From Coastal Command to Captivity: The Memoir of a Second World War Airman by Allan Hunter

Author:Allan Hunter
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781844682225
Publisher: Pen and Sword

The camp was becoming organized in many other respects. Education was beginning to take off; the subjects varied a great deal even if most amounted to little more than talks. But they were popular and, with the arrival of the RAF, their scope was widened considerably. After all there was a wide choice of skills and knowledge represented here. Maybe one didn't envisage becoming a banker, butcher, publican, sheepshearer, jackaroo or a journeyman. But to listen to some backwoodsman of an Australian talking on ‘riding the range’ and making such digressions as only these people could was a riot in itself. It was an experience to listen to those who had been such things before learning their Service trades. For those few minutes one could leave the realms of PoW camp as the speaker would speak with enthusiasm of his experiences to a bunch of chaps lying around in the sand on a warm summer's day. The more serious lectures were often given in rooms vacated for that purpose by courtesy of the other residents. There were lectures on law, mathematics, astro-navigation, art, languages. Naturally it took some time before the camp was fully organized. But that was about the state of the art when we left many months later.

Then, of course, there were the practical pursuits. These could be divided into two main categories – personal and those ‘for the common good’. Personal pursuits would embrace such things as drawing, painting, the making of pots and pans from Red Cross tins, wood carving (the basic material being a bed-board), or even knitting. Pastimes for the common good could be any of these as might be required for escape. Here the chap handy with a piece of wood could manufacture items for use in a tunnel; the artistic might employ some of his talents in map-making or preparing documents; the potential tinsmith would find ample application in making items for tunnels, such as compasses or parts for an air pump. There was much scope for dexterity and/or imagination. In the early days I recall helping to make condensers (or, in modern parlance, capacitors) for the radio. The radio wizards would calculate the requirements and the artisan would manufacture the goods. Capacitors weren't difficult to make. It required tin-foil from cigarette packets (and it really was tin in the British cigarette packet) and dehydrated grease from the rations, into which suitable toilet paper was dipped to make the dielectric. When placed together, alternately tin-foil/greased paper, in the number and size determined by the ‘experts’ and carefully joined together at their opposite ends, this produced a capacitor of the required capacity.

This is but one example of useful things a bright boy could do! Others included the noble art of cutting glass with a pair of nail scissors under water (useful when making compasses), making sticks of solder out of tin-foil from cigarette packets and many other little tricks born of necessity.

Naturally, life was not all that placid all the while. There were always the Germans to contend with.

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