Author(s): Ernest Brough

Biography & Memoir

'We made our break on the night of April 8, 1944. A few weeks before there had been a mass escape of POWs and the countryside was crawling with Germans. But we didn't know anything about it, which was just as well ...' After joining up alongside his mates from country Victoria, at 22 Ern Brough fought and was wounded at Tobruk and at El Alamein in World War II. But neither he nor his humanity died. One morning during the brutal Allied offensive against Rommel in October 1942, he piggybacked a badly wounded enemy soldier back to German lines under heavy fire. Three hours later, the tanks came and Brough was taken prisoner. On Good Friday, 1944, Brough and two others escaped from an Austrian POW camp and embarked on a desperate flight through Slovenia and Croatia to Bosnia. Travelling by night, using only the moon, a stolen map and a handmade compass to guide themselves, they swam icy rivers, traversed snowy mountain passes, hid in ditches and were nearly caught countless times, escaping once by pretending to be Germans. This is the story of that incredible journey, the exploits that earned Brough the Military Medal, and the actions at home that have since made him a local hero.