Australian War Memorial History Webinar Series 26 July 2022

 Australian War Memorial History Webinar Series 26 July 2022

Graphic courtesy of the Australian War Memorial. Sketch by Tim Mayo, courtesy of Mayo Family Archive  

View the webinar at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XnuKX4Oo28Y

For over a decade I’d written about Australian pilots. Biography was my genre of choice, and in imagination I flew through the Battle of Britain and Darwin’s skies; over the Western Desert; the Southwest Pacific Area; and the fjords of Norway. Those airmen were imbued with the sheer joy of flying. Recognising their deep, visceral connection to flight, I wondered how they would have coped if they could not fly – if they had been grounded not through war’s end, choice, or death, but because of captivity.

I thought Stalag Luft III would be a good setting for a group biography of Australia’s ‘wingless’. After all, approximately a quarter of all Australian airmen prisoners in Europe had been incarcerated in the camp made famous – or infamous – by the Great Escape. Who hasn’t read the book, or seen the 1963 film? Who can forget Steve McQueen and his motorbike, the film’s iconic theme music, and James Coburn’s appalling Australian accent? Who hasn’t shed tears as brave men fell to German bullets? But other than Coburn’s fictional Australian we know little about the Australian Great Escapers let alone any of Stalag Luft III’s other Australians. And this is despite the fact that Paul Brickhill, the author of the Great Escape book, was himself Australian.

I was set. A group biography of the Australians of the Great Escape – not just the airmen killed in the post-escape reprisals, but encompassing those who supported the grand venture in so many ways. But the more I researched the more I realised the Great Escape was not representative of life in Stalag Luft III. The evidence suggested that an analytical account of the broader Australian experience was warranted. But I didn’t have the skills for that. I was a biographer. I didn’t know what to do.

In October 2014, I attended a book launch. Chatting after the formalities, historian Michael McKernan asked me what I was doing with myself. I told him about the problems I was facing; how desolate I felt that I would have to put the project aside because I didn’t have the ability to do it properly. Michael then asked one of those life-changing questions: had I ever considered doing a PhD? I hadn’t. But by the time I arrived home, I had. I emailed Professor Peter Stanley, recently installed at UNSW Canberra, and he agreed to sponsor my PhD application and supervise me. Michael was ‘volunteered’ to be my co-supervisor. Six months later, I was at UNSW Canberra ready to discover how 351 Australian airmen – fondly referred to as ‘the cohort’ – coped with captivity. In 2020, I submitted the thesis which brought me here today – ‘Emotions of Captivity: Australian Airmen Prisoners of Stalag Luft III and their Families’.

*****

‘Emotions of Captivity’ presents the cohort as military operatives and emotional beings. I explore their emotions, feelings, motivation, sense-making, and memory. I foreground the affective aspects of agency, community, altruism, duty, identity, masculinity, prison camp domesticity, faith, grief, and death. Wartime incarceration greatly affected the cohort’s physical and mental health. For many, it was traumatic. The memory of it lingered and permeated their post-war lives. As such, I also highlight the emotions and legacy of captivity trauma.

In ‘Emotions of Captivity’, I explicate three central arguments.

The first is that the cohort did not passively accept captivity. They exerted considerable personal and group agency to manage and mitigate the residue of battle trauma; the shock of captivity; and the inevitable strains of wartime imprisonment. By consciously declining to succumb to the ‘futility of existence’ as one man termed it, they remained potent military operatives, albeit behind barbed wire.

The dream of home and the prospect of homecoming is central to military experience. Familial bonds are vital for survival. Accordingly, ‘Emotions of Captivity’ secondly argues that captivity extended beyond the confines of the prison camp to home, embracing the airmen’s families and supportive networks. But family members were not simply helpmeets. Their own affective responses, including anxiety, anguish, and grief, are a significant part of the captivity experience, as is their agency.

My third argument builds on co-supervisor Michael McKernan’s contention that ‘this war never ends’, for either POWs or their loved ones. Recognising, then, that the effects of captivity did not cease at liberation or homecoming, I examine the emotional, psychological, and moral consequences of wartime imprisonment which infiltrated and, in many cases, dominated, the former prisoners’ post-war lives, and those of the hidden casualties of captivity – the airmen’s families.

Before moving on, I want to quote the Australian War Memorial’s Bryan Gandevia Prize judging panel. I’m not just blowing my own trumpet: there is a point to this. ‘Richly researched and well written, [Emotions of Captivity’s] descriptions of life in captivity – and its impact – is wide-ranging and comprehensive. As well as tackling taboo subjects such as sexuality and suicide, the post-war experience of prisoners is followed to address contemporary understandings of ongoing trauma.’

