author
Pat O'Brien
d. 1920
A young American aviator turned his wartime ordeal into one of the most dramatic escape memoirs of World War I. His story follows a Royal Flying Corps pilot shot down behind enemy lines, captured, and then driven by sheer nerve to make it back to safety.
1 Audiobook
Outwitting the Hun: My Escape from a German Prison Camp
by Pat O'Brien
About the author
Before he became an author, Pat O'Brien was an American volunteer pilot who joined the Royal Flying Corps during World War I. In 1917 he was shot down over enemy territory, taken prisoner by the Germans, and later escaped after months of danger and hardship.
He told that experience in Outwitting the Hun; My Escape from a German Prison Camp, published in 1918. The book is a fast-moving firsthand account of captivity, escape, and survival, and it helped make him widely known while the war was still fresh in the public mind.
O'Brien died in 1920, leaving behind a brief but striking legacy. What still sets his writing apart is its immediacy: it reads less like distant history and more like one person trying to think, endure, and stay alive under extreme pressure.