From the News

Each year for the last 53 years, St- Barbe's George Birkett thinks back to his World War II days to the disastrous Dieppe raid at which he was taken prisoner, and the three subsequent years in Nazi prison camp.

On August 19, 1942, George was one of 120 members of the Black Watch Royal Highland regiment joining in the Allied attempt to make a landing at Dieppe.

The raid was a resounding failure. The day George Birkett landed, a total of 207 men out of 1,000 were killed; his own regiment lost three men and saw 18 more wounded. Birkett managed to survive the hail of artillery fire, though shells were bursting all around.

"It was impossible for us to land. Our artillery was caught on the exposed pebble beach. The cliffs and the German fire prevented us from getting out of the line of fire. It was a nightmare," he recalls with emotion, even today, less than a year before his 80th birthday.

Taken prisoner

Along with his mates, he took shelter under the cliff walls for four long hours. Then the Germans arrived to take prisoners.

George's life was saved, for the moment at least. But what followed was sheer misery.

First, the prisoners were locked up in a village school in Dieppe, while awaiting transport to a military prison in Germany. To get there took four long days by rail, crammed 40 prisoners to a box-car, with nothing to eat for the whole journey except one loaf of black bread.

"I'll remember that trip as long as I live," Birkett says today.

In Germany, he became one of 35,000 prisoners of war from many Allied nations who were held in a prison camp a few miles from the Czechoslovakian border(1).

The Canadians in particular were treated harshly after Adolph Hitler ordered their wrists to be tied together with a rope every day for a month between 8 a.m. and 8 p.m., in return, the Germans said, for the treatment meted out to German prisoners in Ontario (2).

At the end of that period, the ropes were replaced by hand-cuffs which at last allowed the prisoners to move their hands slightly.

Sardines in demand

George Birkett, an army medic, was allowed to remove his handcuffs while he was helping to treat the sick and wounded in the prison infirmary.

Meanwhile, some of the Canadians found a way to get the hand-cuffs off without the Germans knowing. Among the monthly Red Cross food packages they received were tins of sardines, with a small metal key for opening them. These keys did double duty since they could also be used on the hand-cuffs, the prisoners found.

The relative value of sardines immediately rose in the trading among prisoners for the few and infrequent luxuries available to them. As a non-smoker, George Birkett's monthly allowance of 1,000 cigarettes came in very handy when it came time to make a swap for some woollen socks.

Painted handkerchief

But his best "deal", he says, was with a Royal Navy crewman, Eric Pickering, who swapped a hand-painted handkerchief bearing the Black Watch insignia and motifs depicting the Dieppe invasion for a single package of cigarettes. George treasures that handkerchief still, and it is in remarkable good condition over half a century after it was painted.

During his three years in the camp, George lived through some pretty horrifying experiences. Two of his comrades were killed by the Germans while trying to escape. And one day, he was late for the morning assembly because he had stayed in the infirmary to look after a dying soldier. One of the Germans gave him a severe dressing-down and George talked back to him. As punishment, he found himself in solitary confinement in "the hole" where he spent 24 hours beside a corpse. "it was horrible," he said.

Liberation

When the Russians entered Germany in 1945, the Germans, knowing the war was lost, began to treat the prisoners more humanely, hoping to avoid reprisals. Fearing that they might be killed or kidnapped by the Russians, they moved them to another prison camp in northern Germany near the Polish border(3), where 7,000 Allied airmen were also being held.

On May 15, 1945, just before the war ended, about 60 American transport planes arrived at the prison to take the American, Canadian and British prisoners back to England.

George, who was born in England, spent three weeks visiting his English relatives. After three years on dry bread and water, he stuffed himself with food and came down with a case of dysentery. His weight had fallen from 160 lbs, in 1942 to 115.

When he was well, he returned to Canada, and to Valleyfield where his family had moved in the early 1920. Like so many immigrants from the British Isles, George's father got work at the Montreal Cottons plant there. George himself went to trade school in Valleyfield and got a job with the Asten Hill company.

In 1946, he married Hélène Loiselle, and the couple have enjoyed 52 years of married life.

Now retired, they delight in their quiet life in the house near the lake at Ste-Barbe. George and his wife are both members of the Huntingdon Legion Branch 81, where they regularly play Bridge and cribbage with other veterans.

"WE have lots of friends and lots of fun there - the activities are well organized and we feel really welcome. And we all have our war stories to swap," says George, who recently took part in ceremonies welcoming the Black Watch Regiment of today to Huntingdon.