That traumatic residue of European captivity, especially among airmen prisoners, has been little recognised. It’s an important story but who on earth ever reads a thesis beyond your supervisors, family, examiners and, in my case, a judging panel? Through the Bryan Gandevia Prize I hope to highlight the wartime, life-long, and intergenerational challenges of captivity. I’m grateful to the Australian War Memorial for providing me the opportunity to do that today. Given my original motivation for embarking on a PhD, I’ve been busy rewriting for a broader readership! I’ve thrown away the academic scaffolding, restructured, inserted new chapters on the Great Escape, and included more illuminating stories. In time, I hope others will read about Australia’s airmen prisoners of Stalag Luft III and their families, and discover their experience of captivity and its legacy.

*****

‘Emotions of Captivity’ draws on a considerable distributed archive of autobiographical, visual, and material evidence. All, including letters; diaries; photographs and art works; poetry; oral history interviews; and even objects such as brooches, sand, spoons, and bits of tiles, express and reflect emotional lives.

One of the most important sources of affective evidence is the wartime log book, a personal narrative unique to the European captivity experience. Containing photographic and artistic images; poems and recipes; news clippings; and lists of recordings listened to, books read, and films watched wartime log books are similar to commonplace books. Some POWs used them as diaries. As well as being personal records of captivity, many include contributions by fellow prisoners. Accordingly, they serve as communal as well as personal records of captive life and affect.

Wives, fiancées, and sweethearts were integral to the captivity experience. While we can discern their responses through the cohort’s correspondence and diaries, their own voices are crucial. As such, I also drew extensively on women’s writings and memory. Of particular note are two collections of reciprocal correspondences. Those between Beryl Smith and her fiancé Charles Fry exist because Beryl made carbon copies of all of her letters and kept them with those she received from Charles. Doug Hutchinson carried the letters he had received from his wife, Lola, on the forced march. They took up precious space in his pack which could have been used for food but he couldn’t bear to part with them. Later, Doug gathered Lola’s letters with those he’d written to her during their years apart, and lovingly preserved them.

Memories are also important sources. Many family members shared details of their lives with former POWs, and I thank them for this. I also spoke with some of those former airmen themselves. One series of interviews in particular greatly influenced the direction of my thesis.

During the course of nine detailed conversations, Alec Arnel kept returning to the distress he felt at putting aside his religious convictions to join the air force; the act of killing; becoming a POW; and losing his faith. I suspected the source of that distress was deep moral troubling. I discussed this with Alec who agreed that it was likely. He then bravely agreed to speak to me in another interview dedicated to his moral dilemmas. That prompted me to reappraise other written and medical evidence – to speak with family members about the possibility that their former POW had also experienced some degree of moral troubling. Chapter eleven, which I will tell you about soon, owes its existence to Alec.

My most important source of experience and affect, is testimony contained in medical records compiled by the Repatriation Department, and, after its name change in 1976, the Department of Veterans’ Affairs. Although they were not yet in the public domain, DVA graciously granted me special access to almost a hundred files.

Those records proved game-changing for my thesis. They revealed that many of the cohort had experienced some degree of temporary; long-term; or permanent psychological damage – including captivity trauma. They also indicated that a significant proportion of men suffering decades of trauma were morally troubled – some had moral injury. In addition, DVA files highlighted that women and other family members were victims of captivity trauma: they had suffered domestic abuse and violence at the hands of the psychologically distressed. That evidence sent me direct to the divorce archive where I found harrowing accounts of captivity-related violence in the home.

*****

‘Emotions of Captivity’ is a thematic thesis, divided into four parts. Family archivists allowed me to copy their photographs and records –  and I made full use of them as both sources of experience and affect. You’ll see many of them as I survey each chapter.

Part one contains the introduction as well as chapter one in which I overview the cohort’s social and military backgrounds, and discuss their motivations for enlisting. I outline the German and Italian captivity infrastructures; Stalag Luft III’s history and organisation; and the arc of the cohort’s experience. I also establish the framework of resilience which was central to successful coping behind barbed wire and which later underpinned the cohort’s ability to live with captivity’s aftermath.

Part two focuses on how the cohort as air men – active servicemen behind barbed wire – and men of emotions drew on their specific service culture and affective bonds to implement strategies to mitigate and ameliorate the strains of their internment.

Starting with capture and interrogation, then moving onto incarceration in Stalag Luft III, in chapter two I examine the cohort’s personal and collective agency in the early stages of captivity. I focus on their morale-raising strategies based on humour – laughing at how they were captured; their living conditions; their plights as POWs; and their seemingly interminable confinement. I discuss their inspirational leadership and the service discipline they entrenched by constructing a de facto RAF station – which I call ‘RAF Station Sagan’. This chapter also examines the POWs’ new martial identity. Like most servicemen, they abhorred the shameful connotations surrounding the word ‘prisoner’ and the constant reminder of it – their POW tag. The German Kriegsgefangener – war prisoner – emphasised the sense of emasculation and powerlessness airmen felt when removed from aerial operations. Instead, they dubbed themselves Kriegies which reflected their continuing fighting spirit. Linguistically and emotionally, they remained men of war.

