Boys at War [Paperback]

'there was nothing ordinary about the courage he and his comrades displayed night after night over occupied Europe . . . This is a fascinating wartime memoir that deserves a wide readership.' --Mail on Sunday, October 2005

'Amid the plain prose he produces arresting images . . . His candour increases one's admiration for him.'

`Boys at War is a minor classic of the Other Ranks' war'

`This vivid story tells of just a few individuals . . . But in its meticulous accuracy and totally honest recall . . . it paints a picture far more real than any history book or idealised film could do'

Russell Margerison writes of the dangerous but strangely unreal world of the Air Gunner, sitting high in the turret of a bomber over Europe, wrapped in several layers of clothes and awed by the destructive beauty of the scene below. His role was to keep a look out for enemy fighters and to take a shot at them if they gave him the chance. After many raids his plane was shot down. The author tells of his weeks on the run with the Belgian underground, followed by many months of captivity in Germany. He describes the long march of January 1945 when for 18 days nearly 1500 prisoners were marched through blizzards to another camp, surviving on an inch of soup a day. A few months later, the prisoners' new camp was 'liberated' by the Russians. The sequel added to the second edition tells of his return to Belgium many years after the War.

Extracts were serialised in the Mail on Sunday, May 2009

Russell Margerison was born to a very poor Lancashire family and is the only survivor of six children, four of them dying before he was born. As a secondary modern schoolboy, he was always happy at school but was more interested in sport than academic subjects. He joined the air force at the age of eighteen, in 1943, and trained as an air gunner. He took part in raids over Germany before being shot down over Belgium, sheltered by the resistance and eventually taken prisoner. In his civilian life, he served an apprenticeship as a compositor with the then Northern Daily Telegraph, Blackburn, and spent most of his working life in printing; for the last fifteen years he was employed by the Manchester Evening News and the Guardian. Around two years after the end of the war he married Betty Coldwell from Huddersfield, who had been the girlfriend of Frank Moody who unfortunately perished when Russell's aircraft was shot down. They have four sons and at the time of going to press have been married fifty-nine years.