Books: The Art of Escape

THE COLDITZ STORY (288 pp.) —P R. Reid—Lippincott ($3.95).

Two British officers, talking things over one day in June 1940, agreed that what they had chiefly in common was an intense desire to be somewhere else. One had a Christmas date in England that he wanted to keep. The other said that if he did not get away, his wife would accuse him of "not caring for her any more." Said Captain Reid to Captain Barry: "Good, let's start." The only catch was that they were then in a German prisoner-of-war camp near Salzburg, Austria.

In The Colditz Story, Author Patrick Reid...