Dearest Jane... Read online

  The subterfuge began one snowy February evening at Spangenberg when the guards neglected to search a batch of new prisoners prior to their entry into the camp. The new arrivals who were shepherded through the gates included some doctors who, on seeing a gathering of prisoners nearby, discretely tried to attract their attention, pointing to a medical case which one of them carried. The opportunity was seized at once. A POW who spoke fluent German distracted the guards in conversation, allowing just enough time for the medical case to be spirited away by some other prisoners, who included Roger and Fred. They hurried their plunder up to their room, a hayloft over the stables just inside the main gate.

  On opening the medical case, they found a small mahogany box containing an object of immense value – a radio. After nine months deprived of news from the outside world they now had the possibility of connecting to the BBC. The mahogany casing was quickly destroyed to reduce the radio, powered by four valves, to the smallest possible size. Dungy Fred recalled:

  By the grace of God it worked off German voltage, and its flex was fitted with the necessary adaptor to fit in a light socket. Immensely excited, we tuned into the BBC and I shall never forget that first reception.

  This life-transforming connection might so easily have been short lived if a safe hiding place had not been found. The loft floorboards were lifted and the radio secreted snugly between the joists. Roger and Fred were not just responsible for the security of the radio: they became the news broadcasters on a nightly basis. Notes on the news were taken down before summoning representatives from each prison barracks to a news conference. The deputy newscasters were sworn to secrecy and the notes had to be returned to Roger and Fred to be burnt.

  Spangenberg was the first receiving station for the radio, christened ‘The Canary Bird’, but it was to journey to several destinations before its time was done. After three weeks the Nazis announced that the entire camp was to be moved to Poland, and the POWs’ accommodation was now about to take a dramatic turn for the worse. It was essential that the Canary Bird made the journey too, and it was carefully hidden in a restitched medicine ball by a former saddler. On arrival in Poland, Roger and Fred and their comrades were marched to their new centre of confinement, a hideous fort at Thorn. They were led down cold stone corridors dripping with water to a stone barracks of equal dampness. When other senior officers reported that their room was actually under several inches of water, the responding laughter of the British contingent at the sheer bloody awfulness of it all confounded their Nazi guards.

  Roger wrote to his cousin Tom Blackwell from Thorn.

  31 March 1941

  I think you’d laugh yourself sick if you saw my new home. Dartmoor Castle simply isn’t in it. I’ve never lived below ground level before, but you soon get used to it. The weather is the worst part – bloody cold and still snowing. My winter clothing parcel has never arrived and I’ve had no news from my family for over three months as they won’t write by Air Mail. Have opened the cricket season and find I’m really rather good with a rubber ball.

  Roger

  16 April 1941

  My Dear Tom,

  This letter may be a trifle incoherent as I’m feeling rather sleepy after a truly delightful lunch of turnip stew – you can imagine how pleased I am to get so much of my favourite vegetable. Most of all I miss a comfortable WC, the Sporting Life, women and music. I’ve been trying to learn Russian but my enthusiasm is dwindling and I think I prefer lying on my bed reading of past years’ racing and thinking of bygone, happier days. I still do PT every morning, as then my conscience permits me to do damn all for the rest of the day.

  Roger and Fred continued to issue daily news bulletins. They learnt from the BBC that the Hitler/Stalin non-aggression pact was coming under strain. At Thorn, prisoners saw for themselves, from their mean fortress windows, that there were German troop movements in the area. The Germans did not want the inconvenience of a load of British POWs to deal with in a zone where conflict might increase and accelerate.

  This was good news for Thorn’s current guests who were sent packing back to Spangenberg at very short notice. This relatively pleasant interlude was brought to an end when, before Christmas 1941, Roger and his comrades were moved to the camp referred to earlier, the muddy dump of Warburg. The Canary Bird travelled once more, tucked into its medicine ball. A new camp meant a new hiding place. In Warburg, the little radio spent the larger part of its existence literally hiding in a shithole. The POWs kept their washing things in Red Cross boxes, and the radio was secreted in one. Fred described the process:

  The box hung beneath the seats covering the latrines which were situated over a particularly noxious pit, in a hut four or five yards from one of the doors to our hut. Every morning and evening I marched to the wash house clutching my Red Cross box; in the evening I returned via the latrines and exchanged my washing box for the one containing the radio: in the mornings I repeated the action in reverse order.

