229713 Pte. Henry Hubert Coggin British Army Rifle Brigade This, unfortunately, is a story told totally from memory. It is my father's story and as he is now deceased I am unable to corroborate any of it.
Having been captured somewhere in Italy after his unit had run out of ammunition in a fire fight with Germans. I believe that this was sometime in 1944. They were reluctantly forced to surrender. Subsequently taken back to Munich and interred at Stalag 7B.
During his time there, my father and his comrades were used as working parties to carry out road repairs in the Munich area. On the return of such a working party one day, my father mentioned to the guards that they had no bread for the men and as there was a shop nearby could he go and buy some bread? It gives the impression that this camp was lightly guarded and the atmosphere must have been somewhat relaxed. The guards gave my father permission to go to the shop unattended. Suddenly, finding himself free from being in captivity he made the most of it and decided to keep going. An extremely risky decision one would imagine. However, not knowing what to do next he decided to try and hide somewhere for the night. This he did by climbing into a roadside salt bin, where he spent a cold and uncomfortable night. The following morning he peeped out of the bin lid and saw some people queuing for a bus. He took a chance and apparently unseen left the bin and joined the bus queue. He was of course immediately recognised as a British soldier, luckily for him it was by a woman who turned out to be French. She helped somehow to disguise him and took him back to her apartment. She at great risk to herself hid him there until the Americans arrived in Munich. I guess this was early 1945?
He then surrendered himself to the Americans who helped him get onto a Dakota bound for England. He was then reunited with his regiment based in Winchester. Soon after this he was posted to Chichester Barracks where he worked in the stores.
This is as much as I can tell you now but I am in possession of many of his letters dating from the time that have much more information. I will try to go through them asap, but I am very busy researching a WW1 project involving my wife's grandfather's war diaries.
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