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This contribution was submitted by Sylvia Hampson and concerns her late husband's experience as a prisoner of war. It is added to the site with her permission.

I was born in Bangor, North Wales and met my husband while at university there. He joined the airforce in about 1940. He was a pathfinder pilot and was shot down in November1943. He had a Red Cross diary and recorded his story.

His squadron was 109...he’d been on a raid that night and was coming home when he was shot down. He tried to get home on one engine, but he realised he couldn’t so he told his navigator to parachute out and he went out after him. He came down just off the coast of Holland in fact. He buried his parachute in the mud and he wandered around. He found a coat in a barn and then he made his way to the centre of the town and went to the mayor’s office and revealed who he was, by opening his coat and showing his uniform. The Mayor told him to “Wait there“ and went out…and in a short while some Germans arrived on a motorbike …and the mayor must have telephoned them. He couldn‘t really have done otherwise because there had been some terrible reprisals against people who helped airmen. Jeff was taken to Amsterdam jail for a few nights…and then was put in solitary confinement. He had been flying a Mosquito which had some special equipment on it which the Germans wanted to find out about. He was actually doing something with radar. The Mosquitos used to fly in and mark the targets for the bombers…so that was a bit hush hush at the time.
He had quite a difficult time for the first few weeks, while in solitary confinement. He went very very thin and had quite a bad time. The Germans didn’t torture him or anything, but he did have a certain amount of pressure put on him. He would be in his cell with very little to eat, then dragged out into a lighted room and questioned. They wanted to know about his aircraft. In the end he became quite ill — he got dysentery — so they took him off to hospital. He was looked after by nuns.

Eventually he went to his permanent camp which was Stalag Luft 3.…in Silesia It was a huge camp with different compounds….so he settled down to prison camp life. He always said he had all the time in the world to do little drawings in his diary as they sat around all day doing nothing. They had a theatre and used to put on plays from time to time …he was in a production of French without tears. The food was all rationed and the rations were supplemented by Red Cross parcels. I was able to send him a Red Cross parcel about once every two months….we used to send chocolate or anything else we could get.

He stayed there until about January 1945 when the Russians were advancing….and they all had a very bad time then. They packed up all the goods they had and had to march in the snow…until they came to be put in another prison camp. He always remembered when he was ushered into that camp. They all got very frightened, because they were all ushered into a big shower room, and they didn’t know what it was. They thought it might be something lethal….but it was to give them all good showers because they’d been so many days on the march. Eventually he was released by the Russians and he made his way to Belgium and saw terrific chaos that the war leaves…people ransacking factories, throwing cameras out of the windows…throwing watches, he said he could have come back with an armful of watches if he’d wanted. Even taking cars — it was just complete chaos the end of the war.
All this time I’d been at home with my parents in Bangor North Wales…because I had a young baby. I was told he was a prisoner before Christmas in 1943…From then on cards came through fairly regularly through the red Cross. But then from about February 1945 — when the Russians advanced — I heard nothing at all. There was no contact then. We knew the prisoners were being pushed westwards ….but no contact, nothing, until I heard — about a week after VE day — that he was alive and on his way home. He was home about two weeks later and able to see how much his baby had grown.

See pictures from the diary also

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