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231598 Capt. Robert Ross Buchanan Brown British Army 4th City of London Yeomanry from:Woolton Hill My father, Robert Brown was captured at the Battle of Villers Bocage, Caen and was held in Oflag 79 until his release on 12th of April 1945 by the US Ninth Army.
6 kilometres North of Brunswick at a village or suburb called Brunswick Querum, 7 modern, 2storey barrack blocks which used to house German air force belonging to the aerodrome just across the autobahn. The autobahn can scarcely be seen through the pine trees which surround the camp but from the attic of House 2L one can see it winding away in the distance to Hanover. The prisoners originally arrived here last May from Oflag VIII F at Marisch Trubau in Chezkoslovakia (sic), most are from the desert but there are Dunkirk and Norway prisoners too but, since the second front, about 500 have come from Normandy, Arnheim etc and a few pilots and Fortress crews have come in. We are organised into 12 companies of 200 officers each, the Indians have a company of their own but the odd few Americans, French and Poles are mixed in with the 2,000 British, Australian, South African and Canadians. Each room, about 20 feet square, accommodates 12, the beds are 2tier and arranged along the walls, there are now common rooms, dining rooms or reading rooms but the attic and cellars accommodate the library, theatre and quartermasters stores, bootmakers shop etc. The camp is surrounded by 2 barbed wire fences, 8 feet high and 6 feet apart, the gap filled with loose barbed wire coils, sentry boxes raised 10 feet off the ground stand at every corner, the sentry has a machine gun and rifle, telephone laid on and a spotlight to use when the main perimeter lights happen to be turned out as they are during air raid alerts. We have 150 British other ranks who act as orderlies in the cook house and sweeping the rooms but we do our own bedmaking and washing up. A parade for roll call is held at 9am and 6pm, we fall in outside by companies one smokes talks and stands with hands in pockets in fives while a German officer makes the count, no one wears a hat or stands to attention, it is all done with intentional slackness. Lights out officially at 10pm but as they are switched out on an air raid alert they often go off as soon as darkness falls. Germans sometimes come round after midnight to count people in bed but in general they don’t interfere with us unnecessarily and whenever a German enters a building a shout of Goon up is given to warn anyone who may be doing something he shouldn’t, a German has been known to shout Goon up himself. |
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