THE WAR in Europe was over and the men who had been prisoners of the enemy were flown back home. With more than 350,000 individuals to transport and process, it was a major logistical operation which, to their credit, those in authority generally carried out with considerable efficiency. The returning men had fought for their country and, in many cases, been held captive for years. Their homecoming, one would have imagined, would have been amongst the most celebrated of the Second World War. At the same time, what tales these men must have had to tell. Fighting, surrender, capture; the trials of internment, their treatment at the hands of the Germans; surely their stories would fill many a volume? Yet when we researched Operation Exodus, as the return of the prisoners was code-named, we found little had been written on the subject, particularly in respect of facts and figures, other than the occasional first-hand account. I suppose people had already moved on. They had other things to think of. Life was going to be very different with the end of the fighting, and not necessarily for the better. Indeed, for some it was a difficult homecoming. Houses had been destroyed, loved ones dead or disappeared.
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