For nearly fifty years, this manuscript sat in a battered trunk in a Florida garage. Nobody read it. Nobody published it. The man who wrote it never asked them to. He just came home, married his childhood sweetheart, and quietly lived his life. But the pages were there-waiting.
On January 29, 1945, U.S. Army Master Sergeant Jack Mallan stepped out of Stalag II-B into a blizzard. Ten below zero. Twelve hundred American prisoners of war were forced to march westward across Pomerania, fleeing the advancing Russian Army. Jack survived-through sheer willpower, dark humor, two escape attempts, and the unbreakable bonds of fellow prisoners.
What you hold is the manuscript Jack wrote as it happened: in his bunk, on the march, aboard the ship home. Alongside those pages in that trunk were his Purple Heart, his Bronze Star, and a jacket so small his grandson could barely fit one arm through it-the jacket of a man who had been starved nearly to death.
Jack Mallan was a Jewish-American soldier. Before his capture, fellow soldiers quietly removed his dog tags to hide his Jewish identity from his captors-a detail that may well have saved his life. His story is rare not because of its suffering, but because of its perspective. Far less has been preserved from Jewish soldiers who carried their identity into battle while confronting the regime that sought to exterminate their people. Jack's voice fills a gap in the historical record that few others can.
No scenes have been invented. No dialogue has been added. The voice you read is Jack's, exactly as he wrote it: vivid, wry, exhausted, and profoundly human.
His artifacts are now preserved at Yad Vashem in Jerusalem. His name lives in the historical record. And now, at last, his story can be heard.