In chapter three I analyse the development of escape-mindedness; the duty to escape; and active disruption. I describe the ‘X’ – or escape – organisation, a viable, endorsed scheme which enabled the kriegies to both manage their captivity and contribute to RAF Station Sagan’s communal life. Escape work and other disruptive acts helped relieve boredom; increased morale and self-esteem; and provided a sense of adventure. They were also expressions of martial identity – the active air man, on duty, in the barbed-wire battleground.

The kriegies’ strong service-based fraternal bonds – their version of the brotherhood of airmen – helped abate the strains of incarceration. I describe those ties in chapter four, as well as the threats to them including homosexuality (real or imagined) and self-interest. I also consider the cohort’s familial ties; their concept of ‘home’; and how they sought to replicate it – including by embracing domestic chores. In doing so, they created a supportive foundation for camp harmony and their all-important escape work, as well as an emotional link to their pre-service lives and loved ones.

Some kriegies drew on religious beliefs, practices, and the prevailing Christian ethos to help manage and make sense of their captivity. As such, I explore the emotional dimensions of faith. As well as outlining their relationships with God, I consider the importance of Christmas and Anzac Day. I also describe how the kriegies gained comfort as they mourned those killed in the post-Great Escape reprisals by composing their deaths as Christian sacrifices.

The kriegies missed sex and, in chapter six, I consider how they managed that physical need. They also missed the warmth of loving, supportive relationships. As such, I analyse the strong emotional connections of partnered kriegies to their wives, fiancées, and sweethearts, paying particular attention to how the airmen actively maintained their long-distance relationships. They wrote letters; planned their romantic futures; and imaginatively brought their loved ones into camp in image, memory, and synchronicity. A vibrant theatre created the presence of women. Faux females stalked the stage and mingled with the crowds. In this chapter, I also describe how the cohort actively constructed what I dub, a ‘fit and well’ composure which reinforced a cheery masculine martial identity. They declared to loved ones – and the world through publication of letters and photographs in newspapers and POW magazines – that they were happy, in good spirits, healthy and well, fit and active, and above all, virile.

Prisoners of war were fully aware that captivity affected their states of mind; that it contributed to what Ronald Baines called, ‘Those Kriegie Blues’ and others termed ‘going round the bend’. Chapter seven examines the cohort’s mental health, including kriegie attitudes towards barbed-wire suicide. The emotional turmoil experienced in the lead-up to the Great Escape and the impact of the post-escape reprisals all took their toll on individual and collective psychological states. I show that, as much as possible, the cohort actively managed threats to their personal and group well-being. They also supported those in psychological extremis. As a consequence of their emotional resilience, the majority of the Australian cohort remained ‘mentally strong’ in Stalag Luft III.

Affective responses of family and fictive kin are a vital part of the captivity experience. In chapter eight I focus on the emotional and practical support provided by air force; community groups; and close and extended family – particularly wives, fiancées, and sweethearts – to ensure kriegies were neither neglected nor forgotten. In exploring the emotional and sexual strains of separation, I highlight female agency in relieving both their own suffering and that of their captive loved ones. Anticipatory and actual grief was also a feature of captivity’s home front experience and I discuss how six Australian families, including the loved ones of the Great Escapers, mourned those of the cohort who never returned.

Part three turns to post-war lives and the long legacy of captivity.

Homecoming was a time of great joy, but also a period of uncertainty; psychological discomposure; and social awkwardness as the former kriegies faced the challenges of return and resettlement in a world very different from the one they had left. In chapter nine I consider the loss of air force and captivity bonds, as well as their service identity; employment difficulties; and compromised physical and mental health. I also discuss domestic unrest, abuse, and violence. Despite myriad social and psychological challenges, most of the cohort chose to ‘get on with life’. They didn’t talk about their experiences – they put captivity behind them and actively ‘forgot’ about it. They tamped down any traumatic residue that bubbled to the surface. Their silence was endorsed; wives, families, and society also wanted to forget the difficult past.

The mental resilience which underpinned successful management of captivity broke down in many cases, leading to psychological vulnerability. In chapter ten I explore long-term psychological disturbance; post-traumatic symptoms; and captivity trauma as well as the health consequences of long-term anxiety and stress, including early death. This chapter also highlights those men whose psychological distress was so great that they contemplated, attempted, or committed suicide.

Chapter eleven examines the moral dimension of war and captivity trauma. I discuss the triggers of moral troubling: survivor and captain’s guilt; the duty to kill; and witnessing or suffering inhumane acts. I show that those who allayed their moral troubles did so largely through their own agency and resilience; the help of loved ones; or through faith.

