Bromley

Joe Mennill

Hugh Bowden
My Pilot (RAF)

Pearson

Stevens

Prisoner of War Dulag, Oberousel
Schubin, Poland
Jan - Apr. 1943

After spending Monday night in the jail on the island, we were taken in a small boat, on Tuesday afternoon, back to the dock and taken on board a freighter and put in a cabin with two guards with guns.
It wasn’t long before the ship got under way. We sailed down the strait between Sweden and Denmark. It was murky, December weather and shortly after we sailed, a thick fog set in. I can not really remember the events of the next few days. Our guards weren’t bad, old codgers and we got fed soup, bread and once in a while a little German sausage. The fog got so thick about the time we were passing Copenhagen, Denmark that we stayed anchored for a day or so in the harbour.
 At any rate, by Saturday December 19, we had skirted along the Baltic shore of Germany and had arrived at the Oder River on which the City of Stettin is located. Somehow the Captain managed to run the ship aground in the Oder River, so we were taken off ship in a small boat and taken to Stettin. Here we boarded a train and travelled to Berlin. We were then taken by subway to a huge railway station and put on board a train to go, we knew not where. As we were escorted under guard the people on the street and in the railway station would point at us and talk about us. The only words I understood at that time were “Englishe fliegers” which means Air Force men from England. After an all night ride on the train we got off at Frankfurt on Mainz. We had gone almost across Germany from north to south. In the station at Frankfurt, we went into a men’s washroom and to my surprise I found an elderly woman cleaning toilets as the men used the urinals. It was a bit of a change from Canada. We were then taken, almost immediately by truck, to a little town called Oberousel which is 30 to 40 miles from Frankfurt. Here we were all separated, and I ended up in a cell about 4 feet wide and 8 feet long with a single bunk, a chair, a little shelf for a table, and iron bars on the one small window to outside and on the little window in the doorway.

August 17, 2001