Lt Humphrey Wilson 1894-1997

 

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.

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. 

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

Monsignor  Humphrey Wilson's chosen obituary passage

 

Captain Harold John Lindsay 1894–1957, Lt Alexander George Bartlett Patten 1894–1975, Captain Edwin John Dilnutt 1895–1978 , Lt Thomas Gilford Holley 1896-1987

 The final stories of the 24......

Captain Harold John Lindsay 1894–1957

Born in South Africa, Harold John Lindsay  was a private in the British Army Transvaal Scottish  before being promoted to Lieutenant in the Kings Royal Rifle Corps 2^nd Battn.

On 10 July 1917 he was reported missing in his Nieuport at Kortryk. By 20 July he was transferred to Karlsruhe and having attempted to escape around the end of August landed in Limburg. From there on 8 November, he transferred to Holzminden and with many of the others on 19 January 1918, he arrived at Schweidnitz POW camp. During that time Lindsay attempted to escape with New Zealander George Augustus Avey  several times.

The New Zealand Herald 22nd  March 1919 described some of the escapades of Captain GA Avey and Harold Lindsay.  They were cellmates with another Australian called Captain Clinton and all working to escape. After working on an aperture in the wall with improvised tools of sharpened down table knives, one night Avey, Clinton and Lindsay attempted their escape.

 

Munching on Bovril biscuits and bully beef they battled on in the snow and darkness.  After they had spent three days on the run, they split up only to be caught the German patrols and returned to camp. After a stint in Holzminden they were sent to the snow covered Schweidnitz in January 1918.

No sooner were they in Schweidnitz than they banded together with other prisoners to start a tunnel through which they would escape as partners on the 19th and 20th of March 1918.  Lindsay and Avey paired together. The plan was to travel in pairs the 300 miles to the Baltic.  They covered 200 miles in difficult and chilly terrain trying to avoid detection by hiding in barns by day. By the ninth day they were totally exhausted and even though they had made it to the River Oden they were recaptured and returned to Schweidnitz. They were later court-martialled by the Germans and given solitary confinement after they landed  in Holzminden around 6 May 1918.

Lindsay was repatriated to UK on 17 December 1918 .

Marriage announcement

 

After the war Lindsay had left his homeland to travel to the USA and Canada where he met and married his wife Marjorie Cooper in 1931. He appeared to have remained with the KRR and was promoted to Captain as noted in his marriage announcement. He lived in Montréal until he died age 63 on 1 February 1957.

 

Lt Alexander George Bartlett Patten 1894–1975

Alexander George Bartlett Patten

Alexander ‘Alec’ George Bartlett Patten was born in 1894 in Brockley Greenwich. He attended Royal Military College in 1915 Alec started his service with a Commission with the 7th Dorset County Regiment, also known as the 7th (Service) Battalion. He later transferred and became a Lieutenant with the 2^nd Suffolk Regiment. He was attached to the 4th (Territorial) Battalion  when he was injured serving in Flanders according to the Gloucester Echo 29th February 1916. It seems he  was wounded twice, once in February 16 and then again in 1916 August with shrapnel wounds.  While at Hann Munden POW camp he met Murphy and Morehead and the rest in Schweidnitz.

                                                    A Christmas postcard from POW camp
 

After being recaptured post the Schweidnitz breakout Patten was involved in a prisoner swap to Holland  with Captain Asquith on  13^th June 1918 and was repatriated  home 22^nd Nov 1918.

In 1921 he retired from the army and later it looks like he immigrated to Canada to try out farming. Records show in  that in August 1921 he arrived in Vancouver Island, Canada as an immigrant farmer but not long after he moved back to the UK.

In 1934 he married May Cleary and they had three children. The 1939 register shows him living Chanchonbury at Lay Brook Farm in where he settled as a pig and dairy farmer . He remained in a Commission with the Regular Army Reserve of Officers with the Suffolk Regiment until October 1945.

He died in Sussex on 20 December 1975 aged .

 

Captain Edwin John Dilnutt 1895–1978

Edwin John Dilnutt was the son of Charles John Dilnutt and Elizabeth Wildgoose. He was born in Streatham Wandsworth London in 1895. He commenced his service in 1914 as a Lieutenant in the 54th Trench Mortar Battery before transferring to the 7th Battalion Bedford Regiment as 2nd Lieutenant and later Captain.  

Edwin John Dilnutt

 

At the commencement of the war, he served in France and Flanders before transferring to the RFC 59 Squadron. He undertook training in flight navigation They say that the life of a flying officer is short- he flew as an observer on his first flight on 13 April 1917 and by 24 April was shot down  in France while on a reconnaissance mission with Pilot Sergeant FC Smith. He went missing at Arbres on 25th of April 1917 with his family hearing about it on 14 May 1917.

Fortunately, he was not wounded in the crash and was taken to Karlsruhe POW on 28 April and then to Freiburg POW on 21 May 1917. From there he was transferred into Holzminden in November 1917 arriving with Lt Tarn Harker. Then he was part of the cohort who is transferred to Schweidnitz 19 January 1918 arriving with Avey, Atkins, French and  Fisher, Phelan, Reid and Wearne. Of course, he was part of the 24 tunnel escapees, was recaptured, transferred to Holzminden. and court-martialled.

 He was repatriated on 14 December 1918. As soon as he returned from captivity, he married Constance Louise Needs on 19 January 1919 and together they had two sons.

                                                                From The Tatler 31/5/1944
 

He relinquished his Commission on completion of service on 6 June 1934 from the Royal Air Force Reserve.

At the commencement of World War II, he was appointed to a Commission in the Royal Air Force Volunteer Reserves and in September 1939 became a Flying Officer. He stayed in the Reserves relinquishing his role in 1947. He died in April 1978.

 

Lt Thomas Gilford Holley 1896-1987

Last but not least is  Lieutenant  Thomas Gilford ‘Gil’ Holley, born in 1896 in Massachusetts USA. He started his career in the Canadian Expeditionary Forces before moving to the 23rd Squadron as an observer in the RFC. By 1916 after the Somme crusade the RFC was desperate for observers. It seems he may have sweet talked his way into the RFC. He was in the air with little training by January 1917.

 

He went missing in action on 2 July 1917 on the Western Front after his petrol tank was hit by machine gun fire. He crashed over enemy lines suffering a fractured ankle and dislocated elbow. He was taken to Limburg and Augustabad POW camps and one near Brandenburg where his wounds healed.

While there, Holley received a special mention “his invaluable services in captivity”. It seems there were 67 escape attempts in Brandenburg at the time. From the German perspective things were seen differently  and because of his “assistance to fellow prisoners” he was transferred to Schweidnitz on 19 January 1918.

His transfer documents come with the red square which signify he is an “escaper”. It was not long before this social and gregarious Canadian was  taking part in the ultimate of escapes.

 

The red pencil mark against his name on the Red Cross transfer signifies an "escaper"

Holley with one of the popular old Captains J Ernest Blaikie from the Nobbs Collection

After repatriation in December 1918, he returned to Canada in  January 1919 where he eventually joined an insurance company. He was married to Elva Brown in September 1920 in Winnipeg Manitoba and returned east with their two sons living in Ottawa from 1935 to 1954 and then Calgary. 

He served in the Royal Canadian Air Force throughout World War II. Holley as it turned out was a buddy with Arthur Copeland. Holley spoke fondly of his RFC/ POW pal.

Holley died in November 1987 in Calgary Alberta Canada aged 90.

Holley (L) with Copeland (R) compliments of the Copeland family