Soldier 124280 Synopsis

Post date: May 19, 2012 4:27:38 PM

Mike Sadler was in the South African Artillery and served in Tobruk when it fell in 1942. He was a POW in Italy and Austria, ending up in Stalag 18A&C.

After the war he became an educator and a successful author (Details can be found here: http://www.mikesadlerbooks.com, with links to sites where the paperback can be purchased.)

In 1999 he self-published his memoirs in a book "The War Story of Soldier 124280", this book has now been re-published this on Amazon.com.

The book is one of an ordinary young soldier in an extra-ordinary time and is more a spiritual, emotional and personal journey that would be similar to tens of thousands of young men, but written by a professional and sensitive story-teller with reflections on the amazing people he met and with whom he had many adventures. This is is a story of a boy becoming a man.

He covers his decision to volunteer at age 17, the rather hap-hazard training of the time, full of amusing and naive anecdotes; life in North Africa and Tobruk and then the final battle of Tobruk where he was used as a message "runner" and so got to see quite a wide section of the battle area. One tantalizing episode describes how they literally, "had in their sights" a number of German staff cars, believed to be Rommel (this matches a report by Rommel himself), yet they decided not to fire! In this section he also reports on a rather peculiar order for radio silence and a requirement to await firing orders which never came, right at the height of the battle. There are no official records of this or mention in other histories and accounts of Tobruk and I think this raises some interesting speculation as to why Tobruk was given up so readily by the Eighth Army?

Once captured he provides a sometimes sad, sometimes painful but also amusing account of life as a POW; transported to Italy, a strike when the men refused to work in the factories and then a rather idyllic time on the farms in Northern Italy. He then fell ill and was admitted to an Italian civilian hospital with some archaic remedies for his rheumatic fever. When Italy capitulated he was free for a short period but recaptured and taken to Stalag 18C where he became a medical orderly. Details of life in the Stalag camps are fairly well known, yet this personal account includes some surprising tales of the men he was with and the stress and traumas they had encountered and were encountering as POWs .

I believe this story would be particularly useful to researchers looking for well written first-hand accounts or information about others who were there that my father might have met or knew of.

This publication is not a commercial venture, but a genuine desire to share a really good story that is bound to resonate with many people of all ages interested in the history of the men who were in second world war.

Jeremy Sadler