大象传媒

In Oflag VIIC camp, there were about 1,800 officers captured at Calais St Valerie Dunkirk and the surrounding areas in May and June 1940. Many of them were experts in a variety of fields in civil life, with active minds not wanting to sit around doing nothing. Quite apart from brilliant actors and musicians, the professions were represented and the idea of a 鈥渦niversity鈥� was developed early on. I signed on for no less than 11 subjects but hunger sent me to sleep in the first lectures that I attended. Studies continued on an individual or communal basis but more specialised. Throughout the summer we kept fit by walking or playing games in the exercise field. By Christmas time our entertainers, professional and amateur, had devised a pantomime and the musicians gave concerts.

For a long time we existed on German rations, only a fifth of a loaf to last a week, boiled jacket potatoes and soup once a day. The first Red Cross parcels arrived in time for Christmas containing tinned food and cigarettes. Cigarettes were our main currency and could be exchanged in a limited way for bread or perhaps chocolate from our family鈥檚 infrequent clothing parcels. Soon after Christmas 500 of us were sent to Poland to a reprisal camp.

From time to time the Germans searched our huts hoping to find a radio or tunnels. On one occasion, at Warburg in 1942, they decided to confiscate all diaries which most POWs had kept in one form or another. My scribblings were of little consequence and I had written on the outside that they could not be of any possible interest to anyone other than my father and myself. The diaries were burnt on site and we abandoned all hope of ever seeing them again.

At the end of the war, I received a notification from the military authorities in Germany. A civilian had come into the office and reported that he had a diary with my father鈥檚 address in Yorkshire, he wished to know if I would like it back. Naturally, I said yes and in due course it was returned to me. I wrote to thank the sender and learnt that he had been one of the guards involved in the search and at great risk had seen my note and put my diary in his pocket. There is no doubt he would have been shot had this been discovered. Apparently, he took it home (he lived in Berlin) and buried it in his garden. At the end of the war he returned from military service to find that his house had been bombed to the ground but the garden had been more difficult to destroy completely. Knowing where to find it he dug away the rubble and unearthed my diary. A true example of humanitarian benevolence between former enemies.

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