In good spirit

D-day infused prisoners of war every everywhere with great optimism of a speedy return to home and loved ones. The Australians in Stalag Luft III were no different. 

They had talked about it for months beforehand, and excitement mounted.

Bill Fordyce, courtesy of Lily Fordyce

Then, on the big day, they 'Heard [about it] per German radio 1330 hours', recorded Ted Every in his wartime log book. 

Harry Train wrote, that 'At 13.30 hours today (camp time) Sondermeldum from the German radio announced that last night the long expected invasion of the fortress of Europe was commenced. It was preceded by heavy bombardment and then landings were made between the Cherbourg Peninsula and Le Havre with heavy sea and air support. Fierce defence fighting is in progress. I am afraid our feelings are too full for expression'. 

Others shared their feelings with family.

‘The great news of the invasion has cheered us all up and the morale is 100% plus’, wrote Justin O’Byrne to his family. ‘The news of the invasion, somehow makes me feel that it won’t be long before we are together again’, Doug Hutchinson told his wife Lola. ‘The news at present is heartening to the Kriegies and some are optimistic—I say England in the New Year’, wrote George Archer as Allied successes increased in the succeeding months. Such excitement and hope of a rapid conclusion to hostilities, and their ensuing freedom, made life in captivity (for a time, at least) easier to bear.

Some of the men recorded their take on the invasion in their wartime log books.

 Ronald Baines, courtesy of the Baines Family 

 Bill Fordyce, courtesy of Lily Fordyce

D-day, coincidentally, also brought some relief one family back in Australia. Colin Phelps wrote his first letter as a prisoner of on 14 February 1944 but it took almost four months to reach Adelaide. While Britain and Europe were thrilling to news of the invasion, the Phelps family read Colin’s heartening words that he was safe and well on 6 June 1944: 'Dear Dad and Mum—have been taken prisoner and am being well looked after by the Red Cross—I am unhurt and in good spirit.—My permanent address is not yet allotted and I will forward it later on.—Sorry to cause you so much worry. Love from Colin'.

After the Great Escape

Much has been written about the Great Escape: what occurred on the night; what happened to those involved; and the commitment to obtaining ‘exemplary justice’. 

Artist: Ley Kenyon, published in Paul Brickhill and Conrad Norton: Escape to Danger (Faber and  Faber, London,  1954). 

 This post, however, focuses on how the airmen’s kriegie friends and Australian families responded to their deaths.

Courtesy Chris Armold, MSgt, USAF (Ret). Taken in March 2017.

Alan Righetti, who had been one of the many ‘stooges’ or lookouts over the previous few months, remembered hearing the shots fired after the discovery of the break out. It ‘was pandemonium’, he recalled, as the Germans tore the North Compound apart. When things quietened down, the airmen ‘were bitterly disappointed that we hadn’t got at least 200 out’. But, Righetti added, they were, ‘at the same time, very proud of the fact that we had the whole of the area and the German Army rushing all over the place looking for our fellas’.

Alan Righetti, courtesy of Alan Righetti

Days later, when the names of the dead were announced, Righetti recollected that ‘we were shocked’. A memorial parade was held and, recalled Justin O’Byrne, the men ‘went into mourning’. ‘Every prisoner wore a black diamond of mourning on his sleeve for the remainder of our term in prison’, including on Anzac Day ten days later, when photos were taken of the men wearing their black patches.

Justin O’Byrne, courtesy of Anne O’Byrne

Courtesy Andrew JB Simpson  NSW POWs North compound Anzac Day, 1944 

Just as many British Great War memorials had been voluntarily built by families and communities to provide a focus for their grief, Stalag Luft III’s air force ‘family’ in North Compound decided to erect a memorial using stone provided by the Germans. Originally referred to by the prisoners as ‘The Vault’ (pertaining to its crypt-like purpose of holding the ashes of the dead), the prisoners’ memorial resembled an altar. 

From Walton and Eberhardt, From Liberation to Interrogation. A Photographic Journey. Page 418.