It’s a natural human response to seek meaning in difficult or traumatic experiences – to make sense of what has happened. This final chapter reveals that constructing meaning is fundamental to resilience and an ultimate coping with captivity’s residue. In it, I explore the transformative aspects of captivity and its legacy: the blessings and benefits of wartime imprisonment; personal growth; and, for the morally troubled, attainment of moral health. I highlight how some wives gained composure through love and accommodation. I examine the efforts of intergenerationals – the cohort’s children; nephews and nieces; great nephews and great nieces; and grandchildren – to create ‘memories’ of captivity. I consider how they forged connections with their family’s former kriegie through objects, artistic expression, and pilgrimage.

Part four – the conclusion – wraps up ‘Emotions of Captivity. It also reveals two unexpected findings.

The dominant Australian captivity narrative focuses on the greater physical and mental trauma of former prisoners of Japan. In contrast, the received wisdom is that those incarcerated by Germany and Italy enjoyed a relatively benign captivity with few, if any, hardships. The cohort’s medical evidence, however, contradicts the perception of an easy captivity with no psychological residue. Almost two-thirds of my medical sample experienced post-war mental disturbance. Many suffered PTSD-like symptoms; captivity trauma; or moral troubling. ‘Emotions of Captivity’ demonstrates that Australia’s prevailing trope of a benign captivity experienced by prisoners of Europe is a myth.

Surprisingly, I found that the cohort unwittingly – but actively – created that myth during the war by constructing and promoting their fit and well composure. Their post-war protective silence did nothing to contradict it. Their personal accounts embedded and perpetuated it. Comparing themselves to former prisoners of Japan, many believed that they had had a better, less traumatic experience. The consequence was that there was no place within the Australian captivity narrative for their own wartime suffering and post-war trauma.

More recently, the trauma of POWs other than those incarcerated by the Japanese has been recognised by scholars and government. ‘Emotions of Captivity’, however, foregrounds the cohort’s own testimony, their own medical evidence, to rebut their own fit and well composure. ‘Emotions of Captivity’ privileges their words to shatter their diligent post-war silence. In doing so, it demonstrates that they did suffer; that the traumatic legacy of captivity for many Australian airmen – and their families – lasted a lifetime and beyond. ‘Emotions of Captivity’ reveals that the former airmen have an incontrovertible place in Australia’s narrative of war trauma.

*****

I have a few final words before I conclude. Evelyn Johnston’s fiancé Eric had been tortured in Buchenwald concentration camp before he was transferred to Stalag Luft III. Evelyn waited anxiously after Eric went missing from aerial operations and was overjoyed when he came home. Like many, Eric did not settle back into civilian life. He suffered unremitting PTSD and the vivid nightmares that go with it – but Evelyn supported him unstintingly. Eric wouldn’t talk about what had happened to him; he refused to describe the nightmares. ‘It was all part of life that I didn’t particularly want to remember’, he said later. He told Evelyn that he ‘didn’t want to worry my relatives and you in particular – about what I’d been through … I didn’t want to tell you about it, didn’t want you upset’. Despite Eric’s continuing traumatic memories fracturing their lives, theirs was the happiest of marriages. Their love never faltered. They sat beside each other in their bedroom and cried together when Eric broke the news that, after fifty-seven years of marriage, he only had six months to live. Reflecting over those years, Evelyn unhesitatingly told me that ‘I’ve had a very good life. A brilliant life’. ‘[W]hen I look back on my whole life I’m very lucky.’ Eric shared her attitude. His life was happy, fulfilled – though difficult. It hadn’t been ruined by captivity. Many other former kriegies and their wives echoed Evelyn’s words. Only a handful considered that captivity had ruined their lives.

I discovered much about the power of love such as Evelyn’s and Eric’s; community; agency; and resilience. I also learned many lessons from the cohort and their womenfolk about how to cope with the challenges I encountered in my own life over the five years of my PhD candidacy. ‘Emotions of Captivity’ enriches our understanding of the human condition. It reveals much about wartime and post-war coping and resilience. That resilience, along with the pre-eminence of personal, communal, and familial agency – despite adversity and trauma – is perhaps the defining legacy of captivity for the Australian airmen of Stalag Luft III and their families. It is a significant affective lesson that remains relevant today. Thank you.

Dr Kristen Alexander | Adjunct Associate Lecturer

School of Humanities and Social Sciences

UNSW Conflict + Society Research Group

UNSW Canberra

kristen.alexander@adfa.edu.au

 

www.kristenalexander.com.au

https://www.facebook.com/KristenAlexanderAuthor

Twitter: Kristen Alexander @kristenauthor

 

https://www.unsw.adfa.edu.au/newsroom/news/dr-kristen-alexanders-phd-thesis-awarded-bryan-gandevia-prize

https://unsworks.unsw.edu.au/entities/publication/f9d80f12-2031-4f23-abf6-40e70987ef8a

 

Optimistic for a speedy return: D-Day

D-day infused prisoners of war every everywhere with great optimism of a speedy return to home and loved ones. The Australians in Stalag Luft III were no different. 

