L/Cpl. Harold Astbury
British Army 1/7th Btn. Royal Warwickshire Regiment
My late father Harold Astbury was a prisoner in Stalag XXA (3A) in Poland following his capture at Dunkirk. He joined the territorial battalion of the Royal Warwickshire Regiment after the Munich crisis along with pals in their local rugby club in Coventry. As L/Cpl Harold Astbury 511320 he went to France in January 1940.
He was first wounded by "friendly fire" when he was struck in the head by shrapnel from French anti aircraft fire. His steel helmet saved him but to the end of his life he had pronounced scars in his scalp, which we would feel as children. He returned to active service just before the German invasion. He recalled the advance into Belgium was dispiriting as they passed through the cemeteries of the Great War. He told the tale of meeting Lord Gort, the C in C while his section were digging a tank trap. After explaining to the General about what would happen with the trap when the Germans came, a junior staff officer piped up at the back. "The fellows talking as though they'll be here next week" Which was, my father said, was precisely what did happen.
At Dunkirk he said his unit along with others formed a defensive line on a canal on the Franco Belgian border. The next day they found the other units had been withdrawn. The Germans arrived and after a firefight he was wounded by a bullet passing through his top lip and he passed out from loss of blood. He, along with all those who did not get away then passed through Holland where he was seen by representatives of the Red Cross. He was given a pencil and a scrap of paper to put his name rank a serial number. This eventually reached his mother attached to a Red Cross postcard saying he had been seen and was alright, although now prisoner 12197. Others of his regiment were not so fortunate and were summarily executed by the Germans after capture.
In Poland he was in a fortress built on the old German/Russian border. He said that at one time the Allied prisoners did not occupy the whole fort but that there were displaced Polish families there as well. A sad story he told me many years later was of how the prisoners were exercised by being marched round the top of the fort and that a prisoner had committed suicide by jumping from the fortress wall. He was always disparaging of the prisoner of war films made after the war as they always portrayed the life of officers and not that of other ranks who were required to work by the Germans. Therefore plans to escape could only be hatched in what free time they had. Certainly there were successes in getting home.
This picture is one I think was sent to my father by two escapees. The innocent scene of two friends fishing is in fact the disguise they used. He also kept to the end of his life a corner of a postcard with an address in Lisbon, which showed someone had reached neutral Portugal. He also had his City and Guilds certificate for Spanish "place of examination Stalag XX". It was part of an escape plan. They would all learn Spanish and pass themselves off as volunteers for the "Blau" division, who were Spanish Nazi sympathisers fighting in Russia, returning on leave to Spain, which was then neutral. There was also tragic irony, two of those who knew to escape returned to active service and one was killed in North Africa and one in the Far East. He also talked of the mysterious repatriation of a prisoner nicknamed "the thin man" as he looked like the actor in the thin man films.Prisoners set to manual labour. He told of working at the Christiana tabacfabrik packing tobacco for Germans on the Eastern front. They brought tobacco from the Balkans in cattle trucks and mixed it with a little Virginia tobacco bought before the war. The cattle trucks had been used to move animals and the prisoners were required to sweep everything out of the trucks. This was done with great care so that many a German light up a pipeful of cow dung in Russia! Before the war he was in the post office and also worked sorting prisoners mail and I have been contacted through the website by some one who can remember working with him.
The prisoners were paid in camp money for this work but the War Office then deducted this from their Army pay accruing in England.
I also attach photos of my father as a prisoner and of a play put on in the camp. The photo in the contribution by Bill Overy is from the same set. My father is on the back row third from the right in a light jacket. Of the actors he only recalled Sam Kydd who was famous in the sixties as "Orlando" on ITV.
He said that from the camp they could see the vapour trails of the German experimental launching of V" rockets from Peenamunde on the Baltic but discounted as fantasy the Polish reports of the Germans firing railway engines into space.
Finally the war turned our way and one day in June as he travelled on a train he could see the Poles barely able to control themselves with the news of the Allied invasion of France. As the Russians closed in the prisoners were marched west. By that time the guards consisted of hard-line Nazis too wounded to return to the front and very elderly men whose only skill was an ability to speak English. They were more concerned to reach the western allies and escape the Russians.
He was finally liberated one month short of five years after his capture. The relived German guards were last seen going off to captivity on an American tank. He was given a "K" ration by the Americans, which contained a hairbrush and shaving kit including a shaving brush, which he then used to the end of his life. The only items he was able to "liberate" were a Nazi party swastika armband and a large bottle of De Kyper cherry brandy. However it was so cold this froze in barracks they were billeted in and the next day a sticky mess was across the barrack floor as the bottle had split
While a prisoner a young woman from Coventry wrote to him, they had known each other slightly before the war. Her letters to the camp came in a distinctive peach envelope, each of which he kept until the march to the west. He returned to England and they married in the autumn of 1945.
I also see from the site there were many Scots from the 51st Highland Brigade prisoner as well and as a child there were many visits to old comrades on our summer holidays to Scotland. He also talked about being kept in the forts round Thorn (Torun) and being exercised on the parapets, but that also Polish refugees/displaced families would occupy parts of the forts. Until I read the contributions I did not realise how large the march West had been. He described being on the road with a general stream of refugees including a circus at one stage. Those guarding them by then were either disabled hardline Nazis or elderly men he portrayed to me as being like private Godfreys more concerned about finding and surrendering to the Americans before the Soviets got them.
His grandson idolized his grandfather and I am sure would welcome any information from anyone who knew him during this time.
