Introduction

Hi Everyone , I've decided to start a dedicated blog for our "Covid" Research into the Escape of 24 men from Schweidnitz POW camp in Germany during the night of 19th March 1918.  

There are several people working away at discovering what it was like to be there in WWI. Some are relatives of the men from UK, NZ, Canada and Australia. Others are interested historians, film makers and writers. The project keeps growing as more people dig through their photo memorabilia. 

 

A list of the prisoner escapees - Lt George Tarn Harker and Lt George Carmen Atkins also escaped

Now we also have information from "the friends of " the POWs who planned their daring escapes or others they met up with at Holzminden. The prisoners were Officers who came from England, NZ, Australia and Canada so they were afforded more respect and freedom. It's a great story of mateship, creativity and bravery from men thrown together in War from the Royal Flying Corp, Infantry, Navy and Merchant Marine backgrounds.

Digitized records have been our friend during this time especially as the National Archives of UK are available free during covid lockdown. Plenty has been found from digitized Newspaper records, free resources from the Australian War Memorial, National Archives of Australia and Red Cross records of POWs, Papers Past in NZ. The list goes on. Ancestry is our friend and all of the men have trees posted on the site with attached media and documents.  There is an ever expanding Dropbox of findings. Contact us for details on this.

"The Six That Dug the Tunnel"  photo provided by Fulton's family- courtesy Margaret Clark

This is a photo that turned up recently We're still trying to identify the "six" as they are sporting new hairstyles and facial hair- all part of the disguise for the impending escape. Left to right-the second one is Lionel Read and Eric Fulton is sixth.

Many have responded  to our email requests for photos, memoirs, records etc. Throughout this blog you will eventually find

• what conditions in the camp were like
• details of the escape from memoirs
  
• dates of POW transfers to and from other POW camps
• POW pre and post war stories

Originally I started this recording this blog on my personal family history blog Robyn and the Genies but its become to big a project so I will  transfer across the existing Schweidnitz blogs to this site and we'll go from there. Interested individuals are welcome to submit their own stories or observations to include in the blog record. Contact me.  Follow the blog for instant notification of new material.