I discovered a Monsignor Humphrey Wilson on our list of Schweidnitz POWs. Intrigued that there might have been a priest in the camp and with nothing else to go on I followed a note that he was interviewed for the Liddle collection at the Leeds University. I received a transcript.
What an interesting story. He was born in 1894 in England, one of six children of Thomas Charles and Annie Wilson. I discovered he was baptised in the Church of England on 22 November 1894 and was schooled at the Waterford Grammar School.
He went to Western Australia to work and was a bank clerk at the Bank of Australasia in WA at the beginning of World War I. Having volunteered in the military in Australia he was rejected due to a health condition. So, he returned to UK shortly after. Before that an Anglican Bishop in Perth tried to recruit him thinking he would be a good clergyman.
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| Humphrey had already been to Australia and back before enlisting |
Returning to England, he enlisted again joining the Grenadier Guards before receiving a Commission three months later. It was with the Territorial Worcester’s and eventually went to the Machine Gun Corps where he served in France.
Despite his upbringing as a member of the Church of England, he converted to Catholicism “to the sound of guns” during his time in the Somme in 1916 under the influence of Father Austin McCabe, Redemptorist Army Captain and Captain Fr CB Pike, a Dominican who also went to Karlsruhe POW Camp.
Seeing service in the Somme at Passchendaele, he suffered briefly from a gassing and then returned to the trenches where he saw thousands die. He was reported missing on 30 November 1917 in the battle of Cambrai.
On 7 January 1918, his mother and received a telegram via the Red Cross at her home in Bushey Hertfordshire England. It read “tell Bushey Lt H Wilson prisoner Karlsruhe was well.” He arrived at Le Cateau at Karlsruhe on 4 January 18. He admitted that in Karlsruhe they were starving but the Germans were starving too.
He arrived at Schweidnitz by train on 14 April 1918 just after our men had escaped and he remained there until Armistice. Prior to that he had transferred through Trier POW camp meeting lots of Flying Corps men on the way. There he like others have reported enjoys the food parcels from home with tobacco.
He spoke highly of the respect Germans had for the offices in the camp. He like others would share their food parcels with the starving Germans. He was fortunate that during his imprisonment he was in the Catholic part of the country. “We were there for a year and it wasn’t the worst time of my life.”
Around the time of the Armistice, he was asked by Major Warner to move to another part of Germany to take some prisoners back home with a fellow POW Peacock who fortunately spoke German. It involved about 1000 prisoners to go into the Dutch frontier on what was to be an overcrowded train of 1100 people. When he returned to England he was repatriated on 6 January 1919 and upon returning he was demobbed quite quickly .
Humphrey needed a job and many people supported his desire to become a priest. After studying in the English College in Rome in 1919 he was ordained.” in September 1925 at Saint Barnabas is Cathedral in Nottingham.
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| Father Humphrey Wilson |
In 1931 he was appointed Vice-Rector of the Venerable English college in Rome. This was an important position in Rome and his local Diocese wished him every success.
He later served for 52 years as a parish priest until retirement and was co-founder of the Diocesan Rescue Society (Catholic Children’s Society).
At 100, he became a Monsignor, gave up driving and declared modern traffic too fast! He died at age 103 a priest for 70+ years on 15 November 1997.
"A man is not only happy but wise also if he tries during his lifetime to be the sort of man he wants to be found at his death" - St Thomas à Kempsis Imitation of Christ
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| Monsignor Humphrey Wilson's chosen obituary passage |
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