大象传媒

This story was submitted to the People's War site Shirley Norton by a volunteer from CSV on behalf of S Norton and has been added to the site with his/her permission fully understands the site's terms and conditions.

Victor was captured In Egypt by the Italians in 1941. While he was in Eqypt he met a man called Dan Soddin where they made a pact to help eachother through anything that they went through, which they both honoured (They even set up a business together, where they invented excavators buckets, when they got back to England) ! He and many others were shipped to Southern Italy and he ws transported by foot and train through Austria eventually arriving Krakow, Poland. He was never given any food or water and had to pick up grains of corn from horse manure which hadnt been digested, and stole raw potatos! One time, while he was being marched up, he was beaten up because one of his group had stolen milk from a farm, and his teeth were knocked with a rifle butt. As a result of losing his teeth, his gums became infected because of the broken teeth and the germans pulled them out without anesthectic. He also remembered being in a camp where next door there was a concentration camp where he could smell the buring bodies of jewish captives.
The day of his release in 1945, the germans heard that the russians were coming so they moved them out of the camp and marched them again. Nevertheless he was still a POW because there was nowhere for him to go even though he had been released. He was still reported missing a year after he was technically released! The Vatican that informed Victors wife Jean that he was still alive in a POW Camp! He was sent eventually sent back to England to be demobbed!

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