The Long Walk Home

On September 13th 1943, two young British officers seized the chance to escape their PoW convoy after the capitulation of Italy. This catapulted them onto a two-month, seven-hundred-mile journey through enemy territory down the spine of Italy, helped by many brave local families. This new edition of The Long Walk Home sets the record of this extraordinary adventure straight. It gives Frank Simms equal billing as author, something that was denied him by the tragic early death of his companion Peter Medd. Simms’s son, Marcus Binney, fleshes out the father he barely knew, who also died young less than a decade after this daring escape, and in the process does much to put the adventure in context. He has also unearthed his father’s thrilling account of his previous ‘Great Escape’ by tunnelling out of the PoW camp at Padula in the south of Italy.