The Music Maker: One POW provided hope for thousands

On May 8 1945, forty-six-year-old Drum Major Jackson staggered towards his American liberators. Emaciated, dressed in rags, his decayed boots held together with string, he’d been force-marched for twenty days over the Austrian Alps after five heinous years as a POW in Nazi labour camps. He collapsed into his liberators’ arms, clinging to his only meaningful possession—his war diary. Having already experienced the horrific nature of battle in the First World War, Jackson had now survived ano...