John Munro’s War: Part 7 – 1946

In May John’s name again appears in the farm diary being paid the same rate as Roy, now on 76 shillings per week. He was finally released from military service in July. He was described on his army testimonial as a reliable type, a good driver who carried out his duties in a hard working manner. The tank commander who went on to spend 3 years in enemy labour camps never drove again, except the farm’s tractors. The enthusiastic, rebellious teenager who enlisted without his parents knowledge in May 1939 returned home a thoughtful, fairly reserved man. Always affable and sociable when required he never pursued much of a social life outside the family, unlike his young brother, Roy. Never dated. Never married. He was a voracious reader and his extended knowledge and intelligence meant he was always engaging to talk with. Quick to laugh and anger in equal measure he could be insensitive at times but was considerate and kindly for all that. While his mind remained sharp his body was crippled by arthritis and he suffered greatly but a friendly vet was on hand to prescribe painkillers for John as well as for the animals on the farm.

There was symmetry to John Munro’s war. He enlisted as an 18-year-old on 9 May 1939 and was freed from his prison camp around 9 May 1945. In May 2011 with his health deteriorating John one day decided he’d endured enough, went upstairs, climbed into bed, turned his face to the wall, refused food and drink and waited for death which came on the 12 May, at the age of ninety.  

John Munro’s War: Part 5 – 1944

Food supplies were continuing to cause concern at home. Much of the farm’s potato crop was destroyed by blight. Cattle feed was so scarce the beasts spent more time on grass in an attempt to fatten them up for market. Labour costs were increasing because of the difficulty finding skilled farm workers. John senior was always very involved in local farming business and was attending meetings of the Agricultural Executive Committee (A.E.C.) a country-wide organisation setup following the declaration of war and chaired by lairds and prominent men with working farmers such as John’s father providing the actual expertise of day-to-day farming. The committees had sweeping powers to go onto land to ascertain the best way to cultivate it to prioritise food production. While each locality had its own group the government through the Scottish Department kept tight overall control. Through local A.E.Cs labourers were assigned to farms, including casual workers, the Women’s Land Army and POWs (many Italian and German) in desperate attempts to fill the gap in experienced agricultural men. Previously unworked land or at least land that had not been cultivated for many years was put under the plough and planted where possible or used as pasture for stock.

Allied POWs were worked hard as substitutes for German workers drafted into the military. That statement should be qualified for being interned in a camp did not automatically mean you undertook work. Conditions and prisoners’ rights within camps including work provision, education, food, religious observances and leisure were covered by the 1929 Geneva Convention which relied on the 1899 Second Hague Convention that specified that prisoners of war could only be employed on work which would not be “humiliating to their military rank” – in effect officers were exempt from physical labour unless they chose otherwise. NCOs were only required to do supervisory work. While NCOs and officers had it cushy other ranks endured long hours of work, some of it hard such as breaking stones for roads, road making, salt or coal mining while frequently suffering from malnutrition. Weak from starvation POWs would glean what they could when outside the camps searching anything edible such as dandelions. That said John found ordinary Germans generous – sharing what little they had with POWs. He may have been employed on a farm given his background but I have no evidence of this.

For men like John (and they didn’t have it as hard as Soviet prisoners) they might have one day in twenty-one off from work but conditions varied across POW working camps. And who you were, as we’ve seen. Officers and NCOs were very fortunate to enjoy opportunities to study and pursue hobbies in arts and crafts, setup clubs and put on entertainments since they were less exhausted than men and women enduring long, long shifts working.

The dire food situation lent importance to the provision of Red Cross parcels each POW was sent from the international organisation. Every week of the war around 97,000 Red Cross parcels were sent out from the UK. Each parcel contained about 17 items and while contents were fairly standardised because they came from different nations and supplied various nationalities within the international mix of camps they provided opportunities for trading items e.g. dried fruit; coffee; chocolate; cigarettes; tinned meat; fish. John would never eat salmon after the war and I wonder if this was because of a surfeit of tinned salmon while in confinement. British food parcels contained variations on a theme – tea, cocoa, chocolate, tinned meat; steak and kidney pudding, meat hash, sausages, Irish stew, bacon, pork luncheon meat, chopped ham. There was usually processed cheese, condensed milk, dried eggs, sardines or herrings, margarine, sugar, vegetables, biscuits, a bar of soap and 50 cigarettes or tobacco. Scots like John would have received rolled oats for porridge. Inevitably Red Cross parcels attracted thieving and towards the end of the war this greatly increased causing malnutrition among prisoners forced to try to exist and work long shifts on very inadequate rations. German food was limited – something like sausage, soup, some sort of fresh meat occasionally and meals made from dried peasemeal. The loss of their parcels also dealt a blow to the morale of POWs who not only depended on them for sustenance but as a diversion from the awful reality of their predicament. POWs also were provided with medical parcels containing cotton wool, safety pins, soap, aspirin, ointment, various medicines and vitamins and toilet paper. Only Soviet POWs had no access to Red Cross parcels because the Soviet government refused to work with the Red Cross. Unfortunate Soviet prisoners had to rely only on tiny German rations and helps explain why so many of them perished while in camps.