They had talked about it for months beforehand, and excitement mounted.

Bill Fordyce, courtesy of Lily Fordyce

Then, on the big day, they 'Heard [about it] per German radio 1330 hours', recorded Ted Every. 

‘The great news of the invasion has cheered us all up and the morale is 100% plus’, wrote Justin O’Byrne to his family. ‘The news of the invasion, somehow makes me feel that it won’t be long before we are together again’, Doug Hutchinson told his wife Lola. ‘The news at present is heartening to the Kriegies and some are optimistic—I say England in the New Year’, wrote George Archer as Allied successes increased in the succeeding months. Such excitement and hope of a rapid conclusion to hostilities, and their ensuing freedom, made life in captivity (for a time, at least) easier to bear.

Some of the men recorded their take on the invasion in their wartime log books.

 Ronald Baines, courtesy of the Baines Family 

 Bill Fordyce, courtesy of Lily Fordyce

D-day, coincidentally, also brought some relief one family back in Australia. Colin Phelps wrote his first letter as a prisoner of on 14 February 1944 but it took almost four months to reach Adelaide. While Britain and Europe were thrilling to news of the invasion, the Phelps family read Colin’s heartening words that he was safe and well on 6 June 1944: 'Dear Dad and Mum—have been taken prisoner and am being well looked after by the Red Cross—I am unhurt and in good spirit.—My permanent address is not yet allotted and I will forward it later on.—Sorry to cause you so much worry. Love from Colin'.

Enacting Social Ritual: Birthdays in Captivity

One of the things that particularly interests me is how prisoners of war enacted the usual social rituals. Birthdays celebrate life already lived and anticipate future achievements. How were these significant family-and-friend orientated ceremonies marked in captivity? And what did they mean to the prisoners of war?

Physically, prisoners of war shared the ceremony with their kriegie friends with cake and parties. Mentally, however, as they wrote about the occasion to their loved ones, they were transported home through recalling other birthdays or hoping that future birthdays outside ‘Kriegiedom’ would be different.

In 1942, John Osborne marked ‘Another birthday too, this one not celebrated at the Piccadilly’. In 1943, he noted to his family that ‘one certainly finds queer places to celebrate’. ‘I didn’t have much opportunity to celebrate my birthday, all I did was hope that I don’t spend another one at this place’, wrote Colin Phelps to his folks. ‘I hope to celebrate my next birthday with you’, another chap told his parents.

For many, the next birthday wasn’t celebrated with loved ones. On his first birthday in captivity, Albert Hake found himself ‘indulging in an idle, fanciful contemplation of circumstances relevant to previous birthdays (for today is such.)’. He wasn’t carried away by fancy or even moroseness, however. He ‘honoured the occasion with merry peals of laughter and a grand festivity, consuming with great gusto a large jelly (strawberry), a larger rice custard a pint of Horlick’s chocolate malted milk (real milk) plus various odds and ends’. Hake’s mood wasn’t as festive as his next birthday drew nearer and he realised he would not be sharing it with his wife. ‘Time will certainly have to march on if I’m to spend my next birthday at home.’

Parties were guaranteed to blow away the birthday blues, and cakes were the time honoured tradition for birthday bashes. George Archer and his roommates concocted a ‘cake made of pancake mixture and sultanas iced with chocolate’ for a Canadian celebrating his 23rd. It was a ‘wonderful success’.

Alan Scanlan was one the Australians who gained their majority in Stalag Luft III. ‘Your son has crossed the line and is now recognised as a man’, he told his parents. ‘I wish I could have spent it at home, but circumstances made it impossible.’ Despite being separated from his family, ‘The boys were very thoughtful and arranged many surprises throughout the day and we spent quite a happy day.’ That evening, when tea was finished, his crew member Arthur Tebbutt, ‘brought forth a two-tier chocolate cake complete with twenty one candles’. ‘Tebby’ demonstrated his impressive culinary skills as well as doffing his flight cap to their shared homeland: ‘The decorations were a white iced border with a small map of “Aussie” done in white, in the centre of which was a small silver key. “Good Luck, Alan”, was written in chocolate across the map’. It was an emotional moment. ‘It shook me up, I can tell you, for the boys must have spent considerable time preparing for the occasion’.

Rex Austin’s 21st birthday ‘occasion’, mirrored air force initiation ceremonies as well as some of the traditional (and raucous) rites of passage to adulthood. ‘The boys’ in his room stripped him naked, threw him in the air, bumped him in the snow, rubbed him down to dry him off, presented him with a key with ‘21 on it’ and ‘an absolutely magnificent chocolate cake’. They then ceremoniously ‘shook me by the hand and said “Happy 21st I hope you’re not here for your 22nd”’. Austin’s ‘21st was something’, an occasion to remember, made even special by the sacrifices made by his friends. In a time of almost desperate rationing in January 1945, ‘the blokes had saved up their semolina and everything’ to make his cake.

