Arnhem Lift: The Diary of a Glider Pilot

First edition, second impression.  96pp, with map frontispiece and further map. Beige cloth-covered boards with green lettering front and spine.  Volume produced in accordance with war economy standards.  12mo. Boards unevenly toned, moderately rubbed, rounded and softened at corners and tips of sunned and dry spine.  Text block edges and pages have some light toning and faint and occasional spotting.  Relevant newspaper cutting pasted onto both sides of the front free endpaper and rear endpapers.

An important and highly personal record of the Arnhem Lift by one of the few surviving glider pilots.  Hagen – German Jew who fled to England in the early 1930s and had himself had a brief spell in a Nazi concentration camp – flew on the Second Lift and fought through, escaping by swimming the Rhine. On returning to the England on leave, he was asked so often by friends and family for ‘his story’ that he decided to write it down, without any view to publication.  His then girlfriend arranged for its publication, anonymously, once he had return to the front.  This copy contains also three related newspaper clippings regarding the Dutch resistance and other officers who served at Arnhem.