BRITISH PADRES

Te Awamutu Courier, Volume 64, Issue 4536, 13 February 1942, Page 3

BRITISH PADRES

PREFER TO REMAIN PRISONERS “In a German prison camp to-day are a group of Britons who recently pleaded with the Nazi authorities to let them stay—even when there was a chance that they would be sent'home. They are not men who love the Nazi regime, just soldiers who feel it their duty to stay in prison camps until the war is ended—the chaplains of the 51st (Highland) Division, captured in the Battle of France,” states the “Sunday Dispatch.” “Since then the chaplains have been in an officers’ prison camp. Among them were men with distinguished academic careers before entering the Church, so they formed a miniature ‘university’ in the camp. Fellow-officers, bored with inactivity, took the opportunity. Books were obtained. Classes were started, Examinations were set. Then came reports of the proposed exchange of non-combatant prisoners of war. The padres of the 51st Division were envied by their fellows. The thought of coming home must have been very tempting. But the chaplains talked it over and came to their decision: to ask the German military authorities whether they could be left out of any exchange scheme, as they wished to remain in Germany. At the same time they sent a further request to the Germans. That they should be allowed to leave the officers’ camp and go to the ordinary camps where the men of their' division were imprisoned. Their work at the officers’ camp, they said, was done. Their ‘university/ running smoothly, could carry on without them. They did not want privileges that were denied to their men. In new camps they hope to carry on the work they have begun. This is why they do not want to come home until the war is won.”