Book name- THE GREAT ÉPINAL ESCAPE: INDIAN PRISONERS OF WAR IN GERMAN HANDS
Author- Ghee Bowman
Published by- Context
Price- Rs 699
The losses suffered in the two devastating World Wars endure powerfully in the West’s collective memory. Be it the poppy, still worn on Remembrance Day, or the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier at Arlington in the United States of America, the two wars remain a symbol of sacrifice and lost generations. But in the hullabaloo surrounding the necessity of tackling fascism, the victims of Europe’s imperial project slip through the cracks. It is thus encouraging that new research is shining light on such marginalised subjects. Ghee Bowman’s The Great Épinal Escape turns the spotlight to Western geographies, discussing the subcontinent’s professional soldiers — native fighters who laid down their lives for the Empire in the killing fields of Europe — and their daring attempts to escape the prison camps in which the Germans had put them during the Second World War.
Take Bhopal Singh Negi, for example. He enlisted in the Garhwal Rifles at just 19 when the daggers of war were still sheathed. Seven years of service later, he was allowed to return to his idyllic village existence, only to be called to defend king and country. Or Siddiq Khan, a havildar hailing from Sahiwal in what is today Pakistan; his sojourn through stints at different camps before finally escaping to a Swiss safe haven is a reminder of the grit and the gumption of the Indian prisoners. The legendary Steve McQueen movie, The Great Escape, dramatises the daring attempt by Allied prisoners of war to escape from the disreputable Stalag Luft III where a large majority of the escapers were killed. But more than 500 Indians — of different religions, linguistic backgrounds and social strata — escaped from the camp in Épinal and many of them returned home unscathed with the help of local French villagers and fighters of the underground resistance; and, yet, there are no movies about these men and little talk of their experiences, rues Bowman. “I’d never heard of these POWs before — all those Great Escapes & never a brown face among them” reads a tweet — yes, a tweet, because social media played a huge role in helping Bowman gather his research material — that is quoted in the book.
Bowman’s writing is well-researched and his narrative is paced superbly; it almost feels like one is watching a critically-acclaimed British war drama film — would the director of Dunkirk be interested? The account cascades from the chronicles of different regiments, which made up the Indian POW contingent under Axis control, to the cheery defiance of the soldiers in evading capture as the war galloped forward. Bowman is unhesitant in describing the racial prejudices of some British officers, acknowledging that “the agencies that might have remembered the Épinal escapers were tainted by racism…” His celebration of the local villagers who, at great risk to their lives, helped the escapers to reach the safe havens of Switzerland, also deserves to be brought into the limelight; Jules Perret and the diary he maintained have allowed readers an extensive insight into the defiant bravery of simple French farmers helping fellow humans, united by no common tongue or religion, only a common aversion to Nazism.
“Forgetting is a process, not a single act…”, ruminates Bowman philosophically in the Epilogue. By sweeping the daring escape stories of brown-skinned soldiers in Europe under the carpet, at a time when Subhas Chandra Bose was recruiting POWs, the Empire sought to delegitimise the contribution of the colonised to the preservation of the Empire. Bowman’s book is an act of remembrance, what E.P. Thompson would classify as a “gigantic act of reparation”.