A Man Escaped - Softcover

Locked in a condemned cell in the grim fortress of Montluc in Lyons, Andre Devigny, an officer of the French Underground, is still determined to free himself. It seems an impossible task. He is in solitary confinement; his strength is sapped by starvation and torture; locked doors, barred windows, and three great walls-not to mention the ever-vigilant Gestapo-stand between him and the realization of his desires. How he overcomes these obstacles, with the help of such flimsy tools as a safety pin and a filed spoon, makes for a gripping and profoundly impressive story.Devigny's portraits of his fellow prisoners are both vivid and pointed, and his plainspoken prose manages to capture their experiences wonderfully, offering readers a remarkable glimpse of the human spirit in the face of great adversity. One of the most extraordinary escape stories to come out of World War II, A Man Escaped is a record of ingenuity and endurance which rivals the best of the genre. (5 1/2 x 8 1/4, 208 pages)André Devigny was a heroic and much-decorated officer in the French Army, beginning his military career in an Infantry battalion during the Second World War and earning the Légion d'Honneur with four citations. At war's end, General Charles de Gaulle presented him with the Cross of the Liberation, a coveted decoration, and later appointed him a senior official in France's foreign intelligence organization. Devigny retired from military service in 1971 and died in 1999, at the age of 82.