The Red Cross and St John War Organization issued monthly newspapers for next of kin of POWs. Because of paper shortages these were not on public sale. The Prisoner of War newspapers were no different from the rest of the press and adhered to government propaganda to create an optimistic impression of life in camps and the publication’s cheeriness irritated some POWs who thought it promoted a false impression of life in camps. The May issue in 1944 reported the need for families to retrain from sending lots of letters to their family member because the British camp leaders in each of the German camps struggled to cope with the sheer amount of mail sent out from the UK that had to undergo censorship and finding the correct recipient with several people sharing the same or similar names, and called for just one letter per week per POW.

At the end of April John sent a postcard home alerting his family to the increasingly dire situation of lack of food and his father immediately contacted the Red Cross expressing his concern at what was taking place in the camp. He forwarded John’s postcard to them. A reply from the Scottish Branch of the Red Cross was sent on 4th May 1944.

“Dear Sir

Re: Tpr. John MUNRO, P.O.W. ******, Stalag IV.A.ARB.Kdo.No 1162

Your letter of 29 April enclosing letter card received from your son, addressed to the Next-of-Kin Parcels Depot, has been passed to this Department for attention.

We are well aware of the conditions which exist at the camp in which your son is Prisoner, but such conditions apply to a large part of that particular area in which the camp is situated. The matter has, however, been brought to the notice of the Directorate of Prisoners of War, who are taking the necessary action to ensure that in the near future, you will hear from your son that things have, in fact, improved.”

John never mentioned them in his letters but in January of 1944 enough musical instruments for a 9-piece orchestra were diverted to Stalag IV-A from Italian camps – 3 violins, a cornet, 2 saxophones, a viola, a clarinet and a set of drums.

John Munro’s War: Part 4 – 1943

On 12^th April a defunct railway carriage arrived by rail, probably at Strathpeffer station, or perhaps Dingwall or Muir of Ord, bought from a farmer at Castletown in Caithness and presumably intended as an additional henhouse. On the same day John’s father paid out £33 for 10 tons of seed oats. With government pressure on farmers to extend land use and increase crop yields the Marginal Production Scheme was established in the spring of 1943 with grants provided to encourage farmers purchase fertilisers to try to increase fertility in previously designated poor marginal land.

The next letter I have finds John in work camp Stalag IV A, near Dresden in southern Germany. Stalag means soldier and stalags (stammlager or base camp for enlisted personnel) were camps for non-commissioned allied troops. Camps for commissioned officers were called oflags. There were two Stalag IV-As – the original one at Elderhorst but from February 1941 the camp at Hohnstein Castle began taking in increasing numbers of prisoners and became Stalag IV-A.  The 1941 number of prisoners under Stalag IV-A was 22,000, later rising to 32,000. Many Soviet prisoners were confined here. They and Polish prisoners were provided with the smallest food rations and allocated the most difficult work assignments.

Some officer POWs were held here for a time but nearby oflag, Colditz Castle, became famous for the daring escapes from there. All camps had their own stories of daring escapes. John had a low opinion of POWs in Colditz because their confinement was cosy compared with the desperate conditions of men in the stalags. As well as stalags and oflags there were several other types of internment camp designations: intelligence, civilians, maritime, air force etc.. Each German military district was identified by a Roman numeral. IV was the Dresden military district covering many camps. By 1942 the district had about 700 work camps – a flexible number that altered according to labour requirements for different industries.

Every kind of industry and occupation in the region employed POWs – coal mining (lignite or brown coal), transport, chemical production, shoe manufacture, horticulture, cement works, timber yards, textiles, hospitals – psychiatric, medical, surgical, convalescent. Hohnsetein POW camp was an administrative centre for a huge network of external camps with its main task the distribution of POW and forced labour to workplaces.  Hohnsetin castle was the area’s command headquarters.

