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Welcome to the official web site of Horace 'Jim' Greasley. Here you will find all the information on Horace and his book, 'DO THE BIRDS STILL SING IN HELL?'
The site has sample chapters, photos, press information, and you can safely purchase the book directly from our site. You can also contact Horace through the site with any feedback or questions. Update of all the latest news will be listed below. Thank you for visiting.
*LATEST NEWS UPDATES WILL BE LISTED BELOW*
3rd February 2010: It is with deepest regret that we announce the passing away of Horace 'Jim' Greasley at 91 years of age. We have listed an obituary below to a wonderful man and friend.
Horace ‘Jim’ Greasley. Soldier, POW, Author, Hero
Horace ‘Jim’ Greasley fought for his country during World War II, spending more years than he cared to remember in POW camps. Horace defied the odds and survived the war despite 4 years 364 days incarceration. Despite his barbaric and brutal treatment he described himself as one of the lucky ones, he came back.
After the war Horace went into business… being an employee was not for him.
“I had five years of people shouting at me and telling me what to do,” he once said, “I swore that would never happen again.”
He opened a gentlemen’s hairdressers, a Taxi firm and a transport company. All three business’s were successful. He retired to Spain with his wife Brenda as he approached his seventieth birthday.
Horace ‘Jim’ Greasley was 89 years of age when he decided to tell his story of his war time exploits interned in Nazi concentration camps. Within six months Horace and his ghost-writer had pulled together a book billed as “The greatest World War II escape story never told.”
Horace ‘Jim’ Greasley was a fighter. He fought the Germans on the battlefields of France and he fought them in their concentration camps. Eight years ago he was given just a few hours to live and his family were called to his bedside. Horace soldiered on and proved the doctors wrong. On another three occasions his family were told that his number had reached the top of life’s list but still he battled on and pulled through.
Someone, somewhere may well have decided that indeed time was up for Horace but he wasn’t ready to go…not yet. Horace still had one more mission in life, one more ambition, a wish…
He had to leave the world a legacy.
‘Do The Birds Still Sing In Hell?’ touched the hearts and souls of everyone who read it. His readers laughed and cried with him, they willed him not to get caught each and every time he slipped through the bars of the window in defiance of the Nazi’s. Horace ‘Jim’ Greasley escaped over 200 times to meet with his lover in the forests of Silesia. His book, a true legacy, is filled with humour and his extraordinary character shines through every page as does his compassion for his fellow man and his love, passion and tenderness for his lover and heroine Rosa Rauchbach.
Horace Greasley took on an undertaking at 89 years of age, he wanted to tell the world his story, particularly the younger generation who he said must never forget the sacrifices that his fellow soldiers made in order to preserve our freedom and our way of life.
He persuaded his ghost-writer to pen a children’s version of ‘Do The Birds Still Sing In Hell?’ (Written, but yet to be published.) He hoped it might find its way on to the school curriculum. He was never happier than when fielding questions about the war from the younger generation and made sure they respected and remembered the sacrifices their ancestors made.
The world is a sadder place without Horace ‘Jim’ Greasley, the whole of the free world owe so much to the likes of Horace and men like him. It is an oft used expression, ‘Lest we Forget’ and yet through the pages of his book we will ensure they never will.
Horace ‘Jim’ Greasley inspired everyone who met him.
His devoted wife Brenda survives him as do his son and daughter Steven and Lesley, grandchildren Jessica, Jeremy and Josephine and adopted grandchildren Rachel, Alan, and Ian.
To live on in the hearts and minds of readers is truly not to die
Ken Douglas
KEN DOUGLAS
DIRECTOR OF OPERATIONS
LIBROS INTERNATIONAL
www.librosinternational.com
‘Do The Birds Still Sing In Hell’ is based on a true story, on information gathered from eyewitness accounts and over one hundred hours of interviews. It is a story about misery, genocide and enslavement…. it is a story of one man’s daring in the face of adversity.
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A few words from Ken Scott, ghost-writer of 'Do The Birds Still Sing In Hell.
