Each prisoner of war who decides to escape is different but they all have one thing in courage. The flame that spurs prisoners of war to escape springs from varied sources. For some of the Second-World-War prisoners, whose stories are told in this book, the alternative to escape was death. Others felt that confinement and boredom were destroying their minds and escape was the only method of staying sane. In one of the eleven adventures Robert Jackson has chosen, the motive was love. All were desperate plans and yet, remarkably, many of them succeeded, no matter how ridiculous they seemed. Wherever the setting and whatever the reasons for the escape, the predominant theme of all the stories is courage—courage and the determination, when freedom calls, to attempt and often to achieve the impossible. These are tales of hope and triumph, of sorrow and heartbreak. They are stories of desperation and they are stories of brilliance. When Freedom Calls is a well-researched and detailed collection of some of the most daring escape plans in history. ‘The descriptions of weaponry…are authentically detailed’ - Publishers Weekly Robert Jackson was born in 1941 in the North Yorkshire village of Melsonby. A former pilot and navigation instructor, his active involvement with aviation lasted many years. Following his retirement from the RAFVR in 1977 as a squadron leader, he became a full-time aviation writer and aerospace correspondent and lectured extensively on strategic issues. He speaks five languages, including Russian, and has written more than forty nonfiction works on military affairs.