TITLE: Behind Barbed Wire
FORMAT: 52 pages, A5 paperback
COLOUR: Colour cover, colour images and black text
ISBN: 0-473-04509-5
PUBLISHER: Prisma Print Ltd, 2006
AUTHOR: Jennifer Pierson
PRICE: $30.00

When war was declared on 3 September 1939 thousands of young men queued at recruitment centres throughout New Zealand to enrol in the armed services. Once accepted they were sent to the various mobilisation centres where they were trained and then despatched overseas for duty in the North Africa campaigns. But for many of these early recruits their battle was brief. War is a deadly business. A great many lost their lives. Many more were captured with scarcely a shot fired. When the Germans arrested them with the phrase: ‘For you the war is over', for most it was. They sat out a long and frustrating war in prison camp. Captain Charles William Joshua Pierson was one of these. This is his story told from a diary kept through the time of his internment.