We don’t know if this is a birthday or, given the 1942 decoration, a new year's party, but cake is on the menu. Sadly, it doesn't seem to be cheering Tony Gordon (seated, right hand side) and his friends. (Courtesy of Drew Gordon.) 

Cake was not the only birthday treat. Alex Kerr was depressed at the prospect of celebrating his 21st in captivity. For him it was nought but a bleak and dispiriting occasion until he received a ‘truly rare morsel’, an egg extracted from one of the guards by Stalag IIIE Kirchhain’s most successful traders. ‘I will never forget the generosity of someone who hardly knew me but considered that the significance of the occasion demanded a gesture of compassion’. 

While Kerr, Scanlan and Austin experienced the best of human kindness for their birthdays, Lex Dixon experienced the worst of humanity for his. For ‘something to look forward to’, he had been saving a potato. (This was before he arrived in Stalag Luft III.) Every time he came across a bigger one he swapped it and ate the smaller one. Just before his birthday, when Dixon’s anticipation was greatest, another prisoner stole the potato and devoured it. ‘It was the unforgiveable thing for anyone to steal anything else from a fellow prisoner,’ recalled Justin O’Byrne.

Fortunately, not every birthday represented the darker side of captivity, but many were not easy. Some weren’t even worth remembering. ‘It happens to be my birthday today’, Charles Fry told his fiancée. ‘I had forgotten about it’. Keith Carmody ‘forgot it was my 26th birthday—am feeling a bit better now—have not spent a birthday at home since my 20th in 1939’. Despite forgetting, he and a friend had a ‘“bash” to celebrate’.

Friends and camaraderie made birthdays worthwhile. So too did the knowledge that their family and friends remembered them, but ensuring that captive loved ones received birthday greetings was a lottery. Australia was half a world away, letters were frequently lost, and delivery was often delayed through censorship or even punishment or retribution. 

Sometimes the family timed their birthday greetings just right. ‘Red letter day, my birthday, also your letter 2/11, my first from you’, wrote George Archer to his folks. (Four months later, however, his birthday parcel still hadn’t turned up.) ‘I received your birthday greetings, which arrived about two days ago, and I was very pleased to receive them, thank you’, another chap recorded.

Home is where the kriegies would have preferred to be, but prison camp conviviality and birthday celebrations demonstrated the strong fraternity, culinary ingenuity of their roommates and friends, and even personal sacrifice to ensure that the festive table was well-laden. For many, that strong friendship made captivity bearable.

Another miserable Kriegie Christmas

Charlie Fry and Beryl Smith had known each other for five or six years when he embarked for the UK in July 1937.

(Photo with application for Point Cook cadetship, NAA A9300, Fry, C.H.) 

 A graduate of 20 Course, 1 Flying Training School, Point Cook (ranked 16th with 70.9 per cent) he was on his way to take up a short service commission with the RAF. The couple wouldn’t see each other again for a little over eight years.

(20 Course, 1 Flying Training School, Point Cook. Fry, front row, third from left. Courtesy RAAF Museum.) 

After completing his training in the UK, and a brief stint in 32 Squadron, Charlie joined 112 Squadron RAF, transferring to Egypt in May 1939, flying Gladiators. The couple wrote regularly during their separation, but after almost two years apart they missed each other terribly. As war clouds thickened, Charlie had ‘had a bit of the blues for the last couple of months’ but letters from Beryl—or Bebs—were just the tonic he needed to cheer him up. Photos were also a significant means of maintaining their strong connection and helped him imagine what she was doing back in Australia while he was on operational service. ‘They were lovely snaps of you dear, and [I] would very much like to have some others too if you have them, I can just imagine what a lovely time you must be having’. They also kindled regret at the fun times they were missing out on as a couple. ‘God I wish I were home.’

(Beryl Smith. Courtesy of the Fry family archive.)

Two months after the outbreak of war, Charlie wrote to Beryl with the question he wished he had put to her before he left Australia. He hadn’t, though, because ‘I sincerely wanted to ask you to wait for me to return home, but I did not dare to, as it seemed so unfair because five years’—the period of his short service commission—‘is a very long time’. After three years separation, and with a new war, however, everything was different. ‘Please darling, this is a proposal: I want to marry you’. Moreover, he wanted her to come to Egypt so they could be together.

(Unattributed engagement notice. Courtesy of the Fry family archive.)

