Dear Blogger
Village Home Front - POWs (Prisoners of War)
How very odd, a headline in the Oswestry Border Counties Advertizer on 9th January 2022 proclaimed
AN EXCITING HISTORICAL DISCOVERY has been made at the site of the new roundabout at Mile End
Archaeologists excavated the site of the new dual roundabout at Mile End have found evidence of a Prisoner of War (POW) camp.
Really? well if they had been around in 2005, there were plenty of people in Ruyton XI Towns who could have given them chapter and verse about that POW camp and the one at St. Martins, as men were transported to work on several farms in the village!
Read about the memories of Ruytonions who remembered Beck, Herz, Eric Heinz. Edwin, Horst and others
A letter from Tony, (Antonio Ranconi) worked for Mr. Moseley at Grigg Hill for three years. Tony had obviously become very attached to little Margaret, now Ruyton`s own Margaret Lycett. He came from Bank Top Camp for Italians at St. Martins. It was a satellite camp to the German Mile End camp. Bank Top held 600 Italians but Mile End held 2,000 German POWs.
We hear very little about the fact that at its peak, there were 402,000 Prisoners of War in 1,000 camps in Britain. Perhaps the reason being that there were not that many breakouts, if you actually managed to escape, how were you going to get across the intervening water between Britain and Germany - without any brave members of the resistance to help you?
Do please read the letter from Edwin Hartman, captured at the age of 17. Instead of being incarcerated in the POW camp, he and his friend Horst were billited with the Robinson family at Middle Farm, Shotatton. His letter to the family when Mrs. Robinson died tells us more about young German POWs than we could ever read in books.
