Forgotten story of escape from Nazis found  | Hot breaking news - video Dailymotion

Private Ray Bailey was captured in the summer of 1940 but was back home before Christmas

Transcript

00:00A British soldier's handwritten account of how he escaped a Nazi prisoner of war camp

00:04during World War II has been published after it was discovered at an auction.

00:09Private Ray Bailey, from Dunstable in Bedfordshire, was among the Allied troops

00:14captured by the Germans in 1940 after the French forces at St. Valerie-en-Cox surrendered.

00:20The 21-year-old managed to escape captivity and travel 2,000 miles, through Nazi-occupied Europe,

00:27to Spain, where he was then transported back to his parents' home in England.

00:32His 80,000-word account of the experience was found in an online auction won by amateur social

00:37historian David Wilkins, who has now published it under the title Blightier Bust. The 69-year-old,

00:44from Portland, Dorset, bid on the box of World War II memorabilia without knowing

00:50exactly what the contents would be. Inside, the diary collector found photographs,

00:55foreign currency and several notebooks that Private Bailey wrote on his return to England

01:00in 1940. He said, when it arrived, I couldn't believe the quality of what there was.

01:07Most published World War II memoirs are written much later in people's lives,

01:12but he was writing like you would write about a holiday you went on 18 months ago,

01:16he remembers it very clearly. I don't think there is anything from this early in the war

01:21written by a soldier ever to be found.