[Going to the Wars and A Dinner of Herbs] have charm and high
literary quality and are testaments to the art of self-deprecation and a
world in which memoirists drew attention to the people they knew rather
than to themselves. Verney had, at times, a taxing and dangerous war,
but to read his accounts of it, one might think he was merely an
observer. They are marvelously entertaining reads, not least because
they open up to us a world that has just passed from view; and they
speak to us in a voice we understand, but that is no longer entirely
familiar.―The New Criterion
In 1943, after parachuting into Sardinia to raid a German airfield, John
Verney and several of his comrades from the British irregular forces
were captured and sent to a POW camp in Italy's Abruzzo region. As the
Allies attempted to retake the country, Verney and two others made their
escape. For months, they survived on the generosity and bravery of the
local Italians who fed them and kept them hidden in haylofts and
mountain caves--despite the scarcity of resources and the dangers they
themselves faced by harboring English soldiers.
Twenty years after the war, Verney revisited the scenes of his
imprisonment and escape, and the result is both an enchanting evocation
of Southern Italy and an exhilarating story of wartime daring. He
recounts the ironic upsides of being a prisoner of war ("for the first
time in four long years, I was free to do entirely what I wanted, which
was to read as much as possible and try to learn to draw and write") as
well as the anxiety aroused by the possibility of attempting an escape.
He describes the extremes of boredom, hunger, discomfort, and mutual
irritation that he and his companions faced after their escape, and the
immense capacity for tolerance and goodness that they discovered in each
other--and especially in the desperately poor Italian families who
helped them. Verney writes with a deceptive ease and wit, which reveals
a subtlety and a candor that make this book as penetrating as it is
delightful.
