Canadian Prisoner of War Diary

Discussion in 'Prisoners of War' started by George Wilkinson, Apr 16, 2008.

  1. September/ October brought news that Betty had married someone else. Sgt Stephenson played it down in his letters home, but it must have been a hard knock.
    " So Betty is Mrs. So & So now, it came damn close to being Stephenson (note my ego). It's Sunday today and raining like hell. the weather suits my spirits..........."

    A letter to a friend dated Sept 7/42 talked of his cheating death. "
    For one horrible moment when I bailed out in my chute, I didn't think it would open as it took longer than usual and when it did I almost landed on top of a farm house. Boy the German farmer was surprised to see me drop out of the blue. I bailed out at 800 ft which doesn't give you much margin for landing in one piece, my landing place was a bunch of vegetables".......

    Sgt Stephenson's jump that night gave him entrance into the "Caterpillar" club. This club has been discussed in this form before. Jim tells me his fathers medal has the Ruby eyes denoting a jump from a burning aircraft.

    June 21/43 brought this letter;
    "I am all settled in my new abode Stalag Luft 6; there are only fifty to a room here which gives considerable more privacy than my previous three camps (Dulag Luft-- Stalag VlllB -- Stalag Luft lll), also all Red Cross parcels are cooked by the cook house staff, which saves us messing about like a lot of old hens, although it did give us something to occupy our time. The sports field when utilized will be a welcome improvement, this one being a grass field, where the other was very fine dust..... Betty was my only matrimonial aim, so such thoughts of marriage will be put in moth balls and put away for a few years....."

    Sgt Stephenson's diary picks up again in July of 44. The letters up to this point are mainly of a personal nature and do not give much information.
     
  2. Slipdigit

    Slipdigit Old Hickory Recon

    Did Mr Stephenson ever marry?
     
  3. Yes he did and his wife is still quite alive. Here is a picture of the Sgt shortly before he died at 71 yrs old.
     

    Attached Files:

  4. Slipdigit

    Slipdigit Old Hickory Recon

    She must be a precious lady. Extend to her my thanks for letting you post his diary and letters.

    I'm looking forward to the remainder of the diary.
     
  5. Owen

    Owen -- --- -.. MOD

    George,
    Please thank the family for letting you post Sgt Stephenson's diary and letters here.
    An excellent thread indeed.
     
  6. Jim has taken printed copies of these pages to his Mother to see and she is thrilled to know people are interested in what her husband went through. Your interest and questions will continue to be passed on to the family.
    Thank you all.
     
  7. #17 July 5/44
    It's almost 2-1/2 yrs since I entered anything in the diary; since that time I have traveled pretty extensively over Germany and East Prussia. We arrived at Sagan in May 17/42 and arrived at Heydekrug on the Baltic on June 10/43
    Since I last entered anything here, the war has taken strange turns. The Germans were winning in 41, and now the Germans are almost defeated. The Red Army at this moment is 160 miles east of this camp advancing rapidly. Rumor has it that the Germans haven't time to take us out and we will be left to the Russians when they get this far, which means ultimately that we shall probably get back to England in time for the armistice. Other rumors say we shall be taken to the port of Mernal and from there shipped to Sweden; however a fortnight will probably show which way the wind is blowing.

    The Russian now have taken Minsk and pushing west of the city. Wilna is ecpected to fall hourly, if it hasn't fallen by now. Wilna is 160 miles away. The camp is very calm but tense, waiting for further events. If they decide to evacuate us the journey shall be hell as only a forced march or cattle truck journey in Germany can be.
     
  8. Slipdigit

    Slipdigit Old Hickory Recon

    Did he ever give a reason why he stopped writing, then started back? Was it just "one of those things"?
     
  9. Jeff

    Jim thinks his father sunk into a bit of a depression at that point but they never talked about it. He continued to write home, but these letters don't give a true picture because he was well aware of the censorship by the Germans. I have noted that some of the letters from this time showed quite a bit of anger. This is just my opinion reading between the lines.

