Zero Night

Mark Felton has written over a dozen books on World War Two. He also writes regularly for publications including Military History Monthly and World War II. After a decade spent working in Shanghai, he now lives in Colchester.

A thrilling, moment by moment account of an epic World War II escape and the real-life adventures that followed.On August 30, 1942 - 'Zero Night' - 40 Allied officers staged the most audacious mass escape of World War II. Months of meticulous planning and secret training hung in the balance during three minutes of mayhem as the officers boldly stormed the huge double fences at Oflag Prison. Employing wooden ladders and bridges previously disguised as bookshelves, the highly coordinated effort succeeded and set 36 men free into the German countryside. Later known as the 'Warburg Wire Job', fellow prisoner and fighter ace Douglas Bader once described the attempt as 'the most brilliant escape conception of this war'.The first author to tackle this remarkable story in detail, historian Mark Felton brilliantly evokes the suspense of the escape and the adventures of those escapees who managed to elude the Germans, as well as the courage of the civilians who risked their lives to help them in enemy territory. Fantastically intimate and told with a novelist's eye for drama and detail, this rip-roaring adventure is all the more thrilling because it really happened.

Prologue1 Barbed Wire Horizon2 Trial and Error3 The Wire4 Short Circuit5 Diversions6 'Big X'7 Operation Timber8 Practice Makes Perfect9 The Road Less Travelled10 Pack Up Your Troubles11 Fifteen Yards to Freedom12 Zero Night12 'Another British Evacuation'14 A Walk in the Woods15 'Hande Hoch!'16 The Bitter Road17 Three Blind Mice18 Comet Line19 The Last FrontierEpilogue