Beryl accepted immediately, but it was over a month before Charlie received word. He was ecstatic: ‘At last my dream of almost eight years has materialised and I am very proud and happy of what we have so far accomplished. I was out on a desert landing ground when an aircraft brought your cable, and the pilot thought I had gone crazy with the antics that I performed’.

Much as they wanted to, it was not possible for Beryl to cross the world to be with her new fiancé. Within months, 112 Squadron was in action. From Egypt it moved to Greece, and then to Crete. Gladiators had been traded for Hurricanes and Charlie, now a flight commander, was in frequent combat. ‘Crete was being subjected to Stuka attacks and the sky was often thick with Messerschmitts’, he later recalled. On 16 May 1941, ‘a fateful day’, Charlie, or Digger, as he was known almost from the time he had set foot in England, was in battle yet again:

‘They appeared again in the very early morning, followed by Ju88s, Dornier 17s, and Ju52s. Crete was subjected to a great softening-up before the troop-carrying gliders came on the scene. The sky also turned white with the canopies of German parachutists. The tide of our war had turned.’

Charlie was attacked: ‘My Hurricane lay in ruins after I was shot down, but I survived’. 

Injured and unable to fly, Charlie made himself useful. He set about building pens to protect the squadron’s aircraft. As Crete fell to the Germans, and their aerodrome was taken, Charlie attempted to construct another strip in the hills. When he realised there was no hope, he organised the evacuation of the remaining squadron members. As one of his comrades recollected, ‘He used to lay up in the hills during the day, and at night he would take … [his men] down to the beaches on the off-chance of a warship being around. I know there were occasions when he could have made his escape but he preferred, as is the duty of an officer, to remain with his men to the last—good old Digger’.

Charlie succeeded in getting off two officers and three airmen before he was captured on 6 June 1941. He was the last of the squadron’s officers remaining on Crete. And so, lauded his friend, ‘he remained at his post to the last. A good pilot, a good officer, and an excellent leader of men’. (His service in Greece was later acknowledged by a Greek DFC and a British DFC.)

For Beryl, who had regularly received letters from her fiancé, there was only worrying silence and unanswered questions: what had happened to Charlie? And then, on 14 August, ‘It was with gladness and thanksgiving, after many weeks of knowing you to be missing that I heard you were a Prisoner of War. Chas it is impossible to describe how happy and relieved I was to learn of your whereabouts. I sincerely hope you are well and safe’. Four days earlier, Charlie had written his first missive to her since capture: ‘At last I am able to write to you I am very well and uninjured’. It took over four months before those precious words arrived just after Christmas 1941.

(POW identity card, Charles Horace Fry 40047, NAA A13950.) 

(POW postcard, Charles Fry to Beryl Smith, 10 August 1941, received 29 December 1941.
Courtesy of the Fry family archive.)

In that first POW postcard, Charlie wrote that he had lost all his photos of Beryl on Crete and asked if she would send him some more. So treasured was her image—and perhaps also conscious of the changes brought about by passing time—it was a question he continued to ask throughout almost four years of captivity. Beryl did not hesitate to respond. Indeed, throughout his captivity, she placed Charlie and his needs firmly at the centre of her life.

She joined the POW Relatives’ Association, she raised funds for the association, assiduously read its newsletter, made contact with other families of captives, spoke with a repatriated prisoner, all to glean information about Charlie and the prisoner of war camps in which he was incarcerated. She diligently worked for his comfort. 

(Beryl Smith. Courtesy of the Fry family archive.)

She wrote frequently, sent photos, arranged for cigarette and book parcels to be sent to him, contributed financially to parcels sent from British relatives, kept in touch with his family and friends, lobbied for his actions to be appropriately recognised, and sought future career advice on his behalf. She wrote about family, a little about what she did in her limited spare time so he could picture her life but, as a minister’s confidential typist, she could write little of her career.

 (Beryl Smith’s receipts from David Jones for parcels. Courtesy of the Fry family archive.) 

(Letter from Beryl Smith to the Editor, The Sydney Morning Herald, 20 December 1943. Courtesy of the Fry family archive.)

Beryl provided Charlie with a real link to home. He in turn did his best to maintain that link. As well as his regular letters, he asked the Irving Air Chute company to send Beryl the caterpillar pin which signified that ‘he had saved his life with one our chutes’.

(Letter to Beryl Smith from the Caterpillar Club, 7 September 1943. Courtesy of the Fry family archive.)

(The Sunday Sun, 9 November 1943. Courtesy of the Fry family archive.) 

Most of Beryl’s letters—and Charlie’s to her—focused on their love for each other. ‘My love’; ‘my darling’; how much they ‘missed’ each other. Interestingly, they wrote little of the future, or the life they planned to share with each other. As Charlie’s captivity dragged on, the most important thing for each was to reinforce the strength of their love.

