What happened to WW2 POW camps?

[Christel]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-tees-30398060


Well worth a read and a visit if possible.

[snayperskaya]

interesting article, I remember my nan used to wear a ring that was made for her by an Italian POW that worked on a farm near where she lived.

[TomH]

My mother still remembers making cocoa in a bucket for Italian POW's working on their farm, who would have come from the Friday Bridge Camp. Which is the one of her two chocolate related WWII stories. The other involved her and a friend some time into the war finding a bar of Exlax in a shop and eating half each with the inevitable consequences.

Tom

[Fazakerley]

There are the remains of a POW camp in Bickerstaffe about two miles from where I live. After the war one of the inmates stayed, married a local girl and opened a Chippy and they were the best chips I've ever had! He is a legend around here and was affectionately known as German Joe, even when he retired the local paper said "German Joe fries his last fish". I know I will never taste chips that good again.

[Jenks]

Spent a summer (circa 1965) at Cultybraggan Camp as unit armourer (top photo in Christel's link) The POWs incarcerated there were a pretty hard bunch.


http://www.secretscotland.org.uk/index. ... ltybraggan

From linked article:

After the end of the war, five of the prisoners were hanged at Pentonville Prison, the largest multiple execution in 20th century Britain, after Wolfgang Rosterg, a German PoW known to be unsympathetic to the Nazi regime in Germany, was lynched there. The reason is not completely clear; some sources say he was killed because he was suspected of being a British spy, while others simply claim that he demonstrated insufficient zeal in his support for the Nazi Party, and was punished accordingly.

Jenks

[Meaty]

My old school (and the one I hope my oldest son will attend) was a USAF hospital and P.O.W camp during WWII. I remember fondly having lessons in the Nissen huts and running between classes down the maze of covered walkways between the blocks of Nissen's-eerie at night time as they were very dimly lit and creaked and groaned with the wind.
http://www.wcremembered.co.uk/pdf/hosp01.pdf
There is very little info available about the P.O.W. camp but there are a few mementos in local museums and the school library, plus a few of the prisoners, both German and Italian stayed in the area after the war and integrated into the local community.
The water tower in the first photo was used as our armoury when I was a cadet-I can still remember the smell of all the No.4's, No.8's and Brens, of which we had plenty.

[DW58]

I can see huts from a former PoW camp as I type. The was a small camp within Forestry Commissin property here in Moray which housed Italian and later German PoWs who worked in the forests around Moray 1941-47.

There were a number of PoW camps in Moray, there is still evidence of several of them remaining.

[DL.]

Not long after I'd been to Cultybraggan someone left the lights on over the weekend in the bunker there, I believe the electricity bill came to many thousands of pounds!

[Jenks]

Amongst the books I inherited from my father was this book by Ray Stubbs.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Prisoner-Nippon ... +of+nippon

A harrowing but interesting read. My parents used to belong to the local dancing club and Ray and his wife were members. Ray gave my dad a copy of the book wherein he had inscribed.







Jenks

[Laurie]

Very interesting (Cultybraggan) Jenks. I spent a number of weekends in that place and surrounding area as a Perth based army cadet in the early to mid 60s. I didn't know it had started life as a PoW camp.

I do remember it was usually wet and cold, and that there seemed to be a huge number of boggy areas in the surrounding hills. (Some unfortunate always came back to camp covered from head to foot in stinking goo having either fallen in, or more usually been thrown in by his 'friends'. I say 'he' advisedly as there were no such distractions as female cadets in them days!) We used to shoot on a fullbore rifle range somewhere close but not within walking distance. I never knew its name or its exact location, but unexpectedly drove above it while on holiday in the area years afterwards - still don't know the name / location. It was a pretty basic facility in the 60s - footpaths to low firing points in the middle of potato fields and a backstop that seemed more rock than sand. The many ricochets and spent bullets that bounced back into the butts was part of the excitement to us teenagers who didn't know any better.