Chicagoland MG Club: Library
Flywheel
Memories Of The Open Road

Keeps the Works Going Round on the Idle Strokes

Tom Swallow and Arthur Pill, 1944-45, hardbound, color drawings

Reinout told me about this book. It is a reproduction of several issues of Flywheel, a handwritten magazine written by (mostly British) members of the Muhlberg Motor Club while being held as POWs at Stalag IVb during WWII. Don’t think of Hogan’s Heroes, POW camps were more accurately portrayed in Stalag 17 or The Great Escape movies. The magazine articles were a collection of the men’s memories of pre-war motoring, the then current news and rumors, and thoughts for the future. Beautiful color drawings, although not all of the information is 100% accurate as it was written by memory, but as Lord Montagu is quoted as saying, “This fascinating book clearly demonstrates the Anglo-Saxon’s love affair with the motor car and their ingenuity in carrying on with it under the most difficult circumstances. No wonder we won the war in the end.”

P.S. Looking at the authors’ names, don’t get the idea that reading this book will be a hard.

-- ~~ Bill Mennell

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