John writes to his mother, in pencil on a plain letter postcard on 21st November, 1943 –

“Dear Mam, Here is another post card to let you know I am all right. We are getting our Red Cross parcels now. I have not had any letters yet but I should get one for Christmas. I hope everybody at home is well. The weather in this country is similar to home so I should not feel the cold much when I come home. Well, I must close now. I am, your loving son, John.”

POW mail was often stamped several times over, going through various checks. There’s a Stalag IV B stamp on this lettercard and I think because John passed through IV B as a transfer prisoner around the time of Italy’s collapse. Military district IV referred to Dresden. John was also held in Poland for a time but I know nothing about the circumstances.

On 17 December 1943, John’s mother was sent a letter from the Scottish Branch of the British Red Cross. John was then in Stalag IV B.

“We are sorry we are unable to change the camp address of the parcel, as it had already been despatched. We do not think you will have any anxiety regarding its safe arrival, as we feel sure it will be forwarded on to him at his new address. We have noted the new address on our records and trust you are having good news from your son.”

Stalag IV-A

In recent years it has emerged that when Italy was on the brink of collapse that British officers stepped in as de facto guards to prevent POWs escaping and attempting to rejoin their army units that were spread here, there and everywhere. An order was issued from within a secretive branch of Britain’s Ministry of Defence and transmitted as a religious broadcast on a BBC programmed called The Radio Padre that all British POWs should remain in Italian camps and wait for the arrival of UK forces. Perhaps in London they didn’t realise Germans could understand English but whatever an order went out for some 50,000 allied POWs to be transferred to Poland and Germany. POW deaths were high during the transfers and subsequent years in Nazi labour camps. The original order subsequently disappeared from the War Office archives at Kew. The 1940s equivalent of deleted Whatsapp messages.

John Munro’s War: Part 3 – 1942

War in the Western Desert was not going well for Britain with Rommel’s tank corps making steady headway.  At the end of May a fresh German offensive broke through the British defensive line forcing the British back to Egypt.

Back on the farm 69 acres were put under oats, 30 with barley, 10 with potatoes (Kerr’s Pinks and Redskin), 24 with turnips, 61 acres were sown as meadows and 120 left under grass and so on. John’s sister, Margaret, was again helping occasionally such as at tattie lifting in October, alongside school children on their tattie holidays. Tattie picking holidays were established in Scotland in the 1930s to provide extra labour to gather-in potato crops in autumn and came into their own during the war when labour was in short supply and picking up tatties didn’t take skill, only energy. During wartime shortages of experienced farm workers created a few headaches because the production of food was essential not only for the domestic market but to provide for military personnel overseas. Men’s wages were increased in January of 1942 from 48 shilling per week to 60 shillings. Women were always paid less irrespective of their skills. With so many men on military service women were recruited as the Women’s Land Army, their deployment falling under the Secretary of State for Scotland. 

On January 3 John’s thoughts were very much on the Scottish Hogmanay and his aunt and uncle from Inverness who visited at the beginning of each new year. Then a little over a week later John’s mother, Bella, is sent a letter written in a beautiful hand from Seaforth Avenue, Durban, Natal, South Africa.

“Dear Mrs Munro,

This is just a short letter to say that we had the pleasure of entertaining your son, John, during his short visit here. We took him and his two chums one from Dundee and one from Glasgow to see some of the sights near the town including the wild monkeys. Then we brought them home for supper and they spent the evening with us. The boys enjoyed their stay here and it was a nice break after their long voyage. They also tasted some of our fruits which they had never even heard of before. They all looked very fit and well and very brown. This is the first Scottish boys we have had and we enjoyed their company as we come from Perthshire.

We think it a great privilege to be able to do something for the boys as we are too old for military work so we do what we can in the hope that this letter will be some comfort to you.

Trusting that this will find you and your husband fit and well and that you will soon have your son home again. We are yours sincerely, Mr and Mrs J. Shephard.”

