Prisoner of War Tom McGrath

My father served in the Second World War, I'm 68. I grew up with war comics, like Victor, Commando. My dad's name was Tom McGrath. I knew he was a POW but never really talked too much about his experiences. If he'd had a drink he would sometimes tell a funny story of the POW camp but not often. Didn't talk very much about what happened prior to him being captured.

Although, I remember once I was reading a copy of Victor and that issue was about Harry Nichols who won the Victoria Cross and my father said, 'Oh, I was in a POW camp with him.' In fact their numbers were only 8 apart so they must have queued up close together when they were in the camp and he saw Harry Nichols being told by the German Commandant that he'd been awarded the Victoria Cross. He was in Stalag XXA and XXB in Northern Poland.

My father passed away in 2009. I went down to HMS Victory and I could see all these records of the sailors on the Mary Rose and I thought that the British Services had always been good at keeping records, so I started doing some research into my father's war and this is what I've collated.

Mum and Dad got married in 28 April 1940 - they had met 6 months before. Dad was called up in January and he was at Hounslow barracks in training and they met on a Sunday evening - he was allowed out once a week. One time my Dad said to my Mum, see you next week, and the next time they saw each other was 5 years later. He got back into camp and was told get your kit, they were going off to Northern France. That was about May 1940 and so they'd been married a fortnight.

He was sent to a holding camp outside Rouen in France. Just about the time of Dunkirk. Sometimes he would say he was in the Fusiliers and sometimes he would say that he was in the Buffs. I found out that he was trained by the Fusiliers and on transfer to France he was going to join the Buffs. That was the army's plan - he didn't know until he got back after the war that he was officially in the Buffs.

I found the form he filled out when he came back to the UK as a returning POW. On that form, the unit was Davies Rifles. I did some research and in Rouen, with the chaos of Dunkirk, soldiers from all different regiments were formed into improvised battalions and each took the name of the officer in charge. They were basically deployed to stop the second Dunkirk at Le Havre and Cherburg. Dad's battalion was deployed to the river Bethune, which runs North to South parallel to the Seine. Early June 1940, the Germans were advancing towards Le Havre and Cherburg. A lot has been written about the 52nd Highlanders in the North of that line, my father was based at Neuchatel. 7 June 1940 Neuchatel was heavily attacked, it was almost laid waste. They planned to blow up the bridge at Neuchatel but the plunger failed, so the next day when all the bridges were blown along the Bethune, the bridge at Neuchatel was not blown until 4pm in the afternoon. By which time the rest of the battalion had gone - he was left behind.
He did mention when I was looking at one of my comics that they used a Bren gun to try to shoot down Messerschmitt and Stukas, but they were useless. 10 of his unit were killed on that day at the bridge.

I have brought his joining up papers from January 1940. I don't know if he was in the TA initially. He was a machine toolist before the war - he had come across from Ireland in the 1930s, as had my Mum for work. He was an Irishman serving in the British army. Irish citizens living in the UK were eligible for conscription so he didn't have a choice.
On his form he filled out at the end of the war, he said when he was captured he was told by the Germans that as an Irish man the British wouldn't help him.

This is a photo of him in training. That's Mum and Dad in the fortnight between getting married and my Dad going off to war.

My Mum got the 'Missing, Believed Killed' letter until about the Autumn of 1940 when she was told eventually that he was in a POW in Poland. A few months of not knowing. She never really said whether she believed he was dead. She just carried on working in London. Dad said that when he came back after the war, landed in what is now Gatwick, issued with a uniform, and went into a pub and got chucked out because he was in a uniform - the landlord didn't want them in there. He was in Crawley for a couple of days and came in a train to Victoria station, said goodbye to the guy he'd been travelling with. My Dad said that was the first time in 5 years that I had been by myself. A policeman saw him looking lost in Victoria Station and asked him what's up? He said, 'This is the first time in 5 years that I've not had someone telling me where to go or what to do.' So the policeman took him to the District Line train to Chiswick - told the driver to make sure he gets off at Chiswick Park.

When he arrived at his home in St Mary's Grove, Mum had a "Welcome Home Tom", he saw all the furniture and she told him, don't worry everythings paid for. It was a nice memory he used to talk about a lot.

He used to work in the Polish forests, where it was very cold. He got ill on occasion. Towards the end of the war he was on the Long March and he did make reference to the fact that a couple of the guys were marching without their trousers on because they had dysentery and weren't allowed to stop. He saw someone who stopped and was shot.
I was a police officer for 30 years, and without a shadow of doubt, with our knowledge now, when I was a child my dad had PTSD. The nightmares, screaming and shouting at night. But everyone, half the country suffered - some coped better than others. It wasn't treated in those days, especially for POWs because they didn't have much sympathy with prisoners of war, other than make some funny stories.

The films post-war of POW life were all very polished - mainly officers. When he got back to England he was asked if he ever did any sabotage - and he said he used to put sand in pipes sometimes - but mostly people were just trying to get through their time in the camps.

I couldn't find his POW card - I did write to the Red Cross. That's the war diary.

After Neuchatel he was told by his platoon officer to split up in 2s and 3s - you're on your own. He spent about 10 days on the run, staying in a barn. They were allowed to stay with a French farming family, but they were found by the Gestapo. He said that they were taken to a chateau into a cellar, where there was wine and he and his friend drank the wine. The regular army then took the soldiers from the Gestapo.

He had only been married a few weeks and the German soldiers asked him to take his wedding ring off - he said 'no, I'm not taking that off, you'll have to cut my finger off'. He was then put on cattle trucks and transported across Europe, which was very difficult. They didn't know where they were going and ended up East at Stalag XXA.

He mentioned some of the lads were killed, but never gave any details. He'd try to remember funny stories in the prisoner of war camps. There are some concert party pictures from the POW camp and also a photo that Mum sent him in the POW camp (see photos).

There was always some confusion about his POW number - the last two numbers were transposed sometimes.

From June 1940 to January 1945, when he started marching West he was in the camps. He never told me where they marched to or when they met Allied troops. He was at Stalag XXB until 15 February 1945 and the next POW camp in Hamburg in April 1945. So 2 or 3 months marching - sleeping by the side of the road. I remember him saying that the Germans just drifted away towards the end of the war. They were in this camp and the German guards drifted off and then it was taken over by the British. He got back to Gatwick just before VE day.

I have also brought in a photocopy of the form my Dad filled in when he returned to England. He filled out the form saying that he belonged to the Royal Fusiliers, but unknown to him he had actually been transferred to the Buffs just before he was captured.

He was ill and was in Shenley hospital in North London. I know Shenley in latter years was a mental health unit, but I think at the time he had tubercolis. He then came to Amersham, to Hodgemore Wood, and he was in a camp there waiting for dispersal. He used to talk about being taken in a 3 tonne truck to the pub in Old Amersham. Then he was demobbed. My Dad recovered physically from his ordeals during the war, but I remember as a child that he would have terrible nightmares on occasion.

As I got older and researched about the war myself, I knew it wasn't like the Great Escape. My dad was a factory worker. They had various jobs to do in the camp - like shifting coal. Officers in the camp didn't have to work.

I visited the National Archive and copied some documents - for instance, a handwritten war diary from Northern France. I found one of the officers from his improvised battalion describing his escape. The officer in charge of the Rifles went back to France on D-Day and was killed.

I was inspired to research all this by looking at the Mary Rose and seeing lists of the ship's company.