In conceiving this design, prominent Australian-born architect and theatrical designer Wylton Todd, who had had a thriving architecture business in London before the war, seems to have been inspired by the recently deceased Sir Edwin Lutyen’s altar-like Stone of Remembrance. (The Stone became the centrepiece of the Imperial War Graves Commission’s most significant cemeteries.)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stone_of_Remembrance

 Like Lutyen’s iconic design, the prisoners’ memorial evokes heroic sacrifice in warfare, as do many British memorials as well as significant Australian memorials such as Melbourne’s Shrine of Remembrance and Sydney’s Anzac Memorial.

Shrine of Remembrance, author’s photo.

The airmen’s names are engraved on three granite tablets reminiscent of Great War honour rolls. Underneath is the inscription, ‘In memory of the officers who gave their lives. Sagan March 1944’. 

SLIII memorial. From the Casualty Section, Dept of Air, March 1947 via Air Ministry London, provided to them by His Majesty’s Air Attache at Warsaw. Courtesy of the Preen Family.

The simple wooden cross atop the nearby cairn (which appears to be a later addition) evokes the crosses which marked the graves of the First World War servicemen who died overseas, before the Imperial War Grave Commission replaced them with stone headstones.

SLIII memorial. From Casualty Section, Dept of Air, March 1947 via Air Ministry London, provided to them by His Majesty’s Air Attache at Warsaw. Courtesy of the Preen Family.

Courtesy Chris Armold, MSgt, USAF (Ret). Taken in March 2017.

Close up of the cairn plaque, Sagan, Poland, September 1998.  Courtesy of Drew Gordon. 

Todd’s design included an eagle, which was mounted below the inscription. Particularly pertinent, the spread-winged eagle is a key symbol for airmen, representing both the ‘brotherhood of the air’ and the insignia—‘wings’—which declare an airmen’s aviation credentials. 

Reg Kierath’s RAAF Wings. Courtesy of Peter Kierath.

 Arthur Schrock, 1944, in Earle M Nelson: If Winter Comes.

This drawing of the memorial, by Flight Lieutenant Grenfell Godden (a South African in Stalag Luft III who was killed in a flying accident on 23 November 1945), was sent to Mildred Williams, the mother of John Williams, one of the five Australians killed in the Great Escape reprisals. It was published in the Sydney Morning Herald, 25 April 1945. Courtesy of the Preen Family.

AWM ART34781.022. Albert Comber, drawing of the Monument to those 50 officers who were shot after the break from Stalag Luft III, 1945. https://www.awm.gov.au/collection/C168955?image=1

SLIII memorial. From the Casualty Section, Dept of Air, March 1947 via Air Ministry London, provided to them by His Majesty’s Air Attache at Warsaw. Courtesy of the Preen Family.

While visible in Bert Comber’s sketch and other early drawings and photographs, and repeated in the commemorative plaque mounted on the stone cairn erected in front of the memorial, the eagle is no longer extant.

Recent photo of the memorial, with modern dedication, c 2015. Courtesy of Geoff Swallow

The memorial was located in the nearby cemetery where other prisoners had been buried. There, fifty urns containing the dead men’s ashes were interred on 4 December 1944. In accordance with RAF mourning custom, a service funeral was held. Thirty prisoners along with members of the Swiss Legation attended. Wreathes were laid and the Roman Catholic and Protestant chaplains said prayers and blessed the monument and ashes.

From the Casualty Section, Dept of Air, March 1947 via Air Ministry London, provided to them by His Majesty’s Air Attache at Warsaw. Courtesy of the Preen Family.

Some of the airmen recorded details of the memorial service in their wartime log books. Some marked the pages, drawings, photos and nominal rolls with a cross, the traditional symbol denoting the dead. 

Lifted from Brickhill and Norton: Escape to Danger.

Before he returned to Australia, Comber produced for the Australian War Memorial’s collection three pen, ink and wash drawings of the memorial’s construction.

AWM ART34781.024 Albert Comber, The monument in the early stages of construction, 1945. https://www.awm.gov.au/collection/C168957?image=1

Six months earlier, on 20 June 1944, a memorial service for family and friends of the Fifty had been conducted at the Church of St Martin-in-the-Fields, London. As the men had been killed in the course of carrying out their service duty they were accorded full air force honours. Australian-based families could not attend and so either British family members or others represented them. 

