The memoirs of Cissie Ewen
War years
Prisoner of War
Shortly after that, while we still living in Rosehill Road, Jack and I were able to go down and have a few days holiday with him. The people we stayed with in Blackpool were the owners of the house. Jack and I used to have our meals with them in the kitchen; John had his with the other soldiers in the dining room. I remember they had a budgie that had pulled all its feathers out and looked like a plucked fowl. The lady said it was because someone had given it fat, and the bird was trying to get the fat out of its quills. It used to walk about on the table and while awful to look at, was very interesting to listen too. It could say “Good day, Jack” (their son) and it used to say its name and address; always repeating the last word twice. The soldiers were only a few weeks in England before they were all sent to the Middle East, and it must have been about that time Jack and I moved to West Jesmond to live with Miss Robertson until 1947 when we came to New Zealand.
Joe married in 1937, Alex married in 1938, and Mattie got married during the war in 1941. I remember very well when Mattie got married I got word from the War Office that John was missing along with others of his regiment. They said I might hear from him before they did: in that case, I was to let them know immediately. It could be that he had been taken a prisoner-of-war, not necessarily that he had died. I then waited six weeks, not knowing if he was alive or dead, before getting word from the War Office to say he’d been taken prisoner on Crete on 1 June 1941, and was now in a prisoner-of -war camp in Germany. After he got home, John told me that it had taken three weeks for them to be transferred to Germany; part of that time marching and partly in cattle trucks, standing like cattle, cramped up and hardly able to move.
If I remember rightly, he was a short time at Dresden, then for most of the next four or five years, he was imprisoned at Potsdam, where he was able to write many times. His letters were partly blacked out; they were always censored. (Both sides censored the letters going each way, to avoid giving away any information useful to the enemy.) He was still cooking, but now for the prisoners of war. It was much harder, trying to make meals out of practically nothing as the saying goes: wishy-washy potatoes and that kind of thing. They were given black bread, and horsemeat: it had a sickly smell and taste.
(Cissie’s son John’s note: “My father’s Soldier’s Service and Pay Book states:
B.E.F. (British Expeditionary Force) 13.4.40 to 18.6.40
Middle East, Greece, Crete. 5.1.41 to 1. 6.41
Prisoner of war 2.6.41 to 24.4.45
Effective date of discharge - 22.2.46)