223323 Pte. Edward Stanley "Blondie" Boden British Army Duke of Cornwall's Light Infantry Fascinating and moving to read accounts from ex-POW's in Stalag VII-A Moosburg. My dad, Stan Boden (known as "Blondie") must have been in that same camp. He never told me its name and, like so many men, would rarely talk about those times. Today, they'd be diagnosed with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder but for them, as soon as they were shipped home, it was back to the regiment to prepare for the Far East! No help whatsoever! Yet he'd been through Dunkirk, the Middle East, North Africa, Italian POW camp and spent six months on the run in the Italian mountains before being sent to Germany.
I've deduced that Stalag VII Moosburg was his camp from his stories of going into Munich to work on bomb-damaged buildings after air-raids. When he was captured he was asked what his civilian job had been. He answered, "Dressler Placer" - he loaded tiles onto the trucks that went into the kilns for firing (it was a tile-making company). The Germans took this to mean he was a tiler - on roofs! Consequently, he was considered useful on bomb-damaged buildings!
After the war, like others, he kept in touch with at least one of the Germans he'd worked with and vouched for him when the man wanted to emigrate to Canada. Dad had a standing invitation to take his family on a visit but we couldn't afford to do so in the years after the war and then contact was lost.
Would Dad have enjoyed reading these accounts? Maybe, maybe not. So hard to know.
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