Canadian Prisoner of War Diary

[George Wilkinson]

#8 Fri Nov 28/41
As I continue these happenings as prisoner of war, I find myself way behind in my writings and as I continue, it is now Nov 28th. A lot has happened , not so much in events , but in my own personal life, that is to say character changes, so I will try and give up the gen today. As I have previously stated (because the writing is, my hands are very cold). John Moyle, a well bred and learned Scotsman age 28 and myself are combined together, or in other words, sharing our Red Cross parcels together, doing our cooking together and altogether living very good. He is one man here I tell everything to and we comfide in one another.
Now to give an idea of what we receive from the R.C. every week, I will detail today's parcel which John just received. We received 1 meat paste, 1 can of pies, 2 meat rolls, 1 tin of sardines, tin of jam, 1 bar of chocolate, bar of soap, 1 Irish Stew, 1 tin of powdered milk, sugar which varies but there are always seventeen articles. I received a tin of pudding, 1 tin of margarine and a package of dripping in mine yesterday.

#9 Sat Nov 29/41
I have learned to cook very well and we use our imagination a great deal, so get both good and bad concoctions but we have realized that no matter what it is our biggest problems are bread ( 1/5 loaf a day). Wood and nails are very much in demand and we treasure one nail here like we would a suit of clothes back home, it is very funny for things which we would place no value on outside, we value very highly here.

[Owen]

Originally Posted by George Wilkinson

Newspaper article of Sgt. Stephenson

George,
I can't open this I haven't got Word.
Any other way you could show it?
Keep the entries coming, I'm finding them facinating.

[George Wilkinson]

Sorry that is the way Jim scanned all the originals. I will see what I can do.

[Slipdigit]

Try this Owen.

[George Wilkinson]

I hope this works better Owen

[George Wilkinson]

Another newspaper article that appeared in the local Toronto Paper.
Sgt Stephenson mentioned his religous metal earlier in a letter home August 15 1941

"Tell Mother that her prayers and that religous medal Adele gave me blessed by the priest is sure holding good. I should have been killed twice now but by the Grace of God, and it couldn't be anything else, I am very much still alive, the rest of my crew on our plane was killed 2 weeks ago and I was the only one to escape"

[Owen]

I can read them all now, thanks chaps.
This is an excellent thread.
Thanks.

[Panzerschreck]

Very interesting reading, where exactly were he held as a pow ?

[George Wilkinson]

He started out at Stalag Vlll B and was moved to other camps as time went on.

[George Wilkinson]

#10 Sunday Nov 30/41

All we are issued with by Jerrys are 1 spoon and a dinie (soup pan) so we make frying pans out of fish tins, drinking cups out of a jam tin and knives out of tin wrapped around wood whittled to a blade form and flattened. We receive cheap needles in the canteen and take the strands of rope to sew with; pipes cost 2 marks 50 so we sell our chocolate or cigarettes to obtain enough for a pipe.
John and I have what we call our banquet once a week in which (ar best we had last week) 1 tin of pitchen (any idea what this is?)and a ration of spuds mixed mixed and fried to a deep brown, welsh rabbit (1 slice each) carrots and peas, 2/3 meat roll fried with 1 ration of fried potatoes, with bread and raison pudding (which john is very proficient at making) with cream, 1 slice of bread and jam, tea, chocolate and we ended it with a cigarette, well after all that I was darn near sick but very slap happy and everything John would say I would start laughing and couldn't stop(idiotic or what) ...................