Do the Birds Still Sing in Hell?: A powerful true story of love and survival

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The ending left me flat. It is sad to know his English Rose died during child birth along with the baby. What did he do after that? Did they have reunions in later years? Horace 'Jim' Greasley was 20 years of age in the spring of 1939 when Adolf Hitler invaded Czechoslovakia and latterly Poland. There had been whispers and murmurs of discontent from certain quarters, and the British government began to prepare for the inevitable war. Even the point when a Nazi-sympathizing civilian was overhearing sensitive information while taking a piss, the author felt the need to add the detail of the civilian "pinching the tip of his penis" to slow the flow of urine. WHY do we need these details? Though it was ghost-written by Ken Scott, he stated he literally only acted as Greasley‘s fingers and typing out the book for the latter, aged 89 at the time, was heavily afflicted with arthritis. While Greasley does begin by providing some context for himself and the political climate he was facing at the time, it doesn’t take long for him to begin discussing the rushed preparations he was forced to undertake to join the army. After seven weeks of training, we see him joining with the 2nd/5th Battalion Leicester, and his capture when he found himself facing the might of the German army with nothing but a few rounds in his pouch. Upon finishing the book it becomes apparent that there was no one alive to verify the story. Although it is likely radio parts were sneaked into the concentration camp and that Jim escaped to see the woman he loved on numerous occasions, there is often a lingering feeling of exaggeration and recollection of conversations that could not have been possible. It is also never made clear whether the letters from Jim’s lover, Rosa Rauchbach, are the original articles or are they what he remembers of them. It is especially dubious that Jim kept copies of the letters he wrote to Rosa, unless he had the foresight to keep them for this book.

Book Genre: Autobiography, Biography, Historical, History, Holocaust, Memoir, Nonfiction, Romance, War, World War II For instance, while some people describe all which happens in a very matter-of-fact way without pulling any punches or embellishing anything, there are others who pull more towards the emotional side, in hopes of making us feel rather than simply see. In my opinion, Do the Birds Still Sing in Hell? falls into the latter category. PDF / EPUB File Name: Do_the_Birds_Still_Sing_in_Hell_-_Horace_Greasley.pdf, Do_the_Birds_Still_Sing_in_Hell_-_Horace_Greasley.epub Again, considering that he was a PoW, I would have thought that he would have had bigger concerns than whether his penis (the biggest in the camp - thanks for the constant reminder 🙄) still worked 🤷🏼‍♀️ I appreciate that the writer wrote it acting ‘as the fingers of’ the fruity old story teller, but in my view it would have been kinder to the teller’s (now) memory, and that of his contemporaries, not to mention ‘his’ women, to put it through some serious editing.What a shame that the original teller of this story seems to have added in an abundance of far-fetched embellishments to what could otherwise have been an interesting and compelling account of his life as a POW. The author said people tell him all the time about "great stories" he should write. Someone told him about Horace, and he thought, I'll talk to the old codger, see what he has to say, humor him. Then was riveted for hours by the story and decided to write it. The project reps the second feature film musical from Monarch Media, with its first production, A Week Away, having sold to Netflix earlier this year. Barnett, Powell and Patel launched Monarch Media earlier this year with a goal to produce two to three feature films a year in all genres, at all budget levels. Deadline first reported that South Korean filmmaker Byung-gil Jung will direct Monarch’s military action thriller Havoc, set inside the North Korean side of the DMZ. As much as it's stated that it's based on "true events" and it's not "exaggerated" - I still feel like this is more a work of fiction. It, unfortunately, made me question how much of the story was true - especially the conversations - how can they be recalled with such clarity after that many years? Horace's war didn't last long. . . On 25 May 1940 he was taken prisoner and so began the harrowing journey to a prisoner-of-war camp in Poland. Those who survived the gruelling ten-week march to the camp were left broken and exhausted, all chance of escape seemingly extinguished.

This is billed as a memoir. The author claims he’s only telling the story of Horace Greasley. At times I didn’t get that feeling especially when conversations took place with their captors. I was also trying to figure out if this is a story about a Englishman who is captured in France or an attempt at pornography. The lines truly become blurred. I completed this book as it was a book club challenge, but never have I forced myself on through a book so unwillingly. I can’t believe someone’s planning to make a film about this!

