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15 October 2014
WW2 - People's War

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Four Years a Prisoner Of War

by ateamwar

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Contributed by听
ateamwar
People in story:听
Harold Hawitt
Location of story:听
Liverpool, Africa, Greece, Germany,
Background to story:听
Army
Article ID:听
A5109293
Contributed on:听
16 August 2005

I joined the army in 1940, and then I left Liverpool from the Pier Head and went to North Africa; The Suez Canal and then the desert. After the desert, I went to Greece, and got chased out of Greece; Athens, at the port there, we had to destroy all of our guns and march ten miles to meet HMS Havoc. We had to climb up the side of the ship and we then went to Crete where I was taken prisoner and my leg wounded. From Crete I was taken on a Cargo Ship, down in a hold to Greece and ended up on an Italian hospital ship which went to Salonica then to Germany in cattle trucks for ten days. They used to throw straw on the floor of the trucks, and they stopped about every day to let us out to go the toilet. We had to use the stations with all of the public watching us.
In Germany I was in hospital till I got fit again, and then I went to work in the forest, railway and sugar beet factory. And then in 1945, I was put on the march for eleven weeks to Western Germany; I was four years a prisoner of war till I got released by General Patton. He walked into the camp and I got released by him, there was all singing and shouting with the Americans. Then I flew from Rauschenberg to Rhemes and from Rhemes, I flew to England in a Lancaster Bomber bomb hold and in August 1945 I got demobbed.

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