Page 29 - Once a copper 10 03 2020

This and many more pages about my dad’s war experience were collated by
my eldest brother Peter, following extensive military and red cross records
research.

Dads last months

My brother Peter spent a lot of time talking to dad in his last months in hospital.
It was during these conversations that he recounted a story that we were all to
find remarkable if true.

He told Peter that whilst a prisoner in Stalag IVG, he suffered with appendicitis
and according to Dad’s note in the Red Cross records, he had a duodenal
ulcer (August 1944), acute appendicitis (November 1944) and a severed vein
in his right forearm, following an accident with a wagon. He also stated that
he received medical attention from the British Medical Officer (M.O.)

The Red Cross report examined by Peter revealed there was no qualified
doctor at Oschatz, so he must have been conveyed elsewhere for this
attention.

Dad told Peter that he was taken to Colditz where the surgery required was
performed without anaesthetic. Colditz was not well known at the end of the
war when Dad completed his Red Cross medical treatments form, so there is
no reason to suspect that he was stretching the truth and was not there.

Why would dad not want anyone to know he’d been in Colditz?

He explained that he received telephone calls from someone saying they
were from the Colditz Society as they had somehow discovered he’d been
there and wanted his input. Dad refused to speak to them, neither denying
nor confirming what they had discovered.

What he went on to tell Peter was a sad, but knowing him as we did, a totally
believable set of reasons for his silence.
Dad was small in stature, only 5’4” tall. A number of weeks after his surgery,
the German guards or ‘Goons’ as they were nicknamed, ordered dad up
onto the roof as there were loose tiles that needed fixing. Dad was never
known for his workmanship, and once up on the roof, his clumsy footing
kicked off more tiles than he was supposed to fix. In temper, the Goons let off
a few shots into the air to frighten him. More tiles dislodged and he was
called down and placed in solitary confinement as they thought his actions
were a deliberate disobedience of their orders.

Days later, he was sent under guard with others to work in nearby fields. In the
next field were local women. Answering the call of nature, dad sloped off to Page29
a corner of the field. Upon which a jumpy Goon, assuming he was either work