|
Synopsis
Nothing prepares a man for war and Private Charles Waite, of the 2/7th Queen’s Royal Regiment, was certainly ill-prepared when his convoy carrying supplies of petrol and ammunition on its way to Dunkirk took a wrong turning near Abbeville. They met half a dozen German tanks on the road and saw hundreds of German soldiers marching across fields towards them. 'The day I was captured, I had a rifle but no ammunition.'
Charles lost his freedom that day in May 1940 and didn't regain it until May 1945 when he was finally picked up by the Americans, having walked 1600km from his prison camp attached to Stalag 20B in East Prussia. 'When I got back I couldn't tell anybody about what had happened during my years as a POW. I was ashamed. I hadn't won any medals: I ahd no stories of brave deeds. How could I be proud of breaking rocks for 12 hours a day or pulling cabbages out of frozen ground at gunpoint? Would they have wanted to hear about the wounded soldiers dying in my arms, of the acts of cruelty I witnessed, and the terrible hunger and fatigue suffered on the Long March? Everybody wanted to forget the war and get on with rebuilding their lives.'
Silent for seventy years, Charles finally put his story on paper He describes his first march from Abbeville to Trier and journey by cattle truck across Germany to the east; working in a stone quarry and years of farm labour; his period in solitary confinement for sabotage; and the long March home in one of the worst winters on record. His story is also about friendship, of physical and mental resilience, and of compassion for everyone who suffered. 'My book is for all who lie in foreign fields. Those in shallow graves, the men we couldn't take with us It's for those left behind.
CHARLES WAITE was born in Barking, Essex in 1919 and was called up to the Queen’s Royal Regiment in October 1939. He was captured in France in May 1940 and spent five years as a POW in farm camps attached to Stalag 20B in East Prussia. In January 1945 he started his four-month march home walking over 1600km to Berlin. He married his sweetheart, Lily Mathers, and worked for Macarthys Pharmaceuticals for 34 years, moving to Kidderminster in 1972 where he still lives. His only son Brian died in 2006 and wife Lily in 2007. He joined the National ex-Prisoner of War Association (NEXPOWA) and met Terry Waite at the Captured exhibition at the Imperial War Museum North in May 2009. In 2010 he returned to France with Testimony Films for Dunkirk the Forgotten Heroes (Discovery Channel) and appeared in The Long March to Freedom (Yesterday Channel) in 2011. In September 2010 he received the National POW/MIA Recognition Day Award from the Air Force Sergeants’ Association Chapter 1669.
DEE LA VARDERA is a freelance writer living in Wiltshire. A member of the Society of Women Writers and Journalists (SWWJ) she has written features for national and regional magazines and newspapers, as well as a series of local history books published by the Frith Book Co. Her website is: www.dewfall-hawk.com.
|