Author’s collection

Squadron Leader William Melville, the liaison for prisoner of war matters at RAAF Overseas Headquarters, considered it ‘a very great honour and privilege’ to represent Reg Kierath’s mother, Ada. After the ceremony, Melville wrote to her as he wanted her ‘to know something of the very magnificent tribute that was paid to your son and the others who died with him’. He told her about the service:

Sir Archibald Sinclair—Secretary of State for Air—Sir Charles Portal, Chief of Air Staff and our Air Officer Commanding, Air Vice-Marshal Wrigley, were but three of the many Air Force representatives who came to pay their tribute and Mr Bruce our Australian High Commissioner was also there. After the first hymn the Vicar of St Martins read the first part of the service and the psalm, and Sir Charles Portal the lesson. Then came the Address by the Chaplain-in-Chief of the Royal Air Force in which he paid tribute to the memory of those whose courage and high faith was an inspiration to us all. As we stood, after the recession, the Blessing, crystal clear came the notes of the Last Post—the most honoured tribute to the serving member and one which is paid to him alone. For a moment there was silence—and then in the distance, the roll of a drum and the awakening call ‘Reveille’. It seems so singularly appropriate, for to all of us in our hearts and memory they will live through their example of courage and steadfastness.

During the service, the RAF chaplain-in-chief had stated that ‘Their sacrifice was touched by the finger of God’. Melville too recognised that sacrifice. He explained to Ada that Reg, ‘and the others, have become my very real friends and I cannot express how much the sacrifice which they have made has meant to me personally’.

Reg Kierath. Courtesy of Peter Kierath

Others acknowledged the deaths in a similar way. Families placed ‘in memoriam’ notices in newspapers. Friends send condolence letters. 

The Argus, 25 March 1947

Unattributed clipping, courtesy of Preen Family.

Group Captain Thomas White, former prisoner of the Ottomans and commanding officer at 1 Initial Training School, Somers where Catanach and Albert Hake had attended believed that the young man’s ‘name and memory will long endure as among the noblest of those who gave their all’.

Those who died after the Great Escape were not forgotten. Their friends attended remembrance services. Winifred Munt, Jimmy Catanach’s childhood nanny, known to him as ‘Da’, was a member of the Australian contingent to the Service of Remembrance at St Clement Danes (the Central Church of the Royal Air Force) on 22 March 1969. Bill Fordyce, who was in the tunnel when the escape was discovered, attended the 50th anniversary service on 25 March 1994. 

Bill Fordyce, courtesy of Lily Fordyce

 Courtesy of Lily Fordyce

Courtesy of Ian Fraser

 Reg Giddey, who regarded Albert Hake as ‘one of nature’s gentlemen’, placed a tribute on his former friend’s grave during 50th anniversary commemorations at Posnan, Poland. 

Reg Giddey. Courtesy of the Preen Family

Their families made pilgrimages to Sagan and wore their service medals.

  

The Preen Family’s pilgrimage to Stalag Luft III, 2013. Courtesy of Max Preen.

The Search for the Compass Maker, Albert Hake 2013: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GaFwU7FI-cU 

Peter Kierath, nephew of Reg Kierath, retraced his uncle’s journey. Photo from The Daily Liberal, Dubbo. http://www.dailyliberal.com.au/story/3538949/retracing-family-steps-at-war-photos/

Albert Hake’s great niece and nephew, wearing medals. Anzac Day, about 1997. Courtesy Jude Preen. 

 That continuing sympathy of family and friends, along with the dedicated commemoration, brought comfort to those who grieved. So too did the knowledge that the deaths of the Fifty had been construed as sacrifices for the cause, as extensions of their air force service. As their ‘Duty Nobly Done’.

Memorial card, sent by Noela Hake to Dick Wheeler. Dick Wheeler Archive. Courtesy of  Tony Wheeler

My thanks to all the families who have shared their photos and records with me.