On the 30^th of January 1942 John wrote home from his training base to reassure the family he was alright and getting settled in camp. He makes a guarded reference to his visit to Durban but not by name, to avoid the censor’s blue pencil –

“Did you get any letters from a town we touched on our way out. There was a couple there who took us around who said they would write home. They came from Scotland. This place is not very hot just now. It is just like summer at home but it is very cold at night. It is pretty dusty too and every step you take raises a cloud of it. Today was pay day and we got 100 piastres or ackers as they are called. It is equal to £1 but it does not stay as long as anything worth about 1d at home costs about an acker here. We get our washing washed and ironed for 3 ackers by the dobeys or something that sounds like that. There is a Church of Scotland canteen down the road called Scots corner. The funny thing about this money is that you have a pile of notes and it may not be worth 10/-. You get notes for 5 ackers worth about 1/-. When we were on the train coming here a swarm of hawkers came on and started selling a lot of trash bangles wallets etc. As there was no money among us they started to change them for old pens and odds and ends. I never changed anything as there was nothing worth buying. I would look very nice I daresay with a string of beads round my neck and a few bits of stuff round my wrists. Some of the rest of them changed stuff. They will be throwing it away yet likely enough. We get good enough grub and beds here but we have a few partners in the beds with us. The place is full of them. I hope everything is all right at home.”

1d is 1 penny and /- is the sign for shilling. He goes on to mention the family at home and complains at the time, sometimes months, it takes for mail to arrive. Finally there is a reference to the troops’ allocation of 50 cigarettes and extra 4d a day colonial allowance.

Between censorship, distance and sheer volume of military mail letters took on average three months to be delivered but telegrams were sometimes a possibility, albeit an expensive one. On 2nd February 1942 John sent a Via Imperial telegram to his mother.

“ALL WELL AND SAFE PLEASE DONT WORRY KEEP SMILING.”

This was followed up five days later by a brief pencil-written letter informing the family of his new address – B. Squadron, 3 R.T.R., M.E.F. (Middle East Forces). He expresses relief having at last joined a battalion for he was fed up of the –

“…spit and polish at the Fort but in a battalion they have a bit more sense…It seems funny to be in the middle of winter and the sun shining every day. It is a bit cold at nights though.”

While this letter was written in February, he realised his mother would not receive it until the summer.

On 14 February John sent home an airgraph, a type of telegram that photographed letters in miniature and sent them on by airmail. He was again frustrated at not receiving mail and it’s clear he was thinking a great deal about the family at home in Scotland. He drew the letter to a close as the last post was being sounded asking his teenage brother Roy if he has been busy keeping down the rabbit population on the farm. Rabbits were often shot but they were also trapped with snares.

“This is not the sort of country to be in to be setting traps in here. You would need to watch them 24 hours per day. They would pinch the colour from your shirt and swear down your throat it was white. There is a lot of dud coins too. If you give them a five acker piece or upwards they will ring it on a stone and as like as not refuse it. After a few days you do the same yourself or if not you will have a pocketful of useless stuff on you. I got rid of all my duds so just now I am all right (I hope). They pester you all over the place in town trying to brush your boots or sell you something. You get a real good   feed here though. Plenty of eggs. 4 eggs and chips tea and bread and salad and what not for about a bob (or five and six ackers). Well Roy that’s lights out so I will close . . . I saw a right good acrobatic turn the other night. It would beat anything Bertram Mills circus ever had. Well Roy, cheerio, I am your loving brother, John.”

On 10^th March 1942 he wrote to say he had received a letter from his Mam, his mind is on what was happening with the routine seasonal work on the farm such as spring sowing and describes a little of his impressions of agriculture in the middle east –

“You should see them pumping water out here for the fields, you should get Roy busy with a pump if you get a dry year … I was pretty lucky I came here according to the newspapers as the other places do not seem so healthy the last few months.”

In addition to his usual interest in what the family are up to he mentions a picture card he’d sent home, possibly of Durban, and makes a reference to a sea journey, likely from South Africa to North Africa with his tank regiment.

“I was not seasick although the most of them was in a bad state for a few days.”

He regrets never receiving local newspapers sent to him by his mother and urges her to forward the Ross-shire Journal, closing by asking if anyone else at home has been called up.

“I think I had better close as I am going down to get my tea. I am your loving son, John.”

On 24 March John again complains that so few letters sent to him from home are getting through to him. You can be sure his close-knit family were writing and problems with the mail system were at fault. His mood is low and he has little to say aside from a mention of dust storms in the area. However, days later, on the 29 March his mood has lifted. Those longed-for letters and a telegram from home have finally arrived. Three of those letters had been posted from Scotland in December of the previous year and another, from his sister Margaret, sent on 1 January 1942. On receiving them John immediately wrote back. Life in the unit was monotonous he indicates and it appears he is lonely; complaining of not seeing anyone he knows or even any fellow Scots despite Scots being in the vicinity. He refers to the weather, already hot, is growing hotter and how hot it was on the boat (north from South Africa) and his sunburn.