  In 1942 Roger and his comrades were moved yet again – this time to Eichstätt. There is little doubt that the Germans knew, by now, of the existence of a radio. Searches were continuously carried out and, as John Surtees said, ‘It was astonishing they never found it.’ At Eichstätt, an attic in one of the prison blocks was supported by roof beams so badly riddled with woodworm that it was no problem to carve out a niche for the radio.

  By the time Roger wrote to his father on 19 September 1942, it was obvious that his close friendships had become central to his survival of prison life. The deep bond of tolerance and understanding established between these imprisoned men was not going to be discarded once the war was over. The longer they had endured captivity, the deeper the damage, but there would be solace in these long-term friendships.

  I’m afraid you may not have heard from me for some time owing to us all moving camp. Most of us came on here but one of my oldest prison friends went off to a smaller camp, I think owing to the severity of his war wounds. The journey here was easily the most comfortable I have had in this country and we passed a very comfortable night in second-class carriages. The surroundings of the new camp and adjacent town are remarkably pleasant and a striking contrast to the last place. The camp itself is also rather better and will probably be alright once we have organised it efficiently. Unfortunately, I am separated from several old friends as I’m living in a special block for those with a ‘prison past’. However, I’m in a room with seventeen extremely nice people most of whom I know well and with whom I’ve been messing for the past twenty-seven months. Still, these partings and breakings-up of old messes are rather sad things in prison, where one’s whole existence and happiness depend on comradeship and living with people whose views and habits are roughly similar to one’s own.

  Preparing for the joys of Christmas 1942, Roger’s tone was one of reflective resignation.

  We are spending Christmas quietly – a large breakfast and then lying in bed until supper-time. Very many thanks for 360 Players cigarettes. I have lots of Sept and Oct letters from you and Mummy. I’m reading as much history as I can and have just plugged gamely through 2,000 pages of Garven’s ‘Life of Joe Chamberlain’ and am now cleaning up on ‘Palmerston’ with Morley’s ‘Life of Gladstone’ as a little treat in store. The great thing about reading history is that it confirms my impression that human nature is not only nasty, but what is far worse, foolish too. Prison is an amazingly good eye-opener on human nature, especially in the early days when things were not too good. I’m playing in a knockout bridge competition. The only fun is the amazing people you find yourself playing against.

  In January 1943, to ring the changes, Roger and a friend, Hector Christie, swap roles, each writing to the other’s parents. ‘Thank God 1942 is over. A drearier year I’ve never known’, wrote Roger as he introduced Hector, whose bulletin on Roger was upbeat.

  I thought perhaps you’d like to know that the old job is really well, in terrific form and confident, like me, that it will be any day now. W
e manage to laugh a lot and Roger has brought the art of living to a very fine point. I wish I could take things quite as easily and smoothly, although I find the good example of a morning in bed a most excellent one which suits me well. I really feel you will be seeing him this year, and you won’t find, I think, that this dreary time has done any harm whatsoever to a quite irrepressible person.

  Home soon? There were another two-and-a-half years to go.

  At Eichstätt, a new craze was sweeping through the camp: gambling. Roger, along with role as newscaster and an additional responsibility on the camp security team, was appointed one of the chief stewards overseeing the gaming tables, along with Jack Poole, who had the particular distinction of surviving imprisonment in both world wars. In February 1943 Roger described Jack to his father.

  Jack Poole really is a splendid person, always even tempered and usually extremely amusing. He brings a welcome breath of White’s into the place. We are also partners in a humbler sphere every day, i.e. at either end of a long saw on the wood dump.