I have written a number of other blog pieces on aspects of the Great Escape from an Australian perspective:

https://australiansinsliii.blogspot.com.au/2016/05/43-years-albert-hake-australian-in.html

https://australiansinsliii.blogspot.com.au/2017/03/albert-hake-and-paul-royle-australians.html

https://australiansinsliii.blogspot.com.au/2016/11/how-deeply-we-feel-his-loss-condolences.html

http://australiansinsliii.blogspot.com.au/2017/04/ever-remembered-james-catanach-anzac.html

http://australiansinsliii.blogspot.com.au/2015/02/great-escaper-thomas-barker-leigh.html

http://australiansinsliii.blogspot.com.au/2015/02/70th-anniversary-of-great-escape.html

Kriegie Easter

Christmas is mentioned a number of times in letters and wartime log books but I only found a handful of Easter mentions in the personal collections I ‘hold’. It seems as if Easter didn’t have the same resonance for the majority as a time of Christian celebration but, for some, it provided a handy point of reference when recalling events. 

For Geoff Cornish, it marked the beginning of captivity. He was ‘marched off to a car … and taken away up to Amsterdam, and that was Easter Thursday 1941 … I spent Easter Thursday in gaol in Amsterdam’. Then, on Easter Monday, he was taken to Dulag Luft for interrogation. ‘There they questioned you, tried to get information about you more than your name, rank and number but it was fairly easy to resist, there was no torture or anything like that. If you didn’t answer you didn’t answer.’

Courtesy of Paul Royle, via Charles Page.

At Sulmona in Italy, Albert Comber sent a special message to his loved ones via the Vatican for Easter 1943. He was much cheered by the recent war news and, ‘everyone of course wishes that the whole business would end very soon’. But when Easter came and went, ‘one realised how quickly the months slip by—perhaps Christmas will see me home’. (It didn’t; by that stage he was in Stalag Luft III.)

Courtesy of Cath McNamara. 

Prisoners of war needed a lot of humour to help them cope with a seemingly limitless captivity. And chocolate. Just after Easter 1943, Justin O’Byrne wrote to his family and told then how the big Easter Monday sports day had been marred by the weather. Life, however, was not too bad in Stalag Luft III. ‘I have become quite used to the diet now, but look forward to the chocolate in the clothing parcels ... so bung in the chocolate for all you’re worth’.

Courtesy of Anne O’Byrne.

In April 1944, George Archer sent Easter greetings to his family. ‘Once more Easter is with us and I only trust the next service will be at St Marks’, his local church. 

Courtesy of David Archer.

He was to be disappointed. He was still a prisoner of war at Easter 1945. By Easter 1946, however, the war was over and he and his fellows were free men at last. 

I couldn’t find any drawings relating to Easter in wartime log books but I am quite taken by this rendition of Bugs Bunny by Cy Borsht, poking fun of the their kriegie accommodation. Happy Easter.

Courtesy of Cy Borsht.

Hell, haven or heaven? Reactions to Stalag Luft III.

I am always interested in how people cope with a difficult situation, and especially how they make the most of it. Take, for instance, the reactions of the men of Stalag Luft III to their new environment.

Stalag Luft III, in 1945, sketched by James R Taylor. Jim Taylor, a Scot, had given the original of this pencil drawing to Ken Carson. Courtesy of John Carson.

Each compound was ringed by two barbed wire fences, 10 feet high, whose tops sloped inwards, making climbing difficult. The 6 feet gap between—the Löwengang, or Lions Walk—was filled with thick coils of barbed wire, about 3 feet high. (The Vorlarger was also enclosed by a barbed wire fence.) Thirty or so feet from the inside barbed wire fence, 18 inches from the ground, was a warning line ‘beyond which’, Justin O’Byrne recalled, ‘it was suicide to step’. But not immediately. Prisoners were forbidden to cross it but, if they did, they were given two alerts, after which the guards were ordered to shoot. With so much barbed wire about, O’Byrne, looking back on his wartime accommodation, likened it to ‘the usual type of German concentration camp’.

Justin O'Byrne prior to his arrival at Stalag Luft III. Courtesy of Anne O'Byrne.

