On the Road Due South

Heroes Remember

On the Road Due South

Transcript

So you went over in intervals, in your sock feet, you got to the other side and you'd hear the guy go up there and then, you know, he had the jack boots on, you'd hear him turn around. We had to go through a canal, a man made canal with very steep banks. So to do this, we rolled our pant legs up, took our socks off which were wet anyway and went down, there was about three feet of water in it up the other side, put our boots back on and headed south. I had a compass, smaller compass, I took out in a little tin of margarine because the Germans always went into any food tin with a bayonet. The same as that bayonet there, identical. I got the compass through. The airmen made their own compass. So we had two compasses. We were heading for Yugoslavia, due south, head due south, try to contact the partisans. The airmen believed that if we could contact the partisans, the underground, whatever you want to call them, they would aid us in being repatriated to England because airmen were a valuable commodity, trained airmen, see. Not a soldier, a soldier was a dime a dozen, but, so this was their plan. They took me in, they accepted me and thank God they did. So we traveled, we crossed the Sudeten mountains, traveled all night and we reached the flat lands of Yugoslavia, then we had, Czechoslovakia, pardon me, Czechoslovakia.

Description

Mr. Poolton shares the path taken by he and the airmen in hopes of getting free!

John (Jack) Poolton

John (Jack) Abernethy Poolton was born in Toronto, Ontario on January 9, 1918. He was one of seven children. His father farmed 100 acres near Kapuskasing, Ontario. Mr. Poolton enlisted in the Royal Regiment of Canada and provides vivid, clear details of the allied landing at Dieppe, France on August 19, 1942.

Meta Data