Pte John Edward Milne
British Army Gordon Highlanders
from:Aberdeen
My Father John Edward Milne, as part of the 51st Highland Division, was captured by the Germans, at St Valery-en-Caux, in June 1940. He did not tell me very much about his experiences as a POW except that he escaped twice. The first time early in his captivity whilst being marched across Holland and the second escape was late in the War where with others he tried to get to Danzig but was re-captured.
The photograph shows him with an accordion and two other POWs one playing slide guitar. My father 'Eddie' was a very good accordion player and had been booked on the BBC in Scotland before the war. I have copies of the fee receipts from the BBC and a cutting from the Radio Times dated 1939. I included a picture of the reverse side of the photograph which was used as a postcard which has the camp stamp on it. I would not be surprised if he had played in the camp big band. He used to also play alto sax and piano.
During my childhood he would sometimes wake in the night shouting in German and the experiences he had in the camp must have been pretty bad. As a young child I found a picture in the bottom of a drawer of a very emaciated man in a striped jacket with his head shaved. My mother told me it was my father who was found in that state when the camp was liberated. He weighed four and a half stone. With many others he was flown by Dakota transport aircraft straight to England where he spend six months in hospital to build him up before he could go home. I now regret tearing up that photograph because it is part of the evidence record of what went on. I am sure his relatively short temper and nerves were a result of the treatment he received as a POW. That said, he was a good father to me and always provided well for his family.
After the war whilst still in the army he was promoted to corporal before being demobbed. He was a musician all his life and played with a show-band in the 1960s & 70s. In the 1960s whilst on a family holiday on the Isle of Wight he met his old Company Regimental Sergeant Major Ferguson (I remember the pair of them went on a two day bender, which annoyed my Mother but thinking back on it they were entitled to a good drink after what they had been through). One odd thing occurred in 1966/7 new neigbours moved in next door to my parents house in Chadwell Heath, Essex. My father met the new neighbour Les whom he immediately recognised as a fellow POW. I cannot recall Les's surname his wife was Madge. Les died in the late 1960s I beleive. My father died in 1997 and since then I have visited St Valery and the Gordon Highlanders Museum in Aberdeen. These places are well worth a visit.