    George
     
  10. #18 July 8/44
    Just drew my cigarettes out of storage. I have 7000 cigs & 3 lbs tobacco. As I will only be able to carry 1000 cigs in case of a move, I suppose I will have to dispose of the rest some way. 30 Lbs is the most we shall carry. That will include clothes, food & cigs. Oh how we are hoping we won't move, because it's several hundred miles to any place safe from the Russians and to walk that distance with guns at your backs isn't my idea of a picnic, however I believe we shall wake up one morning and find the Germans have left. I hope so anyway.
    This afternoon is sports day, have entered the spiral & spoon (any idea what this was?), three legged race & wheelbarrow race.
     
  11. #19 JULY 20/44
    July 20th finds me at Stalag 357 ar Torun Poland. In some aspects the journey was not as bad as expected. The Americans went off from Luft 6 first, then L Lager with A&B blocks of our A Lager. We think C&D blocks made up the last party. My pack weighed 140 lbs and to this day I don't know how I ever managed to lug it here. The first march was 6 km, about 4-1/2 miles, but I was very lucky getting one of my kit bags on the cook house wagon. When we reached Heydekrug we were put in a field surrounded by German guards, with field bbayonets. Finally we were put in cattle trucks on the train and our baggage stored in a separate car. Now to describe how we traveled. The box car was divided into two parts with a separate compartment in the center 8ft by 6 for the guards. We were placed 17 men behind a barbed wire enclosure on either side of the central entrance. That is 17 prisoners in each end with six guards in the center. We were so cramped up in our little enclosure that all the feet were on top of one another in the center where they met as we lay down, which was almost impossible to do as your back scraped up and down the board at out backs all night long. It was a fight to keep your feet and legs on top of the heap. It sure was terrible but very amusing now as I look back on it. To make matters worse, it was very hot and the place stank of sweaty bodies. However all things come to an end sometime and about 36 hrs later we arrived at Torun.
    Now the worst part of the journey commences. To make matters miserable, it was raining and we had to force march 8 km and I didn't have a cook house wagon to carry one of my kit bags in. How I ever got to the camp I don't know. The 140 lbs just about paralyzed every muscle in my body, but as my kit contained food, I struggled on. I'll assure you it was more will power than strength, also the rain mixed with sweat pouring off me was very uncomfortable, however that six miles came to an end and I can lay back in my pit at Torun and laugh it off and the food from my pack is stored on a shelf next to where I write this.
     
  12. David Layne

    David Layne Well-Known Member

    George,

    Which camps did James go through. It was not unusual for them to be moved around quite a lot throughout the war. My own Father was in 5 camps excluding Amsterdam interogation centre.

    Nick

    Like Nick's dad my father was a P.O.W. and again like Nick's dad our fathers were imprisoned in some of the same camps as Sgt. Stephenson. I'm really enjoying this thread as it is giving me further insight as to what these chaps went through.
     
  13. Owen

    Owen -- --- -.. MOD

    spiral & spoon (any idea what this was?),

    I assume as they had no eggs so must have used something else instead for the egg & spoon race, a spiral of wire maybe?
     
  14. von Poop

    von Poop Adaministrator Admin

    Caught up on this excellent thread again.
    Pinned!

    Cheers,
    Adam.
     
  15. #20 April 16 1945
    Today is April 16/45 and one hour ago British tanks & men took over our prison camp. Today is exactly almost to the hour 3-1/2 yrs since I was first captured. All last night artillery, machine guns & small arms fire could be heard. this camp was a bedlam of different nationalities; we have british, Dominions, American, Rissian, French, Polish, Yugoslavian and other nationalities here.

    How do I feel? Well that is hard to answer; I am not as excited as I used to think I would be when this day came, but I have a very happy and contented feeling inside me although now I am very impatient to get home.
    This camp was evacuated about ten days ago and the prisoners put on the march. Len, Al & I kept up a delaying action and managed to stay until the last party when we hid in the cook house. Two hours later the R.S.M. i/c sick party, which was left behind, told us we would have to work in the cook house. We have been eating well ever since.

