Missing The Boat: War Stories of Thomas Alan Dirkin

113 Yes my dad also escaped from a saw mill/timber yard work camp, and was recaptured some time later after being recognised by a gestapo officer. Philip Baker Guy Dirkin You asked about the "porosity" of Stalag VIIIB. I don't think the camp was any more or less difficult to get out of than any other, though the Working Parties might have been easier to get away from than the main camp. There was certainly an escape committee and tunnels were dug. The problem was not so much how to get out of the camp, but what to do next. I have heard (and read) former POWs saying that there was no point in trying to escape, because they were so very far from a border they could cross to safety, and would need to travel hundreds of miles, equipped with enough food and suitable clothing - and how many of them could speak even passable German? Often the weather was against them. Who could prepare them acceptable identity papers? Maybe it would have been possible for a few, but there were tens of thousands of Lamsdorf POWs, and for the vast majority escape either seemed impossible or a very unattractive and unnecessarily hazardous proposition I think. There is a long chapter about escapes in 'Lamsdorf in Their Own Words'. It's also worth reading 'The Escape Artist' by Alfred Passfield if you can get hold of a copy. He has a lot of detail about the Lamsdorf escape committee, the tunnels and the prospects of escape from the camp. Guy Dirkin Author Philip Baker thanks! I think my father’s scenario was that he escaped from a working party, knew that trying to travel west would not be an option and in his words “fought with the Polish resistance”. My best guess is that he did spend time as an escapee, but have no real evidence of how long or how embedded he could have been with the resistance. I would have thought a POW who knew details of a local resistance organization would be a huge liability if recaptured and tortured. I think the general question about porosity, particularly from working parties, is interesting and perhaps Anna can comment at some point. Best regards... Ann Coyle My Dad, Mike Coyle, was a private with the Canadian Essex Scottish Regiment and became a POW at Stalag 8B following the raid on Dieppe. He wrote “from the time of his capture, most had resolved to escape and return to England. The conditions at the main camp were hardly conducive to that end, so it was thought a better idea to get oneself sent to a working party where security would be a little less”. In early 1943 My Dad was one of sixteen men who volunteered to join a forestry work party cutting timber. His working party was located in an old Polish border-crossing house that had been revamped to house the P.O.Ws. On May 16, 1943, my Dad and two other men escaped and he made his way to the Polish city of Chestochowa. He spent the following 8 months with the Polish Resistance until a betrayal turned him over to the Gestapo. He spent the next 10 months in solitary confinement. He was able to inscribe his name, P.O.W. number and regiment on a small bar of soap and toss it from the window to an Englishman in the exercise yard below. Luckily, he spotted it and was able to scoop it up undetected. My Dad firmly believed that with that one act, word went out that alerted the Red Cross of his whereabouts, and eventually led to his transfer back to the Stalag 8B. Most people who had anything to do with the partisans, were summarily executed. At the same time men in the camp began the long march, the POWs who were too ill were removed by train to a Stalag VII- A. My Dad was on the train. It was at Stalag VII-A where on April 29, 1945, he first saw the tanks of the 14th Armoured Brigade prowling along the edge of the forest, directly behind the camp. Later, their Jeeps and tanks took over the entire camp and 50,000 men from every nation in Europe and most of Asia went nuts in the euphoria of freedom. Guy Dirkin Author Ann Coyle