“It was so hot that a lot of us got our hair all cut off. We looked like a bunch of convicts but it is a fair size again. What I am wondering now is whether I will part it or just let it grow. I think I will have it without a parting as I have got my combe broken and I did not have the chance to get another. I was wondering if I could manage to make one out of a petrol tin but I gave it up. Still I’ll get one soon I hope.”

Looking good was still a priority despite the privations of life in the Western Desert.

Those local newspapers he longed for eventually arrived, or rather clippings from them – the Bulletin I’m not familiar with and the North Star I think was The North Star and Farmers’ Chronicle. He writes about how much he’s missing news of home and is longing to read about what’s happening there, again requesting his family send him copies of the Ross-Shire Journal even though they’ll be six or eight months out of date by the time he eventually gets to read them.   

3^rd April 1942. In a letter to his mother John’s mood is again flat and he has little to say. He’s in north Africa and suffering in the heat. There’s a mention of getting his RAC beret (which he wore all his days while working on farming after the war) and going off to the pictures “in a whilie” within the camp as they aren’t allowed out.

“We handed in our kitbags today to go away and we will get paid today. I have the new address but it is only after embarkation. You had better hang on for a day or two before you write. Well that’s all, I am your loving son, John.”

If only we had his mother’s letters to him. Sadly, none have survived.

Back at home newspapers were full of the war in the desert and the struggle against Rommel’s forces.  Young John was a tank commander in the thick of the action that involved hundreds of jousting tanks and continual whizzing and cracking of exploding shells that left spirals of white smoke hurtling skyward and explosions of flames as tanks were hit and caught fire. Visibility was cloaked with clouds of desert sand and thick acrid oil vapour from blazing tanks.  The clamour was deafening.

29 April 1942. John receives an airmail letter from home that took only a fortnight to arrive. Surface mail was still taking around three months. He writes back –

“Things seem to be wakening up a bit at home according to the odd scraps of news we get now and again.”

He’s referring to Luftwaffe and RAF bombing raids of Britain and the Continent.

“I heard they had a pretty strong raid on France too not so long ago. I hope they make a right strong one by the time this letter gets to you and stay there. We ought to be pretty well equipped all over after nearly three years of preparation. The air force seems to be by the look of it and the army is not much good without air support. The Russians are still doing fairly well I think. Well they can afford to lose plenty of men. They have plenty to draw on. At present I am along with a lot of Englishmen. Some of them are all right but some are not. The best lot I came across were the ones I trained with who came from infantry regiments. The RAC ones have a lot of well to do ones – civil servants and so on and I don’t fancy them. There is one with me now who talks lah-de-dah like a toff. He thinks and always likes to tell everybody who have no other option but to listen that Churchill has never done anything worthwhile since he became prime minister. He calls himself a communist but hasn’t the brain to be anything other than a windbag. He has had a pretty easy time by the look of it. A good walloping would do him the world of good. Of course they aren’t all like that but there are quite a lot of them I dislike and despise. One of the blokes from the Seaforths (there are only three of us here now) is fed up with them too. He is on a lorry with other two. The Gerry used to say the English man was decadent. A lot of them are. In another twenty years or so by the look of the better class it may be the best of the whole lot are the ordinary working man.”

He’s again frustrated by the army censoring so much of what he wants to write but understands it’s concern that letters will fall into Gerry’s hands, revealing military positions. He asks about home and mentions that he recently wrote to his Granny (like most of the letters this one has not survived). Again the hot African weather is mentioned necessitating them changing into shorts instead of the battledress they had been in on landing in the cool season.

“I don’t think they have the right idea of the east at home. It’s a lot different from what is talked about it – waving palms and all the rest – there are some but the most of the waving palms belong to the nippers shouting ‘“Baksheesh George. Give it”’ they are always trying to cadge something off you, money or cigarettes. They are awful bargainers too. I bought a wallet with stamped leather designs from one of the kids. He wanted 15 ackers for it about three bob. I offered two. He muttered something in Arabic and came down to 10. I offered three and he came down to eight at last I got it for four and a cigarette. The whole deal took about half an hour and I still think I was robbed.”

