大象传媒

Mr father sadly is no longer alive he died at the age of 46. He was involved in the battle of Ahnem and was wounded there quite badly on the shoulder and arm. He was taken to a hospital in Holland which was first bombed and then taken over by the Germans. My father was transferred from her to a prisoner of war camp and it is from here that he started writing a small diary. The book is very small and all he had was an indelable pencil and I am sure that had he have been caught writing this he would have been in much trouble. In this diary he writes of how much they relied on Red Cross Parcels for supplies, how he longed for letters from home, and how he was marched for days and nights, with I might add a wound that was proving difficult to heal, whithout a lot of sleep from one camp to another. How they spent one night sitting on a football pitch in the pouring rain.

The diary starts from 18th Sept 44 and sadly ends in Jan 45. He did survive all this I am glad to say, but his pencil or something must have happened because he was unable to complete it and did not come home until the summer of 1945.

Since the death of my mother I decided to donate this little book to the War Museum in London, who have tried to preserve the pages of book as they were becoming very delicate. Before I sent it to them I did type out as best I could all what was said in the diary for my own personal reasons.

What I find incredible with any survivor of the second world war is how incredibly brave they all were and to this day they never seem to want to talk about it. Even those men who are interviewed on TV for Rememberance Day, as they talk their eyes always seem to hit the floor, I am sure for obvious reasons but they are not comfortable talking about war.

I hope and pray that these brave men are never ever forgotten by future generations without their actions who knows we may not be here today, and hope that one day there will be peace in the World.

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