Josef M. Bauer, As Far as My Feet Will Carry Me Review

I saw As Far as My Feet Will Carry Me by Josef M. Bauer and thought it would be really interesting. I didn't realize it was written such a long time ago...but that's OK...it was a pretty exciting book. The weirdest thing about this book is that there are no chapter divisions, which makes it difficult to find a place to stop! This book was adapted into a German movie in 2001.

As Far As My Feet Will Carry Me by Josef M. Bauer is a true story of a German soldier's escape from a Siberian labor camp and his 3 year trek to freedom. Clemens Forell was sentenced to twenty-five years of forced labor in a Siberian lead mine after World War II. As you can imagine, a Siberian lead mine is not a fantastic place to spend 25 years. After a few years in captivity he staged a pretty wild escape and got out. That's the good news. The bad news is that he had to get across 8000 miles of Siberia.

His story of travelling that whole way is pretty crazy. He spent a lot of the time by himself walking across Siberia. He also spent time with various groups of people trying to stay away from the Soviet authorities.

At the risk of ruining the ending...he makes it back to Germany after three years. (Though I imagine you figured that out...how else would we know what happened!) The book was a pretty fast and fun read...and obviously Clemens Forell was quite an impressive man.