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129BOOK REVIEWSFootprints on the Sands of Time by Oliver Clutton-Brock. Grub Street;2003. %u00a335.If the RAFHS were in the habit of nominating a %u2018book of the month%u2019,this would probably have to be it. Its concise sub-title, RAF BomberCommand Prisoners of War in Germany 1939-45, tells you what thebook is about but conveys little impression of the remarkable breadthand depth of its content. The first point to make is that this is a big book,548 pages, weighing in at 1.2 Kgs (that%u2019s 2 lbs 10 oz in real money), andmore than half of the content is in a very small typeface, probably 8point, so there is absolutely no shortage of information. The first half ofthe book provides a wide-ranging examination of the subject. The firsttwelve chapters provide a narrative account of events, and of thesignificant personalities involved in them, at each of the camps at whichairmen were incarcerated. The remaining six cover more general topics,including wartime repatriations, Operation EXODUS, traitors andcollaborators, and war crimes. Appendices provide notes on ancillarytopics, such as Red Cross parcels, the Nazi propaganda campaigndirected against airmen and the various Nazi security organisations. Inaddition there is a chronological summary of key dates, specificallyrecording major movements of RAF prisoners, and a series of statisticalanalyses which present Bomber Command%u2019s PoWs with enteringarguments of month, aircraft type, squadron, rank, nationality or target.The endpapers provide maps showing the locations of all of the campscovered by the book (including those not actually dedicated to airmenbut used by them). A representative selection of camp site plans is alsoprovided and there is the customary Grub Street-style insert containingmore than seventy photographs, many of them of surprisingly goodquality considering the conditions under which some must have beentaken. Finally, there is the core of the book, a listing of some 11,000individuals tabulating their names, ranks and nationalities and noting thesquadron, target and aircraft type and serial number on the date on whicheach one was lost, plus his PoW Number, the camps in which he waskept and any relevant remarks; all of which occupies some 210 pages.So much for the facts and figures, what of the style? How does itread? The literature on PoWs is surprisingly extensive, indeed thebibliography in this book runs to some five-and-a-half pages. Many of