Train to Nowhere
One Woman's World War II, Ambulance Driver, Reporter, Liberator
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- $8.99
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- $8.99
Publisher Description
ONE OF HAY FESTIVAL'S 100 BEST BOOKS WRITTEN BY WOMEN IN THE LAST 100 YEARS.
'The most gripping piece of war reportage I have ever read. What a writer! Her observations, mixed with dry humour and compassion, place her at the heart of the conflict and somehow apart from it, as a good historian should be. Remarkable.' Joanna Lumley
Train to Nowhere is a memoir of war seen through the sardonic eyes of Anita Leslie, a funny and vivacious young woman who reports on her experiences with a dry humour, finding the absurd alongside the tragic.
Daughter of a Baronet and first cousin once removed to Winston Churchill, Lelsie joined the Mechanized Transport Corps as a fully trained mechanic and ambulance driver during World War II, serving in Libya, Syria, Palestine, Italy, France and Germany. Ahead of her time, Anita bemoans 'first-rate women subordinate to second-rate men', and, as the British Army forbade women from serving at the front, joined the Free French Forces in order to do what she felt was her duty.
Writing letters in Hitler's recently vacated office and marching in the Victory parade contrast with observations of seeing friends murdered and a mother avenging her son by coldly shooting a prisoner of war. Unflinching and unsentimental, Train to Nowhere is a memoir of Anita's war, one that, long after it was written, remains poignant and relevant.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In this remarkable memoir, originally published in the U.K. in 1948 and appearing in the U.S. for the first time, Leslie (1914 1985) writes with wit and candor of fulfilling her patriotic duty as a female ambulance driver. Born into a wealthy family she was the daughter of a baronet and a cousin of Sir Winston Churchill Leslie nevertheless signed up for war duty with the Mechanised Transport Corps, with which she trained as a mechanic and drove an ambulance. She served in Libya, Syria, Palestine, Italy, France, and Germany, and was awarded the Croix de Guerre in 1945 by Gen. Charles de Gaulle. Her account is full of telling, ground-level details about her various deployments: "Before I had been in France a week a chill descended on my spirit," she writes. "The boisterous gaiety of military life in the Middle East and Italy seemed to belong to another life." Leslie earnestly details navigating her ambulance through bloody battlefields and delivering supplies to far-flung field hospitals; she also indulged in unexpected joys and pleasures, such as taking a warm bath. "Our friends offered us bowls of hot milk while we floundered in the mud," Leslie wrote, experiencing simultaneously the joys and hardships of war; "all knew we were going to join the French attack in Alsace." Leslie's straightforward writing style and eye for detail result in a wonderful saga of one brave young woman's war experiences.
