大象传媒

The 鈥榗utting鈥� which follows this introduction was published in the Hull Daily Mail about 50 years ago and you have been asking for wartime stories so I will add a few details to make the story complete.

In July 1939 I was called up with the first batch of Militia Men and went to Beverley Barracks to do six months training. After that we would serve seven years on Reserve. When war was declared on 2nd September 1939, the next day we were marched full pack to join the 4th Battalion, East Yorkshire Regiment, at Londsborough Barracks [Hull]; a T.A. unit.

Within days we moved south to Stow on the Wold, from there to serve as the B.E.F. in France and Belgium, finally fighting the rearguard action for the evacuation of Dunkirk. I was in the last party to be taken off the beaches. The next day we landed at Dover, 5th June 1940. As I was wounded, a hospital train took me to hospital in Knutsford and, after a week, I was sent home on seven days leave.

On my return the regiment had been made up to full strength and moved to the south coast, Weymouth, to make defences ready for the expected German invasion. From Weymouth, the 50th Division was shipped out to North Africa to face Rommel and stop him taking the Suez Canal and Cairo.

We took over the Knightsbridge Box at Gazala [for details of this battle visit ^{About links}
] and after constant battles, was taken P.O.W. by a Rommel鈥檚 forces. We were kept in wire cages from June until September then taken to Italy and a P.O.W. camp outside Naples; thus on to my story鈥�

The following is an extract from the Hull Daily Mail, compiled by Bryan Taylor.
The date of publication is unknown.

Danger Trek To Freedom

Pressed and preserved between the pages of a bible for the last 40 years, a delicate edelweiss flower is a reminder for a Hull man of the 鈥渋mpossible鈥� journey he made. It was picked as he crossed the Alps after escaping from an Italian P.O.W. camp to the neutrality of Switzerland in 1943. It is now kept carefully by Mr Syd Rippingale and his wife Nora at their home in Ark Royal, Bilton. It will figure in the memoirs he is writing 鈥� not for publications, but for the interest of his grandchildren.

Memories of those desperate days were recalled for Mr Rippingdale when he read of the successful seven-week bid for freedom by two other Hull escapees, Mr Harry Blakey and Mr Seth Ablett.

Like them, Mr Rippingdale was in the 4th East Yorkshires and he survived the massacre of Gazala, near Torbruk when Allied Forces were trapped in the 鈥淜nightsbridge Box鈥� which they were ordered to defend at all costs. They were eventually surrounded when their left flank collapsed to Rommel鈥檚 might and reinforcements failed to arrive.

Mr Rippingale knew Harry Blakey and Seth Ablett, having gone through Dunkirk, Cyprus and the Middle East with them; but their paths parted when they were taken prisoner. He was kept in North African P.O.W. camps for nearly five months before being shipped to Italy. He was shuffled from camp to camp in Italy before being put to work in the fields of a farm and from which they had to march 3陆 miles every day.

A couple of days before the Italians surrendered, Mr Rippingale was one of a party of eight who made their escape from the relaxing guard of jittery Italians.

BLUFF

They pulled off a rather outrageous double-bluff by returning to the farm at which they worked. What is more, they stayed there a week 鈥� and worked in return for food and shelter. A group of eight from that working party then decided to make their bid for freedom. Unlike Harry Blakey and Seth Ablett, who set off with two Londoners in a bid to reach British lines, Mr Rippingale鈥檚 party headed north.

They split into two groups of four to be less conspicuous and were guarded on the first leg of their German-dodging trek by the farmer鈥檚 son; on his cycle. Three men from Huddersfield, Lincoln and Plymouth were in Mr Rippingale鈥檚 group. He does not know to this day what happened to the other group.

On the map the course they took is 150 miles, but they covered much more than that because they had to dodge Germans and, ultimately, had to cover wild open country through the Alps. On the group鈥檚 first day they walked from 4am until 7pm. They set out with three flat bread cakes and supplemented those rations by picking grapes from the vineyards they skirted.

The trip took ten days, the last four of them through the Alps. For those four days they had nothing to eat and by 4pm each day they had to spend the night just where they were. That was the time the mist descended and to try to walk on would be suicidal. They made the crossing without the help of map or compass in the clothes they wore in a much warmer climate. Little wonder, then, that when they reached the Swiss border and found a sentry post commanded by a sergeant who had been a chef at a London hotel before the war, no one believed their story.

There were kept for four days at the sentry post and then taken on a four-day walk to the Swiss unit鈥檚 headquarters. Suspected of being Fifth Columnists or spies, the were questioned intensely before being interned. They were kept in a disused factory for six months and then, Mr Rippingale was set to work in the garden of the home of a Swiss banker.

By then, Mr Rippingale had some boots which fitted. He had made his Alps crossing in a pair from a parcel from home which were a size too big and padded out with old rags.

NOTEBOOK IS SOUVINEER

As well as the edelweiss plant, Mr Rippingale has among his souvineers a hard-backed notbook of his exploits. It was fashioned in the prison camp at Maseratar from beaten out jam tins. Etched on the front are views of the camp as they saw it.

It is entitled 鈥淭he Griff鈥� in memory of a notice board to which the prisoners pinned messages and poems which they composed to while away the time. But it was not as ambitious a project as that undertaken by another prisoner. He used tins of Canadian dried milk from Red Cross parcels, and brass which he begged or stole, to make a grandfather clock 鈥� which worked!
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Added by: Alan Brigham - www.hullwebs.co.uk

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