Skip to main content

Not typical "crime" of Gunner Hugh C Bone, Royal Artillery, 51st HD

Last weekend of may we were guides for Evelyn and Wighton Clark. It was pleasure to show them places connected with Stalag XXA. Below we are showing a resume from trip of footprints of gunner Hugh C Bone.

The day after the BBC’s television coverage commerating  the 70th anniversary of the evacuation of the BEF at Dunkirk, there was a programme shown relating to those soldiers who were left behind in Normandy, in the main the 51st Highland Division, a Division who along with the French helped hold back Rommel’s Panzers  in order to allow the evacuation to take place. Their understanding was that they would be evacuated too.


During that t.v. programme, I listened to POWs recount their experience of battle and incarceration in Stallag XXA in Poland and for the first time I had an insight into what my father had been through from 1940 to 1945. From then on I wanted to find out as much as I could.  This was extremely difficult, as like the majority of POWs my dad never spoke to us about it and everyone who might have been able to answer my questions had sadly passed, apart from my dad’s older sister. 

I asked my aunt what she knew about this period of his life and she said practically nothing, as he was unable to speak about his experience when he got home.  Her memory was of him sitting for long periods of time staring into the fire lost in his thoughts -  a different young man from the one who went away to war. She said “he was 21 when I walked him through Glasgow to Central Station to be transported somewhere in England for training and it was 5 years later before I saw him again”.  She knew he had intervened when a guard pulled his gun on a prisoner for rejecting the food he was given. The prisoner had apparently thrown the bowl to the ground.  Also, he had been operated on without an anaesthetic, albeit it was minor surgery but very uncomfortable none the less. 


I do recall asking dad about what happened at St Valery when the decision to surrender was announced.  His reply was “we sat down and waited on Rommel arriving”, end of conversation, typical dad!


Thanks to Hania and Pawel I have now gleaned important facts about him personally. On their web site, I found my dad’s name on a list of prisoners who were court martialed and sent to a hard labour camp north of Torun.   I can only presume that this relates to his intervention when the guard threatened to shoot a prisoner.  Hania felt this was feasible, as an example would have had to be made of his “crime”.  Visiting Fort XI and seeing where he was likely held prior to being transported was mind blowing - how did these young men survive these awful conditions?


I am now 99.9% sure he was on The Long March.  I knew he was marched, I just presumed this was from St Valery to Poland,  a difficult enough one without the 3 months of utter torture that was still to come.  This also explains his inability to eat lettuce or anything resembling it!  A man who truly appreciated you making him a nice meal would comment if you left just one little bit of leaf on broccolli, that‘s how sensitive he was about the legacy of trying to surrive on what was available to eat whilst being marched, not a lot!


I would like to be able to contribute to Hania and Pawel’s historical account of what took place in Stallag XXA.  Sadly I cannot, this makes me even more grateful to them and their colleagues who help keep this account of WW2 alive. Thanks to Wartime Guides and the museum, I am able to pull together some important information and photographs and pass these on to his grandchildren, who hopefully will appreciate just exactly what this quiet and shy young man went through in order to help fight oppression and fascism and survived.


Many, many thanks Hanai and Pawel.  We thoroughly enjoyed our trip to beautiful Gothic Torun and the tour with you.


Evelyn Clark 
In the "gallery" of Fort XI

The found of wooden huts

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Thanks this trip we've discovered new facts about POW from Stalag XXA in 1945

That was wonderful trip. During three days we saw couple of places connected with POW path of Jack Stansfield. Moreover thanks his son Michael we saw notes with memories of last days in Stalag XXA in Torun. In opposit to all facts which says that prisoners left camp in late december 1945 Jack wrote that they started to march on 21 january! That means that lasts groups of POW left camp in 10 days before Torun was liberated. Fortunatley Jack survived afeter he escaped from march. He met russians army and polish partizants. Below we presents you short memories about Jack and trip to Poland... My father was called Jack Stansfield, he was born in August 1918. He was brought up in the market town of Malton in North Yorkshire where his parents were publicans. He joined the Territorial Army in March 1939 and was mobilised on the declaration of war. Jack enlisted in his local regiment joining the 5th Battalion of the Green Howards. After a short time at the Regimental HQ in Richmond, North...

Living conditions in Stalag XXA

Monthly bath in Stalag XXA Living conditions Lawrence Travers Dorins a former POW describes „fort XI was surrounded by a high bank and the fence around it with gates across the entrance road, on one side there was also a dry moat with a bridge on it. The bridge led to a tunnel” The fortress was covered with trees, bushes and earth so that the fortress could not be visible from the bird's eye. Prisoners slept in caponiers where initially were supposed to sleep Prussian soldiers. Yet PoW describes the rooms as if there were designed as rooms in the concentration camps. Rooms looked as semi tunnels. “The perpendicular walls were about 3m high and the height of the arched roof was about 5 m, wooden bunks provided sleeping spaces. Each room had only two small windows which obviously allowed no ventilation. Due to the end of the night the air was solid and everyone would have a headache due to oxygen starvation” .In those rooms kept approximately 32 men. There were three shelves whe...

Just few hours to understand life in Stalag XXA(20A) in Torun

"I will always be grateful to Pawel for helping me understand better what happened to my father when he was captured by the German army after the fighting at Dunkirk. Like many former British POWs, Dad was reluctant to tell his children very much about what he had endured during the war. We knew he spent most of the war in German POW camps, in particular one in Poland. From his army records we discovered that camp was Staleg XX-A. I contacted Pawel at very short notice recently when I was in traveling with my husband in Europe. Pawel was able to meet me in Torun to walk me through the history of Staleg XX-A and some of the forts of Torun. My father, John Wilkinson, was with the British Expeditionary Force, serving in the  Light Tank Regiment of the 1st East Riding Yeomanry. We believe he fought at Cassel in France before being captured.  It was extraordinary for me to walk with Pawel at Torun where the British POWs disembarked, knowing my father would hav...