The Longest Walk Home by Ray Bailey
A wonderful true story
Book Review: The Longest Walk Home
Ray Bailey was a young man, just 20 years of age, when he was called up to serve in the British Army in the Second World. In 1940 he found himself in France, sent there to halt the advancing German forces. Ray was captured, along with many other soldiers, by the Germans and forced to march for many days before making a brave decision to escape.
That decision led him to making a two-thousand mile trip on foot and bicyle to be able to get safely back to England. It’s a remarkable story told in Ray’s own beautiful handwritng in a collection of notebooks. The notebooks along with other ephemera lay undiscovered until they appeared in an auction. They were sold in that auction in 2018 and later put up for sale again in an online auction. David Wilkins, an avid collecter of such documents, purchased the collection and discovered this wonderful story written by Ray, who had completed his notebooks by the end of 1941. The story has remained untold until David published this book.
It’s a wonderful account and David Wilkins adds additional historical information to help the reader learn more about those times. Ray was a wonderful writer and it’s a shame that the story wasn’t put into print sooner. However, we now have the story and can read it for ourselves and join Ray on the epic journey across Europe as he makes his way home. There is a sad twist to this story, but I won’t spoil it for you.