My Grandpa had war stories which others have heard and read about. I remember watching "The Great Escape"
with him once. At various points in the movie during the digging of the tunnel
he would update me on the strategies he and his POW mates had used when they
were digging tunnels. I remember when they were dropping the dirt out of
holes in their trousers as they were walking around the exercise yard, grandpa
said "we weren't that subtle, we made a cricket pitch out of some of the
dirt we dug up!"
He was a Field
Ambulance driver and captured in North Africa. He made several attempts
to escape, the first being on the first night of his capture. They were
being held in the desert, with the German soldiers forming a ring around them.
They were stumbled upon by allied soldiers and a battle ensued. In
the noise and confusion Grandpa crawled out between 2 of the soldiers on the
perimeter, and was about to sneak off into the desert. He took a breath,
looked at all the tracer bullets flying around, thought about how he would
survive in the desert, he turned around and crawled back into the camp.
On another occasion he did escape
into the desert but sold out by Bedouin and given back to the Germans.
For a time he was kept in North Africa, and once with his friend Snow
Campbell, escaped from the camp in Derna, stole a boat and using makeshift oars
they rowed out of the harbour and into the Mediterranean, aiming for Tobruk
which could only be reached from the sea at that time. Over 3 nights they
covered 100 miles, and laid up each day. They felt sure they were far
enough to be behind allied lines, they saw a British truck by the shore with
soldiers swimming so they rowed across. Unfortunately the truck had been
seized by Germans and they were once again prisoners, they had been 3 miles
short of their goal. On another occasion, he volunteered to help the
Germans with his mechanical knowledge, and helped them to service trucks in
return for more favourable conditions in the camp. This was viewed with
disdain by his fellow prisoners who were not aware that he was adding valve
grinding paste every time he changed the oil, to erode the engines from within.
He was moved to a POW camp in
near Udine, in North Eastern Italy and spent the next 3 years there. He
told stories of humour, resilience and mateship, all the while you could tell
that he was understated and that conditions were tough. There was an
elaborate tunnel excavated during his time there. A great deal of
ingenuity and skill was needed to perform the digging unnoticed, hide the dirt,
ensure the stability of the tunnel against the frequent collapses, and send
light and air down the tunnel as it grew longer. The time came for their
escape and it was decided to send a man down to the end to dig up to the
surface and poke a stick up so they could see exactly where the exit was for
their escape that night. There was a need for several men to relay
messages down the tunnel due to its length. The big wigs in the hut where
the tunnel commenced look out of the window into the shaded woods where the tunnel
was expected to be. "Tell him to poke the stick up now" was
relayed down the tunnel, taking a full half a minute to reach the intended
recipient. Not seeing the stick, the next message was "Poke it up a
bit more". You can imagine the scene, eventually the guy has his
whole arm out of the ground waving the stick around, when someone looks off to
the side and sees him, in a completely unexpected location and in full view of
the guard tower! "Pull your arm in!!" and it took another full 30
seconds of exquisite anguish for the observers before the arm and stick were
retracted, fortunately without detection. Grandpa decided not to
participate in the escape, because he had just been informed of his imminent
repatriation as he had a Red Cross stamp due to his ambulance duties. One
Australian was being exchanged for each 6 Italian POWs - the Aussies thought
that was about right! 19 of Grandpas compound did escape through the
tunnel that night, the Camp Superintendent, who had previously strutted around
bragging his camp was inescapable had to change his tune. Unfortunately
all were recaptured, but not submitted to the same fate as those in the movie.
When Grandpa eventually made it
back home to his farm and family, his old sheep dog welcomed him, they both sat
down and cried together. Also of note is that he spent a couple of years
back in Libya in the 70s, near the scene of his initial internment working with
the community to improve dry land farming methods. Many of the paddocks
on our farm carry names of the Libyan towns and ports that featured in his
journey.