  White’s is the prestigious London club.

  Roger, Jack and the committee had to blacklist a few cheaters from the gaming tables. Amongst those who played fair were quite a few ‘swells’ who played by rules of ‘settlement after the war’. On another level, an honest, middle-aged schoolmaster found himself in debt to the tune of £80 which he was quite unable to pay. He found a way of honouring his debt – mending worn-out socks of fellow POWs at five shillings a hole. Keeping their scant wardrobes in repair was a continuous process. My father became an accomplished knitter during that time and for many post-war years his tweedy gardening jumper with deliciously lurid cuffs in lime-green and pink was an enduring example.

  Eichstätt was an improvement on Thorn but the Germans continued to think up ingenious little ways to aggrieve the POWs. When my father first received a precious pair of warm corduroy trousers in a clothing parcel, the Germans chopped them off at the knee. Later, at another camp, a fresh pair of corduroy trousers got through to Roger, unmolested, and at some point an American friend of Roger’s sister sent him a thick, duck shooting coat from the US. He attributed his physical survival in no small part to the insulation of that coat. April 1943 brought snow, not springtime, to Eichstätt. Roger was being dispatched for regular spells of solitary confinement, or what he called ‘rest and solitude’ and ‘silence and meditation’. In a letter to his father, he wrote:

  I must say I always give a fairly hollow laugh when I get letters saying I will be home soon. It is greatly to your credit that you have never indulged in nonsense like that.

  In this letter of 30 June 1943, Roger was extremely low, with very understandable reason.

  This has been a wretched month. Today, to crown everything, most of my room have been moved to another camp, including Freddy Corfield whom I’ve lived with for over three years in quiet content and a considerable amount of laughter. What sanity I still possess is largely due to him. I feel very lonely and adrift now. Friendship is the only anchor one has in prison, and now after three years I feel just as if I was starting all over again. I suppose my resistance to the bleakness of things is decreasing, but at present I feel like attaching my old school braces to the lamp bracket, fitting a snug knot behind my ears and jumping off the table. I expect things will seem better soon and perhaps I’ll be home one day soon. Anyway, it might so easily be worse.

  Roger

  My father had lost the comradeship of a close friend and co-operator of the Canary Bird. Despite it all, the letter ends in brave filial style. Later that summer, in August, he recounts:

  Two inmates made unsuccessful attempts to commit suicide last week – presumably from sheer boredom and despondency. I must say though, to fail even at suicide shows a deplorable lack of skill and determination. For myself, I’m bored but by no means despondent.

  Two weeks later, deeply frustrated, Roger’s letter home is a sardonic response to his parents’ domestic preoccupations and grievances at home. Wartime was hard for them, too, but how their views must have grated.

  I wish you hadn’t suggested my learning chartered accountancy this winter: it may be useful but it is hideously dull. I’m still hankering after law, especially as I can get a competent tutor. I hear you’ve been looking for a home in the country – how very exciting for you. I only wish I could be there too. Mummy writes very despondently as if she had already assumed the onerous duties of sole cook and housemaid – I take that to be merely an instance of that astonishing capacity for looking on the bleakest side of everything which is such a feature of our family life and which I myself share to the full. Ever since I can remember we’ve always been hovering on the edge of a bed sitting room in the Cromwell Road, but by tremendous good fortune we never seem to get there. I am quite prepared to be told that you are going up to the city in clogs, as you are unable to stump up for a new pair of prinkers. Never mind, with the money I’ve saved the last three years I’m quite a capitalist and will doubtless be able to assist in hiring a girl to come in once or twice a week to help with the heavy work. Of course I should like to stay in the Army if possible, but if that isn’t on, I should like something to do with the executive side of racing, or the police. How about the racecourse police? I’m also prepared for a small fee to succeed Bob Lyle on The Times.