The 8^th Army had nearly 850 tanks in the region, nearly 200 planes and 100,000 men protected by the Gazala Line – a huge minefield that extended for 43 miles inland from the coast. John’s 3^rd battalion were involved in the near non-stop action.  Assumptions were made by the British command about German tactics. They got it wrong. Rommel launched an attack on 26 May 1942 (John’s sister Margaret’s 26^th birthday). Both sides struggled with inadequate supplies for their troops but Germany’s tanks and air defences proved superior to those of the British and Rommel’s Panzer division pressed forward finally penetrating British positions and securing supply lines to consolidate German’s grip on the region. A British counter attack was launched on the 1^st and 2^nd of June amidst severe desert sand storms but the British action was repulsed by the Germans resulting in the destruction of many tanks, their crews killed, injured or captured as POWs. On 5th June Operation Aberdeen went badly wrong with vast losses of British troops and equipment and thousands of men captured.

The war in the desert was reported back in Britain but perhaps not in a way that was recognisable to the men involved. The 4 June edition of Aberdeen Evening Express was upbeat about the progress of the Allies campaign –

“…we have been able to cut off the head of Rommel’s forward positions… at last light on June 2 our armoured forces drove the enemy out of Tamar… The enemy are known to have lost at least fourteen tanks in this engagement.”

No mention of Allied tank losses which were huge. And on 11 June 1942 the same newspaper had this to say –

“…there are many more around who, though not yet shouting, are supremely confident of the final result.”

On 16th June optimistic propaganda exploded into bombastic hyperbole with embedded war correspondents describing British convoy commanders

“…sitting up aloft on their trucks like sunburned gods – their sun compasses pointing a black sliver of shadow towards the Boche”

 Aberdeen Press and Journal 16 June.

Towards the end of the month the British press was still painting a positive picture of the desert campaign –

“It is these battle groups which are enabling strong British forces to operate with deadly effect well behind the Axis lines.”

With the surrender of tens of thousands of British-led troops to the Axis powers, Churchill later wrote 

“Defeat is one thing. Disgrace is another.”

Back on the farm it was a bumper summer for barley and oats but unfortunately much of the crops had to be left in the ground because of a scarcity of sacks and transport.

On 14 July 1942 a generic statement was issued to John’s father at the farm from the Cavalry and Royal Armoured Corps. It was misaddressed but he eventually received it.

“I regret to inform you that a report has been received from the War Office to the effect that (No.) ******* (Rank) TPR

(Name) Munro J.

(Regiment) 3^rd Btn. Royal Tank Regiment was posted as “missing” on the 2^nd June 1942 in the Middle East.

The report that he is missing does not necessarily mean that he has been killed, as he may be a prisoner of war or temporarily separated from his regiment.

Official reports that men are prisoners of war take some time to reach this country, and if he has been captured by the enemy it is probable that unofficial news will reach you first. In that case I am to ask you to forward any postcard or letter received at once to this Office, and it will be returned to you as soon as possible.”

John’s disappearance was one of many reported in the press during July 1942 –

“Mr John Munro, farmer, Kinnahaird, Strathpeffer has been officially informed that his son Pte. John Munro R.T.C, is missing.”

The news would have been a devastating blow to the family, one shared by so many in Scotland and countries everywhere. John’s mother must have been beside herself with grief and worry but then one morning she announced to the family “John is safe” for she had dreamt in the night of a baby in a cradle furiously rocking back and fore before slowly steadying and coming to a stop which she interpreted as her son John as the baby in the endangered cradle that stilled with the child safe. She wasn’t to know then but John was the sole survivor of a tank destroyed in battle.

On 2^nd August 1942 a plain postcard was written by John.

“Dear Mam,

I hope you have not had long to wait to learn I was (a) prisoner. You do not need to worry about me. When you reply write c/o Italian Red Cross, Rome. Well I will close now. I am your loving son, John. “

John and his fellow captives from North Africa were transferred to Sicily’s Camp PG 98 Prigione di Guerra (Prison of War) under a prisoner agreement between the two fascist governments of Germany and Italy. Prisoners were stripped, deloused, their heads shaved then allocated a tent with about fifty others. The camp in a mountainous area was cold, wet and windy and difficult to escape from. Food consisted of tiny rations of bread, cheese, pasta or rice at best -a handful of berries at worst. There were high levels of sickness, diarrhoea, dysentery and vomiting due to the filthy conditions and near starvation rations. I don’t know if John tried to escape while in Italy. He did break out of camps on several occasions, possibly in Germany where in the earlier stages of the war failed escapees were questioned and returned to camp and perhaps put in solitary confinement for a few days (towards the end of the war they were often shot dead), but in Italy a recaptured POW might be tethered to a flagpole and left for days without food. For many of the very sick Italy was the end of their journey. Surviving POWs such as John were further transferred into Germany. There camps were well protected with trip wires around the perimeter and backed by double barbed wire fences topped with coiled barbed wire, perimeter towers with armed guards and regular foot patrols of camp guards.

