An Alien Sky

The legendary RAF bomber who survived the infamous Stalag 3 POW camp recounts his WWII experiences in this military memoir. Growing up in Berlin just as Adolf Hitler was coming to power, Andrew Wiseman escaped to Poland with is family when he was thirteen. He later made his way to England where he joined the Royal Air Force, training first as a pilot and then as an air bomber in South Africa. Joining No. 466 squadron, he flew Handley Page Halifax heavy bombers in a handful of operations before being shot down in Occupied France. Wiseman spent the next year as a prisoner of war in Nazi prison camp Stalag Luft III, where he used his knowledge of Russian, Polish and German to act as a camp interpreter. Taking part in the prison break known as the Great Escape, Wiseman acted as a scrounger for the X committee who dug the tunnel. Moved from camp to camp, he was one of those forced into the Long March when the Germans attempting to escape the Russian advance. He later played a key role in avoiding bloodshed when the Russians refused to allow British and Norwegian prisoners to return home—a role for which he was later recognized by the King of Norway. Co-written with the acclaimed aviation historian Sean Feast, Andrew Wiseman's wartime memoir is a vivid chronicle of courage, service and survival through the Second World War.