Posted by Peter Ceresole on March 06, 2006 at 00:36:12 from 80.177.22.49 user PeterC.
In Reply to: POWs (was CC w/o a map) posted by Jock on March 06, 2006 at 00:09:10:
When visiting Horsey Island in the 1960s my parents were told that German POWs were employed on the island. (Or were they Italian POWs or refugee Poles? My memory aint wot it used to be.)
Could be any of the above. German POWs were finally repatriated in 1948. If you look carefully at old newsreels of the big freeze of 1947-48, you can see POWs in their Wehrmacht forage caps shovelling the snow.
There were plenty of them; when I was a little lad, still in war time, we went by train to Windsor. We stopped for some time next to another train and the word rustled around 'Look! Look! German prisoners!' Out of the window, just feet away, was a carriage crowded with men in those feldgrau caps. They looked... Serious, I think is the word. I waved at them and they smiled back, but it was so strange. I was four years old and they were The Enemy. I remember my mum telling me that they were just people like us, and that they must certainly be homesick.
As for the 1946 aerial photo shoot, Poles are the likeliest candidates. Many served with distinction in the RAF during the war and afterwards many chose to stay. I remember even a decade later finding Poles in every variety of gound job on RAF stations, including in the photo section.
Nowadays of course they are back as our favourite plumbers.