Shot down by Germans over occupied France, Harvie was the only member of his Bomber Command crew to survive the crash. After hiding for several days at a French farmhouse, he started back to England with the help of the French Resistance, but was betrayed to the Gestapo by a traitor. He spent a month in solitary confinement in Paris and then was transported by boxcar to Buchenwald. He describes the appalling conditions, the indignities, and the extreme hardship he and his fellow prisoners endured there. Later he was transferred to Stalag Luft III POW camp where, with food from the Red Cross and the comradeship of fellow prisoners, his body and spirit were restored. As the Russian army advanced into Germany, Harvie and the other POWs undertook the long march from eastern Germany to a camp near Bremen and then to Lübeck, near the Danish border, where he remained until the Allied forces broke through and he was liberated by the British army. Both painful and uplifting, Missing in Action is an invaluable record of the unforgettable horrors and heroes of World War II.

John D. Harvie's profile page

"A distinctive contribution to prisoner-of-war literature. Harvie's observations of 'life' in a death camp are extraordinary and are valuable evidence of the nature of Buchenwald and its conditions." S.F. Wise, History, Carleton University.