-1985), daughter of Shane Leslie (Sir John Randolph Leslie, 3rd Baronet) and first cousin once removed of Sir Winston Churchill, was a writer of memoir and biography. She joined the Mechanized Transport Corps as a fully trained mechanic and ambulance driver during World War II, serving in Libya, Syria, Palestine, Italy, France and Germany. She wrote letters home from Hitler's office in the Reich Chancellery and took part in the Victory parade in Berlin. In the latter part of the war she drove an ambulance for the Free French Forces, and was awarded the Croix de Guerre in 1945 by General Charles de Gaulle. She is the only woman to be awarded both that and the Africa Star for her service in the Western Desert.

Leslie later married Commander Bill King and had two children. She published seventeen books, the last in 1985-the year she died.