Whilst filming the Remembrance Sunday at Eccles yesterday I met up with my old chum, Patrick Grifin who had been a guest on the Fred and Flynny Show a couple of weeks earlier, where he mentioned that he had some family postcards from World War two that I might be interested in. We had a chat and he loaned these three postcards, printed on flimsy card sent by his Uncle John to his sister Kath who was living on Barton Lane, Eccles from Stalag XX-A a prisoner of war camp at Turun in Nazi occupied Poland. John an Eccles lad is believed to have joined the Lancashire Fusiliers at the outbreak of war, Patrick wasn't sure which regiment, and was sent abroad to fight, he was captured by the Germans in 1941 after parachuting from a plane and sent to Stalag XX-A where he was held until the camp was liberated by Russian troops in February 1945. Patrick tells me that John and a few of other prisoners managed to escape from the camp but where captured a few days later, beaten and brought back, and put under high risk status. The postcards are fascinating in that they show that prisoner has only a few lines to write upon to send his message and were heavily censored for any cryptic messages, it looks like John was a talented artist looking at the cartoon characters he has drawn upon them. The Christmas postcard is a wonderful souvenir of the camp and depicts four smiling POW's some with sprigs of holly in their caps and Santa climbing out of a sack with Red Cross parcels for them, it was drawn by a fellow POW called Thomas Burke and says printed by "The Camp" perhaps they had a printing press in there, which would have been kept under a strict observation. I did a bit of research into Stalag XX-A and it was a series of small forts initially used for Polish POW's In accordance with the Third Geneva Convention, POWs below the rank of Sergeant were required to work and were attached to Arbeitskommando ("labour units") mostly located in various towns and villages in the region. They were hired out to military and civilian contractors. In the case of farm work, this was often carried out on state farms. Sergeants and above could not be forced to work and if they did so were sent to non-working camps. Also it had a couple of notable POW's held there including Sam Kydd the actor who spent the entire war there and Airey Neave who became an MP and was killed by the INLA in a car bomb explosion as he drove out of the car park at the Palace of Westminster. John Griffin died a few years ago and was never married but what a fascinating life he led and I would have loved to have gone for a pint with him and I am delighted that Patrick has not only looked after these postcards but has let me have a look at them so I can share through Salford Media, Cheers!