  Best love,

  Roger

  Here is the first recorded suggestion by my father that he might make something of his racing interests, perhaps even finding himself a job in some capacity. If prison life had a silver lining, it was the time my father had been able to spend on enlightening himself through extensive reading on the bloodstock breeding of racehorses. For those who have rarely if ever set foot on a racecourse, that pursuit may sound as fascinating as gaining expertise in railway timetables. Yet reclining on his slatted prison bunk, lost in volumes of race form, Roger was transported to another world – the rolling green racecourses of England in peacetime.

  Roger produced his first article on that esoteric subject whilst in prison, in a little POW magazine. A surviving copy of this publication was sent to me by a former POW comrade in Canada. I was thrilled to receive this little fragment of my father’s history. In his inaugural piece, though, his typical turn of phrase was yet to find its place in print and his article was delivered with respectful earnestness.

  By the autumn of 1943, Roger’s tone was much lighter again – his life seemed to have settled into a more tolerable mode. He had achieved a first-class result in some Royal Society of Arts exams and the autumn sunshine had enabled him to enjoy plenty of cricket: ‘Some of it really high class considering the conditions – matting wicket, bumpy outfield etc.’ Later in September he sent home ‘A Day in the Life of a POW’.

  I’ll endeavour to describe my routine at present. I usually get up with extreme reluctance at 8.30, shave, have a cold shower, make my bed and clean my shoes by 9 o’clock, when we have morning appel. At 9.15 we have breakfast in our room – a cup of tea without sugar, and two slices of bread with butter on one and jam and margarine on the other. After breakfast the room orderly, assisted by whoever is on duty for the room – sweeps and washes up. I usually work in the silence room at the other end of the camp and squat on a wooden stool peering vaguely at my German primer till 12 noon. Lunch is a plate of vegetable soup followed by biscuits and cheese. In the afternoon, I sit and read outside if it’s fine, or on my bed if it’s wet. Actually I invariably do more talking and mobbing than reading. Tea at 4 p.m., the same as breakfast. Afterwards I usually walk, have a net or take some form of exercise and a cold shower at 6 p.m. followed by appel at 6.30. Dinner at 8, the big meal of the day, meat (supplied by Red +) and potatoes followed by stewed fruit or a savoury (all Red +) and a cup of cocoa. 8.30–10 everyone talks their heads off and 10.30 lights out. One’s room is one’s castle. Other prisoners don’t ever come in unless asked, and after a year you probably don’t know half the people in the next room by name.

  Roger

&
nbsp; It was a day reminiscent of the better form of prep school. Francis Reed, a good POW friend, recalled my father as a raconteur regularly welcomed in his room during that period.

  I was in a room of sixteen (eight of whom were Etonian, which the rest of us managed to survive) . . . Roger was in a room of six in the same building and was a very frequent visitor to ‘The Nursery’ as our room was known. He was about ten years older than most of us. He had done a stint in Palestine and had considerable experience of high, and sometimes low, life in London, altogether a man of the world. How we delighted in hearing his stories.

  If I seem to be making Roger out to be rather a Wodehousian character, he certainly wasn’t. He was very well read and with a personal memory which must have stood him in very good stead as the famous racing journalist he became. It was said that of the 100 boys at his prep school in his final year, he could still reel off the names of 98 of them.

  Francis Reed demonstrated his appreciation by knitting my father ‘a rather nice heather mixture tie out of an old sock’.

  Additional stimuli for Roger could be found in some of the camp lectures and debates. Of universal interest was a proposal that was to revolutionize Britain after the war – the Beveridge Plan which initiated the welfare state, establishing the National Health Service and state pensions. My father’s response was a heartening one.

  We’ve been having a number of lectures and debates on social reform and the Beveridge Plan: most people here are pretty progressive except one or two hide-bound landowners and a few RCs. I think many of the reforms are long overdue and to oppose them would be short-sighted and ungenerous, and perhaps a cause of serious trouble. Certainly the Conservative party will almost cease to exist if it continues to show such half-hearted enthusiasm for what is a general or reasonable demand. Whether our economic position will be able to stand it is a very different matter.