260732 Pte. Tom Swinburne "Bud" Abbott British Army Airborne Signals 1st Parachute Brigade from:Llantrisant, S. Wales Tom Abbott was my dad.
He was 21 when captured in Arnhem and sent to a POW camp in Limburg, Germany. He escaped with a Canadian fellow inmate from a working party repairing the railway marshalling yards after an RAF raid. When recaptured, they were found to have pureed apples and margarine in their pockets that they had found in a railway wagon. Because they had food on them they were accused of looting, and a formal request to execute them was made. The permission to execute was granted, but before the sentence was carried out the camp was bombed on Christmas Eve and Dad survived because they were being held in an underground cell. The Germans demanded that everybody with carpentry knowledge help rebuild the huts. Dad immediately claimed to be a carpenter (he was actually a glassblower), and in the ensuing mayhem he and his Canadian buddy were able to get into the Disciplinary Officer's hut and destroy the order to execute.
Shortly afterwards, they were sent to a POW camp in Bad Orb where he remained until liberated by the Americans. Dad’s overriding memory of Bad Orb was arriving after being marched there from Limburg to hear gunfire coming from the surrounding woodland. On inquiring what was happening, they were told that in order to make room for them the Russians that had previously been prisoners there were being shot because the Germans had no room for them, and Russia had not signed the Geneva Convention.
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