VERGE OF ESCAPE

Timaru Herald, Volume CLV, Issue 22785, 8 January 1944, Page 2

VERGE OF ESCAPE

Captured By Bulgars Objectionable Treatment Of Prisoners If any sympathy for the troubles of the Bulgarians exists, there is one man in Gisborne who takes no share in it, says the “Poverty Bay Herald.” He is Corporal W. B. Shaw, Desmond Road, who recently was repatriated from Germany because of his state of health. He owed to Bulgarians, civilian and soldier, an extension of two years of his detention in the hands of the Nazis. Captured at Corinth, at the tail-end of the Greek campaign, Corporal Shaw was then suffering from a wound in the stomach. He was sent to a prison compound at Salonika, and after recovering from the effects of his wound he escaped and wandered for over a year in Greece, gradually making his way toward the Turkish border. On the threshold of deliverance, he was identified by a Bulgarian civilian as a foreigner in those parts and through the agency of this civilian he was taken by Bulgarian soldiers guarding the Turkish frontier for the Germans. Had he been in normal health, Corporal Shaw probably could have got through. He was greatly debilitated, however, by the effects of malaria, and, in fact, had lost more than half his normal weight through sickness and starvation. Ragged, hungry, and helpless, he was dragged back to Salonika, and there handed over to the Germans for reimprisonment. The rigours of his period of liberty resulted in his spending a further eight months in hospital after his transfer to Germany from Greece. He had the services of British doctors, and hospital staff during his stay in hospital, and found no cause to complain of the treatment he received in Germany apart from the shortage of food. Worse Than Nazis From his experiences in Greece, Corporal Shaw regards the Bulgars as the most objectionable in their treatment of prisoners and civilians. The tragedy of Greece is not so much the active measures of depression taken by the Nazis as the terrible shortage of food. During his liberty there. Corporal Shaw shared the hardships of the civilian population, and knew what it was to sink well below the subsistence level. He ate grass and small domestic animals, and when these were not available he simply starved. From a normal weight of over 11 stone, he dropped to little more than 5 stone in his wanderings. Starving and almost hopeless as they were, however, he found the Greek people intensely loyal to the Allied cause, and determined that they would hang on somehow until the British came back to drive out the Germans and Bulgars. Pitiable as their own case was, they would share their last scraps of food with an escaping British soldier and try to help him on his way. Without their help, Corporal Shaw would almost certainly have perished. Owing to his status as a wounded prisoner, he was not required to work while in Germany, and for this reason he saw nothing of the country outside his prisoner-of-war camp except when travelling by rail. On the Journey through Europe to the point from which his exchange was effected, his route avoided all areas where bomb damage was heavy, and the only evidence the prisoners had of the effect of R.A.F. bombing was the extreme length and tortuous character of the Journey itself. Still greatly debilitated by his illness, but fully recovered from the effects of his wound, Corporal Shaw is now putting on weight again at a reasonable rate, and hopes soon to be fully back to his pre-war form. In common with other repatriated prisoners, he feels that he owed his survival in Germany to the food parcels received through the British Red Cross.