General Chat

Stray ..............

you are so lucky that your granddad talked about the war.

My grandfather was in WW1, and never talked about it. All I know is what I have found in his records ...... I'm lucky that at least some of his records have survived. My mother would have been about 10 when he got home from "Mesopotamia" (basically current day Iraq), but he mustn't have talked about it even then. She only had one story about him catching a flying fish that landed on the deck of the ship as they came home through the Mediterranean. He dried that fish, took it home, and gave it to Mum .......... it was hung in a cupboard for the rest of her life, never in full view.

We had a POW camp in Oldham ....... in a former cotton mill that had been converted.

From stories that I have heard and read, the men weren't too happy. Some of them were even allowed to go out in 1s or 2s to have tea with locals who were willing to risk the ire of their neighbours.

I even met a man who had been imprisoned there!!

I went on a school ski trip to Kitzbuhel in Austria about 1957/58, and our ski instructor came to join us for a chat on New Year's Eve. He picked up where we were from ................. and started asking questions we found hard to answer.

The POWs had built a lawn, and a tennis court where they could play games and pass the time, and he wanted to know if they still existed. They didn't, of course ....... but I'm afraid we lied and said the tennis court was still there.

He was Austrian, had had to join the German Army, and was glad when he was captured!! He must have been very young .............. he was only in his mid-30s when we met him.