I reluctantly agreed to meet up with an
elderly gentleman in the spring of 2008. He was eighty-nine years old. I was
desperately trying to finish off my third book and had another two projects on
the go. I was notified that an ex-POW wanted to write his World War Two memoirs.
“Oh no,” I said to my wife, “not another war story.”
It was a man called Filly Bullock who introduced the two of us in a small town called Alfaz del Pi on an unusually hot March day on Spain’s Costa Blanca, the White Coast. Filly had warned me I was about to stumble on the greatest World War Two story never told and that I would fall over myself to write it.
I secretly bet my bottom dollar that I wouldn’t. This old boy just doesn’t know how busy I am, I thought to myself, and anyway he’s eighty-nine, why the hell did he wait until now to think about getting his book written?
I sat in Horace Greasley’s well-kept lounge while his wife Brenda ferried in the coffee. I’ll talk to him for ten minutes, I’d decided, let him down gently. Anyway what was I doing here? I’m a fiction writer; sure I’d dabbled with the memoirs of a not so famous, not so exciting MP but the book never made it to print. I’d had no experience whatsoever of ghostwriting this type of book. I knew nothing about it, wouldn’t even know where to start.
I sat with Horace for over two hours as he relayed his condensed story to me, first through numerous cups of coffee and then through the beers. (Horace preferred gin). I sat with an open mouth as this old soldier took me through the dramatics of his unfortunate capture, the horrors of a death march and a train journey where the Allied prisoners fell dead every few hours. The story was only just beginning.
I listened while Horace ‘Jim’ Greasley spoke.
Horace relayed his near death experience in the first camp and then took me through his first meeting with Rosa, in Camp Two. There was an instant mutual attraction between the young German interpreter and the emaciated prisoner. Within a few weeks he would be having sex with her on a filthy bench top in the camp drilling workshops, under the noses of the German guards. It wasn’t love at first sight; that took the best part of a year. In fact, at the exact point he discovered how much he felt about Rosa and how much he actually loved her, the Germans transferred him to yet another camp.
He was devastated. It was at this point that Horace told me that the good bit was only just beginning. He would relay his time in the third camp at Freiwaldau in Polish Silesia in dulcet whispered tones for nearly an hour.
I sat in silence. The book was formulating in my head as I desperately fought the urge to take my pen out and begin scribbling right there and then. I had questions. Why wait nearly seventy years before writing the book? Why me? How’s his health? A book can take a year to write - is he going to hold out?
I never asked the questions as I didn’t want to hear any answers I might not like. I agreed to give it a go. For five months I sat with Horace while he relayed the greatest escape story ever. I thought back to my youth, the great Colditz stories and of course Steve McQueen in ‘The Great Escape’. Horace Greasley’s account of his time in the POW camps blows those stories out of the water.
What makes it all the more amazing is that every bit of the book is true. I attempted to exaggerate at times with a little poetic licence. Horace wouldn’t allow it; in reality I didn’t need to. The words in this book are not those of Ken Scott, ghostwriter, they are the words of Horace Greasley, ex-prisoner of war. Horace cannot write or type because of severe arthritis. I take no credit for this book; I have merely acted as his fingers.
Horace’s long-term memory and attention to detail is remarkable. At times reliving the brutality at the hands of his German captors would bring him to tears. I closely followed suit; it is one of my weaknesses. For me, tears are contagious.
I would like to think that this book has brought a certain closure for Horace on the horrors he experienced during the war. He has expressed on more than one occasion that this book is for his prisoner comrades - the men that suffered at the hands of their fellow man.
The experience of writing this book has made my life richer; meeting a man like Horace and hearing of his suffering has humbled me. I doubt whether my generation could have coped with the experiences these men went through. I relayed some of the stories to my children Callum, nine and Emily, twelve. They were fascinated and listened at times in disbelief as I described the prisoners’ suffering and the callous, barbaric acts committed by mankind. I think it is important that we never forget the suffering an ordinary individual goes through during war and remember that Horace was one of the lucky ones... he came home.
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.
My children have met Horace. We socialise with him and his wife Brenda. I count myself fortunate to have met such a man as Horace Greasley and take it as a great honour that he approached me to write his book.
I only hope that I have done it justice.
