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My Dad and I had made an offer at a Royal British Legion Meeting that if anyone needed help with putting their story onto people’s War we would be pleased to help. So it was that after the meeting a shy, polite quite spoken elderly gentleman approached us and said ’I don’t know if you want my story’. Feeling myself intrigued I asked why it should be that we might not be interested. I was touched to the heart by his answer.

‘I was taken prisoner at Dunkirk and spent the war as a slave labourer in the coal mines of Upper Silesia’

My immediate response was to ask ‘What was it like!?’

‘Cold, hunger, brutality and exhausting back breaking labour that went on day after day until so many literally dropped dead of illness and exhaustion’ .The reply was given in a low almost matter of fact manner, in the kind of tone you know instinctively to be full of the genuine remembrances of one who had survived the almost unthinkable.

Not for him the opportunity to train for special forces or some other intriguing and valued military escapade. No nor the chance to earn the rows of medals seen on some parades. Instead his war was one of every day survival within a situation of the deepest privations and brutality.

‘I’ll be proud to tell your story’ I assured him just give me the facts of it and I’ll input it. So it was that I received a brown paper package with the story of Bill Pledgers War. It is With great pride and humility that I am now relate one young mans experiences from
WW11.

It has been a very gruelling experience for me to put down Bill's experiences and I hope and pray that our brave young men will never have to go through anything like the things that were experienced by Bill in Bill Pledger War.

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