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Hutt News, Volume 18, Issue 44, 28 February 1945, Page 5

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WAR PRISONER'S RETURN

OYER THREE YEARS' CAPTIVITY

The opinion that the VI and V 2 bombs have cost Germany the war was expressed by Mr. I. A. Anderson, of Haig Street, Lower Hutt, who returned to New Zealand last week after spending three years and three months as a prisoner of war in Germany. Mr. Anderson, who was a member of the 22nd Wellington Battalion, was captured at Maleme aerodrome in Crete and during the period of his captivity saw a great deal of conditions in Germany through being sent to various districts on working parties. Because Germany's aircraft production was switched almost entirely to the manufacture of the V-type bombs the ordinary air strength of the Luftwaffe dwindled! surprisingly and the position to-day j was that the Nazis simply did not! have the 'planes necessary to oppose! the R.A.F. and Allied air forces. As a result, it was quite a common sight to see as many as 1800 Allied planes in the air ove? Germany with out a single "Jerry" plane in sight.

So far as the morale of the German civilians was concerned, said Mr. Anderson, there can be no question that during the early stages of the Allied air blitz, the civilians took *it remarkably well, but now, under the continuing and ever-in-creasing strength of the raid they are becoming "bomb happy." "They must be very near the end of their tether now, and I don't think they can stand it longer than perhaps a few weeks more»" said Mr. Anderson. So far as Berlin is concerned, it will take 100 years to rebuild it and many people believe it will never be rebuilt. The destruction there is enormous and the whole town is more or less flat, and such conditions are largely duplicated in many other of the large industrial cities of the Reich. As a member of the Second Echelon, Mr. Anderson was in England during the famous Battle of Britain and saw the bombing of London in 1940. Having also seen Berlin after its wartime bombing and then returning to see London again at the end of 1944, Mr. Anderson was able to draw comparisons and states emphatically that "compared with Berlin, London is whole."

Mr. Anderson pays a high tribute to the work of the Red Cross. "It was only the Red Cross parcels that made life possible," he #ays, "for with the exception of potatoes all other rations were on a mc>st meagre scale."