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The man with nine lives.

After a disastrous start to World War II, Yeoman spent three and a half years inside, trying to get out. This episode of Kiwis At War runs the roller coaster of his capture and several bold escape attempts.

"Standard book of field service regulations says that it is the duty of an officer in the British army, once captured to escape" declares 91 year old Katikati resident Allan Yeoman.

So he did.

On more than one occasion he could very easily have been shot. Although he was imprisoned in Italy, Germany, Austria and Yugoslavia, Allan Yeoman never lost his determination to be free.

He survived some rather dodgy escape plans, one of which saw him escaping from a four story building using little more than a rope of sheets. In a heart-wrenching moment, dangling 15 metres off the ground, Allan was spotted by the armed guard.

"And the only reason I'm here today," laughs Yeoman, "is that the sentry was late back for duty from the town, and instead of going to the barracks to get his rifle, he went past the armoury and grabbed the first rifle he could see, not knowing it was faulty&"

Yeoman and his comrade got away, and spent nearly three weeks getting to the coast, only to be spotted by an Italian guard lurking behind a building.

"We were sent back on the train - it took 19 days to get to the coast, and 9 hours to get back," he smiles. At the time, his escape was a record. He was met at the camp gates by the commandant, who offered a warm handshake with one hand, but kept a pistol firmly gripped in his other.

"There was a fair bit of fellow feeling between soldiers. It was as though 'we didn't start his war, and on the battlefield you are my enemy, but that's no reason why I should dislike you'."

But his escapades soon got Allan bundled off to the Italian equivalent of Colditz, the imposing Gavi castle. Now labelled 'molto pericoloso' - very dangerous - Yeoman was shifted around camps, and into Austria. He made another audacious escape by posing as a Frenchman and fled through the mountains, where he spent time fighting with the Yugoslav partisans.

Captured again on his way back to Italy, Yeoman narrowly avoided a firing
squad, and saw out the rest of the war in Germany.

It was a tremendously long road to freedom, that makes Allan Yeoman one of the greatest Kiwi escape artists of the war.

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