Author(s): Tom Trumble

Military History

A boy's own adventure that traverses some of the great battlefields of WWII - a story of breathtaking gallantry, resilience and friendship, but also of violence, hatred and cruelty. When 22-year-old sapper Ian Busst boarded the RMS Mauretania bound for Glasgow, it was the beginning of an extraordinary military adventure that took him through fighting in Tobruk and surviving horrific conditions in the prison camps of occupied Europe. Busst - known as 'Mad Bastard' because he would do anything to survive - became a great escape artist. Ian Busst was witness to several iconic moments of the Second World War - the Battle of Britain; fighting in the Western Desert; the Fall of Fascist Italy; the near annihilation of Munich. He is now 95, but the detail with which he could recount certain moments that took place 70 years earlier makes his life well worth documenting. He remembers the way a soldier held a cigarette before battle; the thrum of a transport ship making full speed in a storm; the smell after an air raid; the sound of a strafing Messerschmitt; the physical and mental anguish of enduring 28 days solitary confinement for failing to salute the prison commandant; the names and faces of the Italian partisans that aided his escape through the Apennine mountains; the glorious taste of tinned herrings in sauce; the expression on a wounded comrade's face moments before he took his last breath.