The story was called The Long Walk by a polish officer. It has been republished and has been on our family’s homeschooling list for years.
Goodstory well told.
Here’s the Wiki article on “The Long Walk”, which turned out to be fiction.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S%C5%82awomir_Rawicz
An excellent read! I first read it as a teen in Madison, WI in the early 60s, and then just recently via Kindle.
Here is a long and fascinating discussion about Rawicz who wrote the book (actually, he had a ghostwriter named Ronald Downing), and a fellow named Witold Glinski, who in 2009 claimed that Rawicz, whose real name was Roscislaw Rusiecki, as I learned elsewhere just now, had stolen his, Glinski’s story. It turns out (as far as we can tell, and a number of historians including Ann Applebaum, who specializes in the history of Gulag, have studied these claims) that both of these gentlemen made up their stories without actually living them, although there have been successful escapes from the Gulag, and at one point 3 or 4 escapees managed to reach Calcutta. For example, there was never a camp #303, as Rawicz claims.