• Once a Hussar

  • A Memoir of Battle, Capture, and Escape in World War II
  • By: Ray Ellis
  • Narrated by: Derek Perkins
  • Length: 11 hrs and 24 mins
  • 4.6 out of 5 stars (15 ratings)

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Once a Hussar  By  cover art

Once a Hussar

By: Ray Ellis
Narrated by: Derek Perkins
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Publisher's summary

Once a Hussar is a vivid account of the wartime experiences of Ray Ellis, a gunner who in later life recorded this well-written, candid, and perceptive memoir of the conflict he knew as a young man seventy years ago.

As an impressionable teenager, filled with national pride, he was eager to join the army and fight for his country. He enlisted in the South Notts Hussars at the beginning of the Second World War and started a journey that would take him through fierce fighting in the Western Desert, the deprivation suffered in an Italian prisoner-of-war camp and a daring escape to join the partisan forces in the Appenines.

His story is an honest and moving memoir that relays graphic eyewitness accounts of the horrors of warfare, but it also reveals the surprising triumphs of the human spirit in times of great hardship. Ellis's self-deprecating humor skillfully counters the harsh realities related in a personal recollection of a war that claimed so many young lives. Once a Hussar is a compelling and deftly told account of one soldier's life in the Second World War.

©2009, 2014 Ray Ellis (P)2014 Audible Inc.

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Very well written personal memoir.

This man saw some ferocious fighting. If you often wonder if an artillery job was relatively safe, read this book. As this book found it’s legs I was drawn more and more deeply into just how much this man went through. He does not glorify or humble-brag at all he just tells you like it was. In fact he goes out of his way to remind and inform the listener that he is just relating his experience in one tiny corner of a big battle in a huge war, he never looses perspective. Just ordered a hardcover for my collection. Seriously, very good.

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