Yours Till the End: Two Survivors of the Hostage Crisis - Their Amazing Story

Jackie Mann, a 75-year-old British pub-keeper in Beirut and a WW II Spitfire pilot, was picked up on the street one morning in 1989 by Palestinian terrorists and held hostage for two and a half years. Kept in chains and isolation, deprived of reading materials when his eyeglasses broke and approached sexually by his captors, Mann, the oldest of all the hostages taken in the Middle East, kept up a stoic spirit that brought him through the ordeal in physically weakened but relatively good condition. Although he was never permitted to see the faces of his captors, from conversations overheard and movements around him, he decried the inept and bumbling, if dangerous, men who, toward the end, simply wished to be rid of him. His wife, Sunnie, who detailed her ordeal in Holding On , never knew if he was alive but stayed on in war-torn Beirut, waiting for word. Throughout the nightly shellings, shortages of food, water, money and electricity--and the eventual kidnapping of her steadfast companion, a poodle--she fruitlessly besieged the British Embassy and the press for help. Alternately, Jack and Sunnie each recount the drama of their daily lives in homely detail, drawing a picture of mutual devotion and staunchness of spirit. Photos. (Dec.)