The first time Horace has sex with Rose (the love of his life and the reason he started escaping over 200 times).... it's rape. She says, "No. Stop. We'll get caught." and whether that last line means she wants to but is afraid to get caught or not, the first two words make it rape. AND he even says he was raping her. I couldn't paint a picture of Rose in my head because all I knew about her was that she had nice boobs and a nice body and that she was always satisfied by Jim (and his massive willy)... That's it. Cringe. Although Jim was from a time when sexism appeared to be ‘accepted’, Jim’s persistent self-congratulatory remarks about his performance in bed were tedious and only reflected poorly upon his personality: ‘I left Rosa, with a satisfying soreness between the legs’. Jim possesses a proud obsession with mentioning how endowed he is and seems to save all his adjectives for these all-too-frequent occurrences, which have no significance to the story. Then there was the constant placing of the author at the centre of some heroic piece or other. 200 escapes? Really? Here's where I have questions. Did the author JUST write what Horace told him, like, word for word, or did the author get the story and like most ghost writers, shape it into a book.

From the moment we are taken on the ten-week death march to the prison camp in Poland, Greasley assaults our senses with vivid descriptions of all the inhuman suffering he and his fellow prisoners had to endure every day, every hour, and every minute of their trip. Depois, a forte componente sexual. Eu percebo que Jim tinha apenas 20 anos quando se deu a guerra e que os tempos eram outros mas, será que eram necessárias tantas descrições sexuais? E tantas descrições do tamanho e capacidade do seu pénis? There are plenty of interesting chapters in the book about his captivity and the harsh treatment the SS doled out to the English pigs and how they would rebel against their captors even if it meant they would receive a severe beating or worse. I enjoyed when Horace, “Jim” busted up the sergeant that surrendered without firing a shot. It’s true, even if they would have fought it out, it wouldn’t have prevented France from falling, but at least they would have made a stand. Justice was served! Joseph Horace Greasley was a British soldier during the Second World War who was captured by the Wehrmacht and became famous later for having escaped from his camp over 200 times to meet with his love interest. His life was the subject of an autobiography titled Do the Birds Still Sing in Hell?This quote (which is meant to be the thoughts of a close friend in the book) kind of sums up the way that Horace (Jim) is consistently described throughout the book, “Jim Greasley was almost certainly one of the unsung heroes in the Second World War. He was the hunter, the gatherer, the engineer, the smuggler, the lover and the fighter. He was the most stubborn bastard he’d ever met.” These sorts of descriptions are pretty constant. When so much has been written about WWII, when zillions of stories have been told, is it still possible to find something really, really different? In short, Greasley tries his best to make us understand the conditions under which he and his comrades had to make due, and the effect is quite powerful, even if you’ve read this about this subject matter already. There is definitely a whole lot of darkness to trudge through in this book before we see any light, and in my opinion, despite not being an author, Greasley made good use of his limited wordsmithing abilities to accurately convey how he perceived the unfolding events. The Light of Love Even in the most horrifying places on earth, hope still lingers in the darkness, waiting for the opportunity to take flight.

When war was declared Horace Greasley was just twenty-years old. After seven weeks' training with the 2/5th Battalion, the Royal Leicestershire Regiment, Horace found himself facing the might of the German Army in a muddy field south of Cherbourg, in northern France, with just thirty rounds in his ammunition pouch. Do The Birds Still Sing In Hell?: He Escaped over 200 Time from a Notorious German Prison Camp to See the Girl He Loved. This Is the Incredible Story of Horace Greasley We must continue to teach our children about the futility and horrors of war. The politicians that instigate them must question their conscience. They never suffer; only the young men and women of their country and the countries they fight with.” This is an amazing story and well worth the read. At times I couldn’t help but think that and elderly Horace was using the book to reminisce nostalgically about being a young man which brought the content of the book down. For example, the sex scenes were very graphic and didn’t fit with the mood of the book at all- it was kind of like reading a cheap romance novel. The size of Horace’s penis was bragged about around 3 times- each time more random than the first!It’s hard to know if an editor even glanced at this novel or they had adjectival dyslexia, considering the constant tedium, clunky sentences, and repetitive conversations. Instead of allowing the reader to assume that the two people in the scene are in-fact talking to one another, each has to sign off with the other’s name: ‘Can I have a haircut Jim?’, ‘Yes you can Flapper’. ‘How are you Jim?’ ‘I am good Flapper’. Gripping stuff. Forgotten the title or the author of a book? Our BookSleuth is specially designed for you. Visit BookSleuth Horace was a sexually driven man, from his accounts, I believe he loved to love and be loved. To remove this characteristic from the plot line and character of Horace would’ve been dehumanising for him, as it is an essential component of the book. Horace himself doesn’t sound much like a contemporary “hero” or even a gentleman in many cases, his lust for sex is clear and these scenes are vivid and descriptive. War is a marvellous stimulus for the economy of a failing country. It takes young men out of unemployment and creates wealth for Arms dealers, construction companies and medical and drugs corporations. Said country can rape thieve and pillage with complete justification. World War III - coming to a TV screen near you soon.”