There were short rations, too, for farm stock back in Scotland because so little winter feeding was available. Less fertile land was ploughed as an attempt to grow more food instead of relying on foreign imports that tied up vessels and cost mariners’ lives.

John Munro’s War: Part 2 – 1941

By February 1941 Germany’s Afrika Korps commander, Major General Rommel, had landed a force at the Libyan capital of Tripoli in support of the Italians who were struggling to contain the British. Rommel’s tank companies proved a formidable enemy and within a matter of weeks British forces had retreated to the Egyptian border. 

Far from the heat of war in the Western Desert Scotland was suffering severe winter weather during which many of the farm’s lambs died of exposure to the extreme conditions. Grass sickness stopped the breeding of horses on the farm and the numbers of their working horse fell with some of the tasks previously undertaken by horses transferred to a paraffin-fuelled tractor.

John’s uncle, Duncan MacRae, awarded the Military Medal for bravery in the First World War, and grieve (foreman) on the farm during the Second lived with his family in one of the farm cottages close to the steading. In addition to firewood and farm produced food such as oats and potatoes, eggs etc he was paid £11. 10s a month in 1941. The farm employed five other men – for example cattleman Frank McLeod who received £105 a year and others whose wages ranged between 48 shillings and 54 shillings per week. John’s young brother, Roy, was paid between £7 and £13 per month, dependent on hours. John’s sister, Margaret, when not away working as a nanny earned the occasional £7 or £8 at busy times.

John’s father’s farm diaries rarely include any references to family events but on 3^rd December 1941 he noted –

“John sailed. Cable sent from Glasgow – 2^nd Feb about 9 weeks at sea.”

John had been transferred from the Seaforths to the newly formed Royal Armoured Corps, a tank corps that replaced the old horse cavalry regiments. In April 1939 the Royal Tank Corps had been  renamed the Royal Tank Regiment, part of the RAC.  John was recruited into the Reconnaissance Corps which was setup in January 1941, to carry out reconnaissance – scouting ahead of infantry divisions before they advanced – and disbanded in 1946. Recruits into this corps were selected through an intelligence test before being trained as drivers, wireless operators, mechanics and assault infantrymen. Many failed the test and were sent back to their own units. During World War 2 the Reconnaissance Corps served in the Middle East, East Africa, North Africa and the Far East.

During 1941 B battalion 3 RTR were in Greece fighting Italians but I have no evidence John was stationed there although some family members believe he was in Crete where fighting had spread from mainland Greece. Both were terrible bloody encounters and defeats for the Allies despite Britain’s determination to hold Crete which was regarded as essential to British interests as a vital refuelling base in the eastern Mediterranean since 1940. (The first reference John makes to being with the RTR is the following February).

The 3^rd December 1941 is the date on the first of John’s letters I have.

Dear Mam,

We are safely aboard at last. I’m afraid the paper you was sending on is a bit late now. Well it will be sent on later I suppose. We had a sing-song last night and we had a fairly early reveille this morning. Has Roy got busy pushing the pram yet. He can hitch it behind the motor bike he was to get. They will all be settled down for the winter now at home at the neeps. This letter may take some time on arriving as it will be censored and perhaps kept back for a while. Well I am afraid I cannot say much more.

I am your loving son John.

I don’t associate John with sing-songs as the John who returned from war was quite reserved but at twenty and surrounded by comrades he comes across as carefree and with a keen sense of humour. Roy was his young brother and the pram reference is to their sister Chris’ recent baby. Neeps are swedes and it’s clear John is thinking about the life he left at home on the farm.  

Just over two weeks later John writes home again, he’s contemplating the turn into the new year of 1942 but otherwise has little to say partly because of the army’s strict censorship rules, though he does hint at where he currently is –

“I can’t say where I am but it’s hot enough anyway. I have hardly anything on but I am sweating like a pig. We may not be here long and I think it may be a lot hotter yet.”