More Slop Than Food

Heroes Remember

More Slop Than Food

Transcript

No doubt. I didn’t doubt for a moment we wouldn’t... well, that we wouldn’t win the war and get out. At least that’s the way I felt and the way the fellows that I was with felt. We just had to wait it out. And we did have a... they had a radio in every camp. The Germans could never, never find them. They use to come around everyday to the huts and one guy would read the news. It was a lift. The Germans knew they were doing it, but they couldn’t, they couldn’t catch them. I don’t think they ever did find a... find the radio. It was more slop than food, you know. There was bread. You get about one slice of bread a day and some potatoes and then the so-called soup. God knows what was in it, but it wasn’t harmful. I was lucky if I got a carton every 2nd month, but still it was something. I would smoke half of them and spend half of them with the Germans. Smoking did help, you know, as far as hunger was concerned. It relieved the gnawing feeling that you have when your hungry all the time, you know, and cigarettes did that. Maybe part of it is psychological. It was... it wasn’t a happy time at all. We had a lot of laughter, but it wasn’t happy laughter. Everybody was... well you’re entirely different people, you know. Survival, survival, survival. We’re still here. What’s going to happen today? Not very much. There wasn’t really much to look forward to. Even the... we got some, towards the end, we’re getting some pretty good reports on the radio that certainly lifted our... lifted us, you know. But at the start it was, things weren’t going entirely our way early on in the war. We were beginning to wonder whether we’d ever get out of there alive. On the whole our... as a group... pretty, pretty happy bunch of people. Just happy about being alive. And being able to talk to each other, not much to talk about, except what they use to do.

Description

Mr. Fawcett discusses life in a POW camp and the emotional toll it took on the prisoners

Charlie Fawcett

Mr. Fawcett was born June 15, 1922 and grew up in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. He first became interested in planes when his father took him to Regina to go for a ride in one. It was this early interest in aviation that led him to sign up with the air force in 1942. He received gunnery training at Dafoe, SK and from there went overseas in the latter part of 1942. He chose to be a rear gunner as it was the fastest way to get overseas. Once in England he was assigned to an RAF squadron, stationed in Yorkshire, that consisted of an Australian pilot and an all English crew. In 1943, while on a trip to Czechoslovakia, they were shot down over Germany by a Messerschmitt. After bailing out of the aircraft Mr. Fawcett landed in a tree. The following day he was taken prisoner by the Germans. Over the next 2 ½ years he was interned in three different POW camps. Mr. Fawcett remained a POW until the end of the war.

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