 While those of Stalag Luft III’s complement with experience in Buchenwald Concentration camp would perhaps disagree, the barbed wire certainly did nothing for some prisoners’ well-being. As one man put it, ‘It is really a horrible prospect looking out on a world through barbed wire: it gives you the feeling of having absolutely nothing to do with it’. Others, however, took a different view.

One man told his correspondent that ‘if it were not for the barbed wire and sentry boxes one could almost visualise a huge holiday camp’. Rather than gazing at his new abode through rose-tinted glasses, this chap appears to have sanitised his account for the benefit of the homefolks. He was not the only one to liken Stalag Luft III to holiday accommodation. Peter Kingsford-Smith took up the theme in his wartime log book. His drawing of the tree and barbed wire bordered compound, with guard tower to the left and wooden hut to the right, took the guise of a naïve travel poster captioned ‘furnish flats at mod[erate] rates. Holidays-at-Sagan’. Promoting ‘summer & winter sports’ interested holiday makers were to apply to ‘Luftwaffe headquarters’ or Stalag Luft 3’. Arthur Schrock, also painted a mock travel poster, complete with pines, snow and barbed wire, in his wartime log book entreating tourists to ‘Visit Sagan. A Haven of Tranquility [sic] Midst the Pines of Nieder Schlesien [Lower Silesia]’. 

Courtesy of Andrew RB Simpson.

Bill Fordyce depicted the ‘horrid result of life of debauchery & drunken-ness at the “haven-in-the-pines” Stalag Luft 3’.

Courtesy of Lily Fordyce.

 John Cordwell, much taken with the coniferous tree-scape, captioned his depiction of North Compound and its needle-y border ‘Heaven in the Pines!’; it was one of the few artefacts Kenneth ‘Ken’ Carson brought out of the camp.

Ken Carson's copy of John Cordwell's map of North Compound. Courtesy of John Carson.

British-born Archibald Sulston’s watercolour of a pine forest-backed hut in Peter Kingsford-Smith’s wartime log book is also entitled ‘Heaven in the Pines!’ but his tongue, like the tongues of the other artist-commentators, was firmly planted in cheek given the presence of an overflowing waste container, large puddles of water, an unsteadily-leaning wooden cask and a number of tree stumps in the drawing’s foreground. (It seems as if this was a common theme for Sulston because he painted a similar image in his own log book.)

Archibald Sulton's rendition in his own log book. Lifted, with thanks, from http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3058534/Enola-Gay-pilots-flight-logs-Hiroshima-plans-sale.html.

For some, there was no humour in the depiction of the camp as haven or heaven. Jock Bryce thought one of the Red Cross magazines erred ‘on the bright side when it described Luft III as “the heaven in the pines”’. John Osborne may have ‘almost settled down’ after his recent arrival, but was quick to tell his family that ‘it’s no heaven’. Osborne also resented the rosy portrayal of the camp by the Red Cross who frequently reprinted extracts from letters, such as the barbed-wire holiday camp mentioned above, depicting the brighter side of life. ‘What tales do the Red Cross print of our conditions?’ Albert Hake, however, was more than content with the images of ‘the pleasant pictures of happy POWs which I am assured are portrayed to worried relatives’ by the Red Cross and Prisoners of War Relatives’ Association. It gave him comfort knowing that his wife Noela was taken in by them. 

At least one man categorically believed that Stalag Luft III was both haven and as close to paradise as you could get in a prisoner of war camp. ‘After two months of hell of earth’ at Buchenwald Concentration Camp, where every hair on Keith Mill’s body had been shaved off, and he and his fellow prisoners, including eight other Australian airmen had ‘slept with rocks for our beds and the sky for our blanket for three weeks’ before managing ‘at last to get into a hut about 50 yards long with 700 people in it’ where they saw people die there, ‘some in strange ways’, Stalag Luft III ‘was heaven’.

Keith Mills and his wife, Val, in 2004. Lifted, with thanks, from http://www.dailymercury.com.au/news/true-gentleman-bows-out/1280342/ (Read this touching obituary.)