Thomas Barbour McNeish, my dad, was born in Lesmahagow, Scotland in 1919, into a coal mining family. He was a shoe maker and cobbler.

What follows is the first of a few of his World War Two ‘misadventures’. The biggest misadventure was getting captured. However the few I will highlight are situations that took place whilst a prisoner and caused by his belligerence and his attempts to ’thwart’, if even in a small way, the German War effort. While I attempt to inject a smidgeon of humour, based on the way dad related the tales, remember, the risk of a beating, solitary confinement or even a firing squad was always a possible outcome.

In 1939, a few months before his 20th birthday, war with Germany was looking inevitable. Dad decided the right thing to do was join the army. So, not long before war was declared, he walked a few miles from his home in Denny, a small industrial town in Central Scotland, to a nearby recruiting centre, where he signed on the dotted line and became a Seaforth Highlander. One of the oldest Scottish Infantry Regiments in the British Army.

When asked years later why he chose the Army, rather than the Air Force or the Royal Navy his answer was typical of the man.

If I am a sailor and the Captain wants to win a Victoria Cross, I will have to go with him. In the Army, I can duck. Oh, and I cannot fly.

In January 1940, after a few months training at the regimental HQ, Fort George in Inverness-shire, dad and his Seaforth colleagues, were each issued with a rifle and 100 bullets, and sent to France as part of the British Expeditionary Force, the BEF. There they joined the other Scottish ‘line’ infantry regiments, the Black Watch, Queen’s Own Cameron Highlanders, the Gordon Highlanders and the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders, supported by units of the Royal Artillery, the 23rd Field Regiment, Signals, Lothian and Borders Yeomanry and more, to form the 51st Highland Division, simply known as the 51st.

In the British Army, a Division comprises two or more Brigades and can be have as many as forty-thousand troops. The 51st was not as big as that, but it did have more than ten thousand troops.

They were sent to Metz, on France’s border with Belgium, to guard the Maginot Line. A series of concrete fortification and other obstacles built by France in the 1930’s to hinder a German invasion of France.

After the war my dad used to say, with a touch of cynicism; we had 100 bullets and a rifle, but we were Scottish so we thought we were ready to take on the might of the ‘battle hardened’ German Army.

Towards the middle of May, the German Forces invaded France through Belgium. It was sudden and fast. The 51st was outflanked and isolated from the rest of the BEF, effectively cutting them off from Dunkirk. They were ordered to remain in France and fight on, under the direct command and orders of the French High Command, specifically, the French Third Army, led by General De Gaulle. It was hoped that would encourage the French to fight on.

Another reason to keep the 51st fighting in France, was to keep the German Army divided and, by doing so, reduce the pressure on the main bulk of British and Allied Forces who were retreating from the battlefield to get back to Britain via the French port of Dunkirk.

Many soldiers of the 51st had no idea that the Dunkirk ‘retreat’ was taking place or that they were, in the words of many of them, being sacrificed. These things only came to their notice well after they were in captivity.

With Dunkirk now history the German Forces, led by Field Marshal Rommel, were soon back up to full strength and they harried and fought the beleaguered and vastly outnumbered, 51st Highland Division, who were trying to reach the French port of Le Harve, where they hoped there would be ships to get them back to Britain.

Cut off from any support, and running out of ammunition and food, reaching Le Harve was a forlorn hope.

At Abbeville they dug in to resist and throw what they had at the enclosing enemy.

The rifles and ‘bren’ guns of the 51st, were no match for the German tanks and artillery.

“Bren Machine Gun was a British adaptation of a Czech light machine gun. The name, Bren was an acronym from Brno, the town where the Czech gun was made and Enfield where the British version was manufactured.”

They were outnumbered and lost a lot of men before finally being forced back to the French coast at St-Valery-en-Caux, where, on the 12th June, 1940, they surrendered and were taken into captivity.

And so began nearly five years of hell for my dad, not just him. It started by being marched, then crammed into barges and railway cattle wagons as they were moved east for about one thousand miles across Europe. Those who survived, because many didn’t, were deposited in prison camps across the width of Germany and Poland.

Dad found himself the guest of the German authorities at Stammlager XXA, Torún, east Poland.

(Stalag is a contraction of Stammlager which in turn is the short version of Kriegsgefangenen-Mannschaftsstammlager, which means ‘war prisoner’ ‘enlisted’ ‘main camp’. Stalag therefore meaning, ‘main camp’.)

Six times he tried to escape, but lacking the language and failing to link up with the Polish resistance to aid him, each attempt ended in failure, leading to beatings and solitary confinement. When not in solitary or on the run, he spent much of his time working on farms or in forests.

Many prisoners, my dad included, resented being made to work in this way, not because of the work, which was better than rotting in camp. What they resented was helping the German war effort. So, if given half a chance they would sabotage the task they were given.

The First Misadventure

Back to my dad, a shovel and a chute.

One such job saw him working on a sugar beet processing manufactory, somewhere in East Poland, near Torún.

His task was to shovel sugar beet down a chute into the processing system.

Not a complicated job.

It was then the unfortunate ‘accident’ happened. The rain and wet conditions were bad enough. However, according to dad, the mud on the handle of the shovel was the last straw.

Having hitherto wielded the shovel so skillfully it was a shock for dad to find the shovel unexpectedly taking on a life of its own and miraculously flying out of his grasp and, after teetering on the edge of the processing machine for what seemed like an eternity, suddenly and without warning taking off down the chute, like a rat up a drainpipe, or in this case, down a chute, to finish up in the sensitive beet processing machinery.

There followed a few minutes of squealing and grinding from the bowels of the machinery before the whole process ground to a halt. An eerie silence then ensued, before guards started running hither and yon about the factory.

Suspicion soon fell on dad and he was unceremoniously dragged away for interrogation about his involvement in the ‘suspicious’ incident. He steadfastly protested his innocence, claiming it had been an unfortunate accident and that the shovel had slipped from his grasp and fallen down the chute.

Or, was it deliberate?

He was not believed and was asked to write down his version of events. In doing so he created a second level of panic. Due to language difficulties and perhaps dad’s state of mind at the time, when writing what had happened, he made a grave error.

For chute he wrote, ‘shoot’.

Reinforcement were immediately summoned and the factory, along with the nearby living quarters, were torn apart in their search for the non existent firearm. When nothing was found, already frayed tempers became unraveled, resulting in more unpleasantness and threats of a firing squad.

Eventually things calmed and a bruised and bleeding prisoner got one week in solitary confinement and remained breathing.

Like Shakespeare, my dad amended and was inventive with his word use. However, unlike the Bard, such inventiveness was not always carried out wittingly.

Perhaps the words from Hamlet; ‘sweets to the sweet’ may have appeared in dad’s writings as;

‘sugars to the beet’.

Dad died in 1974. He was 54 years of age, so young. He never really recovered from his years in captivity, nearly a tenth of his life, and never forgave the powers that be, or the media, for ignoring and staying silent about the bravery and the sacrifice of the men of the 51st Highland Division and their capture at St-Valery-en-Caux.

Mis-Adventures of Prisoner of War Thomas Barbour McNeish

Quest For a Glass Container

Trauma and Me