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Old 7th Feb 2017, 11:27
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ICM
 
Join Date: May 2008
Location: Bishops Stortford, UK
Age: 82
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Part of the reason for the story not being better known may lie in the unwillingness of Allied authorities to have it publicised when the men were eventually freed and repatriated. (From Buchenwald they were transferred into the 'proper' Luftwaffe POW system.) Why that should have been, I cannot say, but I understand it to be so.

A book "168 Jump into Hell" by Arthur G. Kinnis and Stanley A. Booker was published in Canada in 1999. Channel 5 ran a film "Bomber Boys" on the story in 2011.

In most cases, the men's stories started with betrayal to the SS by a Resistance collaborator and incarceration in a jail near Paris, out of the POW system, with their transfer to Buchenwald occurring as the Allies neared Paris. And if, years ago, you ever read "The White Rabbit" by Bruce Marshall, about the experiences of SOE agent Peter Yeo-Thomas, first published back in 1952, you would have found an incidental reference to the 168 in his time in Buchenwald.
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