大象传媒

My name is Colin Watling and my late uncle John Watling was in the T.A.in 1938. In 1939 he volunteered and went with the British Expeditionary Force to Dunkirk. He was one of the last trying to get off the beach at Dunkirk but he was cutting the telephone lines, the communications, when a German sniper shot him in the back. He was captured and a German surgeon saved his life, but he lost one lung. He was taken as a prisoner of war in Germany. Unfortunately it was not quite the way we have seen the prison camps on films where everyone was friendly and the prisoners were getting proper food. My uncle was eating potato peelings while the Germans took all their Red Cross parcels. He made six escape attempts and when he was recaptured the Gestapo tortured him.
The flip side to this story was that in South Shields at a place called Hall鈥檚 Farm where the crematorium is now, there was a POW camp. My Dad living in Hope Street, Simonside existing on rations couldn鈥檛 get bananas or anything like that, while the Germans POW鈥檚 were getting sun-tanned, eating off the fat of the land, living it up and not wanting to go back to Germany.
My Uncle John made history as he was the first prisoner-of-war ever to be repatriated back to South Shields in 1943. He sadly died in the late 60鈥檚 as a direct result of the war.

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