208284 L/Sgt. Henry Vies "Ginger" Suggit MMBritish Army 5DG East Riding of Yorkshire Yeomanry from:Hull My father, Lance Serjeant H.V. Suggit of the East Riding Yeomanry, seconded to the 5th Royal Inniskilling Dragoon Guards, was captured south of Brussels on 18 May 1940 whilst attempting to break through a German forward column. After initial treatment for serious wounds in a German field dressing station and hospital, he convalesced in base hospitals set up in Lazarettes in Brugmann and Malines, before recovering sufficiently to be transfered to prison camps in Hemer (Stalag VI A) on 17 September 1940 and then Lamsdorf (Stalag VIII B) on 28 November 1940.
Despite a still not fully functional arm, he bluffed his way onto coalmine working parties for the prospect of better rations, regaining fitness and more lax confinement - conditions useful for escape. Initially based in Morgenroth, he was transferred to Triebitz (party E211) in the Sudetenland, from which he made his first break on 27 August 1941 with two like minded colleagues, TSM Perry and Corporal Pugh - removing bars from their block windows and shinning down knotted sheets.
They were on the loose for nearly 3 weeks, covering a significant distance on foot before being caught as they tried to stow aboard a train near Lundenburg. After security processing, they were returned to Lamsdorf and 20 days bread and water in solitary confinement.
Undeterred, he spent the next 8 months keeping a lower profile before securing another outside working party job, this time in a brewery in Hansdorf (party E95), again in the Sudetenland. Within the week, he and two East Yorkshire Regiment chums, Edie Harris and Jim Andrews, had done a bunk, changing into home made civilian garb that they had brought with them and had secreted on arrival.
Freedom was short lived, being apprehended 7 days later near Mueglitz. Two days initial security processing followed in Schoenberg, before being returned to Lamsdorf (as proof that escapers would be caught) and another interrogation, but only 5 days clink - all sticking to a tale indicating appalling conditions in work party E95. Their story and reality were poles apart, but was not checked, otherwise they could have got a year in a straflager. As it was, they were separated and father spent a month in two closely guarded timber working parties (E495 and E364), before a camp transfer to become somebody else's problem.
After a temporary confinement in Parsburg, he was held in what became Stalag 383 at Hohenfels from late August 1942 through to liberation, making two more escape attempts. The first was on 25 August 1943, when he and George Beeson walked out dressed as German guards. They were only loose for just over a day - a consequence of generally tighter German railway security measures around Nuremburg. They subsequently received 30 days solitary in the bunker, but managed not to compromise their modus operandi of getting out.
This enabled another attempt dressed in facsimile German uniform on 17 March 1944, with Australian Charlie Elphick. After passing through the inner gate, they came to grief at the outer security checkpoint, when a clued-up sentry asked too many questions. This time - being apprehended in the enemy's uniform - they were perhaps extremely fortunate only to receive 30 days solitary. The guard who passed them at the inner gate received 14 days of the same.
With a reputation as a persistent escaper, further attempts were problematic. When the Germans evacuated Hohenfels in Spring 1945, my father and others secreted themselves, hunkering down till liberation on 22 April. Cadging lifts to Paris, he was flown by prisoner recovery arrangements in a Dakota to Buckinghamshire and arrived home in Hull a week later.
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