    This ends the actual diary it'self. Sgt Stephenson dictated his memories of these events to his wife in the 80's and I will follow with some of these. There are still some items to be scanned yet, so there is still more to come.
     
  16. Owen

    Owen -- --- -.. MOD

    George,
    What camp was he in when liberated?
    Wonder what unit got to his camp.
     
  17. Owen I am assuming he was still at Stalag 357. One of the newspaper articles in Jim's collection is a picture of the cheering men that were freed from 357 and it is the last camp mentioned.
    He does state in his memories dictated in the 80's that they were released by the British 7th Armoured Division.

    I hope this helps
     
  18. Owen

    Owen -- --- -.. MOD

  19. From Sgt Stephenson's dictated memories

    In Sept 1939 Canada declared war and I enlisted as a pilot in May 1940, but unklnown to me that meant (aircrew)- pilot, navigator, radio operator and gunners with wireless experience. I was chosen as a wireless gunner, the biggest disapointment of my life as I wanted to be a pilot and have a career as an Airline Pilot, if I got through the war alive-- it was a big gamble.

    I went to wireless school in Montreal and was soon bored but we had some good beer bashes in the mess, one group trying to see who could drink the most. Our group usually won with my help, which seemed funny because I had hardly drank before, but it wouldn't be my last........

    I went to gunnery school and passed with flying colours-- you see I had a job I enjoyed and outside of the guns jamming it wasn't bad. After getting my air gunner wings, we headed home for leave before going overseas. A very good friend Peter Emblem, stayed with us at home; he had a famous brother who acted under the stage name of Robert Donat. We got into a bit of hellery once in a while with our practical jokes and having more to drink than we should. Peter was killed later in the Middle East-- one of many good friends.........

    We then left for Debert Nova Scotia and all I can remember of Debert is mud and rain, it was a horrible place, but we were not there long-- we boarded an armed merchant cruiser to take us to England. Can you imagine a ship with two small guns aft and forward escorting a great number of merchant ships loaded with ammunition and other supplies of war-- if a German sub had spotted us, the whole bunch would have been blown out of the water....
    To be coninued
     
  20. cont.

    ...... I was stationed at Uxbridge England. One evening I took the tube to London and it was during a very bad air raid, I got my eyes filled with what the English people were going through--- sleeping in the underground of the tube subways, little kids yelling --- it was hell. I would rather take my chances with the bombs above.
    I latched on to a newspaper reporter with the paper called The Scotchman and we spent the evening together. His newspaper was in a tall building and we saw London in flames, standing on the rood of the building. After seeing this for a while we went to a London underground bar, had a few drinks and then went back to his office and slept in a couple of bunk beds.
    Well-- finally off to O.T.U. ( operational training unit) where we had advanced training to prepare us for a squadron. We flew Wellington bombers and learned all kinds of air firing, air to ground -- the ocean being the ground. We had two browning machine guns in our gun turret and I had to learn how to clear jams and in fact put a gun together in a dark room, with the gun in pieces. It was a fun time, with an occational bash on the side. Mostly it was work and more work-- our guns were always jamming and in O.T.U. you didn't have the best equipment, the best equipment going to the operational squadrons. One time I had a jam and we were over the North Sea doing firing to ground exercise when a German Dories bomber appeared a few hundred feet away.-- he was probably short on fuel and our guns didn't work so we went our separate ways, but to say I wasn't scared would be a lie.
    My frequency in the Sgt Mess became a nightly affair but I passed my gunnery course with about a 70 to 75 % average. Finally my future crew flew to the O.T.U. and picked me up for a raid that night, their previous rear gunner had been killed the night before on a bombing raid. Our quarters on the squadron, 75 New Zealand, were superb, two men to a room and our rooms were kept clean and the beds made by the Waafs.
    My raid over Germany that night was nothing; we had to turn back because the port engine was flaming. I made my first op without any trouble ( our trip was scrubbed, but the engine fire was something new.
     

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