From a Hard Place to a Rock (the WWII ecape to Gibraltar) by Timandra Slade

First-hand Accounts of Soldiers of the British Expeditionary Force on the Run in World War Two

This talk follows events in the summer of 1940 when two members of the speaker’s family were captured separately by the Nazi Germans. Both men managed to escape and, together with fellow officers, make their way through France to Spain where they were again captured and held by the authorities. Whilst captive in Spain and with details of their endeavours still fresh in their minds, the speaker’s father and his partner wrote an account of their escape – possibly one of the very first such accounts to be written. Finally arriving in Gibraltar it was here, tragically, that events in West Africa led to a Vichy bombing raid and not all of the party were to complete a ‘home run’.