CHAPTER ELEVEN

Final Thoughts

ERNIE STEVENS

I knew that coming home was not easy. Prisoners had to do the best they could and get on with their lives and not make too much fuss about things. But that week was a terrible week for me. Well, I felt that if anybody upset me, they were in for trouble. I mean the fact that one is released is not easy, coming back to a new world. When you’re a prisoner you get used to certainty, you get up and you go to work at a factory, but coming home you don’t know what you’re going to face. As far as POWs were concerned, we were all given a two months’ pass and I think that was a wise decision by the authorities, instead of having these men fiddling around in barracks.

GEORGE GADSBY

I had only received eight parcels of foodstuffs out of the 70 that had been sent. I did not receive any of these until September, parcels of clothing and boots were also sent but never reached me. I never received a single letter or post card from anyone during the whole time I was in captivity and I had no news from my people from the 16th of March until I reached home on the 8th of December.

JACK ROGERS

In my room I’ve got a letter from the King – King George V – it’s in my room now in a frame, in which he and Queen Mary thanked me for all that I’d gone through and for being a prisoner of war, so somebody thanked you for it. I know they couldn’t do any more but the recognition was important, that you’d tried your best, and I appreciated that very much. The point is, I’ve got to be grateful, I’m still here, I’m 106 years old, and I’ve just had a cup of tea.

FREDERICK HAMMOND

Things used to come out now and again and my family used to say, ‘Oh, you’ve never said anything about that before.’ But I didn’t want anything to do with the war, I wanted to forget it all. I was glad to get home and never bothered about a war pension. I didn’t think the Government owed me anything, in a way, that’s why I didn’t trouble. But I always said afterwards I was glad in a way that I went.

NORMAN COWAN

We knew they would never make the Germans pay, that any talk was a load of hooey. They asked questions of the prisoners, but then I hadn’t been hit. I suppose some fellows would say all sorts of things, but I didn’t, I was just glad that I was alive. I suffered something which was beyond hitting. A lack of food to sustain a body, and many were like that, and some succumbed to it, but I managed to get through. I was lucky, I had the opportunity to live again. A fifth of a loaf a day and turnip soup, and whenever I have felt like complaining about food, immediately my mind says – a fifth of a loaf a day and turnip soup.

WALTER HUMPHRYS

I didn’t give myself up voluntarily, but better a prisoner of war than being in the trenches. You don’t expect to be given chocolates as a POW, but at least you are comparatively safe. You have your life to thank for and you’d rather live your life having a hard time than having no life at all. Nevertheless, you are helpless as a prisoner, and you have to rely on them totally for your bread and water and for the way you are treated.

BILL EASTON

This part of Kings Lynn was like a village then, not built up like it is today. Everyone knew me. People used to speak to me in the street and, to tell you the truth, in the end I got so fed up with congratulations that I didn’t go out too much, I was a sort of recluse. In those days I used to do a lot of reading, and that’s what I did. But it was a wonderful feeling to be home.

THOMAS SPRIGGS

In 1910 when I lost my father, I went to live with my grandparents. Grandfather was an estate steward and farmer at Norton Hall on the Daventry/Norton road. I used to love playing, as a thirteen year old boy, in a 40 acre field on a frosty November morning, perhaps with a couple of horses and a single furrow plough, one of my great delights. And I was walking along there, passing this field one day, and suddenly there was a shrill noise and then one bomb dropped, then another one came down and exploded, and then a third. Then I woke up and realised where I was. The noise came from a prisoner of war sleeping in the bunk next to mine and he was snoring to his heart’s content – whistle, snore, whistle snore, whistle, snore.