During the course of his long captivity, Charlie spent time in Oflag XC, Lubeck, Oflag VIB, Warburg, Stalag Luft III, and Oflag XXIB, Schubin. On 2 April 1943, he returned to Stalag Luft III. Captivity was not an easy state for Charlie. He endured physical and psychological stresses but he appeared to suffer more from his long separation from Beryl. She too felt the strain of being apart. They tried to be cheerful, but both had doubts about the other’s constancy, and they did little to hide it.

‘Charl, dearest, I love you very very much—it is most anguishing to be separated from you for so long and I am looking forward longingly to the day when I shall be in your arms again. You are the only one I care for (or have ever cared for Chas)—since the very first day I met you … . I sincerely hope, Chas, that you reciprocate my feelings and that these long years apart have not dimmed your ardour for me.’

Both were conscious of the passage of years. On 29 November 1943, Charles wrote, ‘By the time this will reach you, you will have had your 28th birthday. [Beryl was born on 5 March 1915.] Happy returns darling gosh I wish I were here with you darling for I would have lots more to tell you. I miss you darling and hope we shall be together again soon. Cheerio my dear you have all my love, yours for ever’.

(Charles Fry in Oflag XXIB, Schubin late 1942, after their heads were shaven. Fry second from left. 

Courtesy of the Fry family archive.) 

By December 1944, the strain was almost unendurable. It was their seventh Christmas apart and Charlie’s fourth in captivity. He had sent her Christmas cards in times past but if he had this time, it did not reach her. 

(Christmas Card from No 1 Flying Training School, RAAF Point Cook, 1936. Courtesy of the Fry family archive.) 

(POW Christmas card from Charles Fry to Beryl Smith POW,  postmarked 22 November 1942 while he was in Schubin, received 12 March 1942. Courtesy of the Fry family archive.) 

On 12 December, Beryl wrote again to Charles. It was her last letter addressed to him at Stalag Luft III, yet he never received it. [She typed all of her letters and kept the flimsy.] ‘How are you, my precious darling? Sick and tired of waiting, I guess. I feel that way at times too. Not tired of waiting for you my darling but tired of having to wait.’ It was a poignant letter, full of all the longing a woman felt for a man she had not seen since July 1937. It suggested a silence that, despite the many letters over the years, stretched between them. It hinted at the things that could not be told because of censorship, or because they both recognised that ‘one must keep a happy exterior and write bright cheery letters’, or because some words simply could not be put on paper: they could only be whispered between lovers entwined in each other’s arms:

‘I wish I could express what is in my mind—tell you how I feel and what thoughts I have about life, the war and ourselves … . I really think of some marvellous things to say to you but when I come to write them it is very very difficult. I feel I would like to tell you how much I love you and adore you and that you are the embodiment of all my dreams—that I miss you very very much and am often unhappy and sad about that. I would like to tell you that I dream of the time we will be together and that you will say that you love me and think that I am beautiful … I try to imagine what it will be like to have your arms around me and to feel your kisses.’

As Beryl wondered what she would do when they were reunited—‘Will I rush forward and throw my arms madly around your neck and kiss you and kiss you and kiss you—or will I stand shyly by whilst you embrace your mother and family and wait my turn later on’—Charlie was having a ‘miserable Christmas’. ‘How I would like to be with you there’, he wrote. He had been at a low ebb during the last weeks of 1944 as the hoped-for release in the wake of the D-Day invasion had failed to eventuate. The only joy was the ‘lovely Christmass [sic] present of three letters … Thanks darling they were lovely letters’. Realising yet another birthday was nigh, he wrote, ‘Hope you receive this before your birthday darling with all my love for a happy birthday & may the next one be happier’.

Beryl’s 30th birthday was no happier. Charlie still had not returned to her and, by March 1945, was off the radar. She had not heard from him for weeks. Mail from Germany was irregular at that stage of the war and Charlie had not written since the prisoners had evacuated from Stalag Luft III at the end of January 1945. After months of silence and anxiety over Charlie’s fate, Beryl finally heard the wonderful news that he had been liberated and was back in England. ‘There are no words to express my happiness and joy’, she wrote on 14 May. ‘Oh my darling. I am so happy. I sincerely trust you are in good health and none the worse for your experiences. Gee Charles it is hard to believe after all these years. I can hardly wait to see you, dearest, and to have your arms around me.’

(August 1945, taken at Buckingham Palace just after DFC investiture. Unknown source.)

Charlie was soon on his way, excited to be returning home and to Beryl. On 6 September 1945, as he approached Australian waters six years to the day when he had proposed by letter, he sent the most welcome telegram: ‘Be with you soon for good. Happy excited love Charles’. 

(Courtesy of the Fry family archive.) 

Charlie disembarked in Sydney on the 9th. Less than two weeks later, on 22 September 1945, Charlie and Beryl married. They were together at last: ‘for good’.

(Cutting the cake. 22 September 1945. Courtesy of the Fry family archive.)