Footprints on the Sands of Time: RAF Bomber Command Prisoners of War in Germany 1939–1945

By Oliver Clutton-Brock

The author of RAF Evaders provides a comprehensive reference of the airmen of Bomber Command who were held in German captivity during WWII.

This extensive book is divided into two part. The first, which has eighteen chapters, deals with German POW camps as they were opened, in chronological order and to which the Bomber Command POWs were sent. Each chapter includes anecdotes and stories of the men in the camps—capture, escape, illness, and murder—and illustrates the awfulness of captivity even in German hands. Roughly one in every twenty captured airmen never returned home.

The first part also covers subjects such as how the POWs were repatriated during the war; how they returned at war’s end; the RAF traitors; the war crimes; and the vital importance of the Red Cross. The style is part reference, part gripping narrative, and the book will correct many historical inaccuracies, and includes previously unpublished photographs.

The second part comprises an annotated list of ALL 10, 995 RAF Bomber Command airmen who were taken prisoner, together with an extended introduction.

The two parts together are the fruit of exhaustive research and provide an important contribution to our knowledge of the war and a unique reference work not only for the serious RAF historian but for the ex-POWs themselves and their families and anyone with an interest in the RAF in general and captivity in particular.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Aug 19, 2003
• ISBN: 9781909166301

Book preview

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Contents

Acknowledgements

Glossary

Preface

Introduction

Chapter 1: The Early Camps, 1939-1940

Oflag X (Itzehoe) September-October 1939

Oflag IVC (Colditz) June 1940-April 1945

Oflag IXA/H (Spangenberg) October 1939-April 1942

Chapter 2: Dulag Luft: December 1939-April 1945

Chapter 3: Stalag VIIIB (Lamsdorf): May 1940-January 1945

Chapter 4: Stalag Luft I (Barth): June 1940-May 1945

Chapter 5: Wehrmacht Camps, 1941

Oflag VIIC (Laufen) July 1941-September 1941

Oflag XC (Lübeck) July 1941-October 1941

Oflag VIB (Warburg) October 1941-September 1942

Stalag IXC (Bad Sulza) July 1941-May 1942

Stalag IIIE (Kirchhain) July 1941-May 1942

Stalag VIIA (Moosburg) December 1941-September 1942

Chapter 6: Stalag Luft III (Sagan): March 1942-January 1945

Chapter 7: Wehrmacht Camps, 1942-1943

Stalag 383 (Hohenfels) September 1942-April 1945

Oflag XXIB (Schubin) October 1942-May 1943

Stalag IVB (Mühlberg) June 1943-May 1945

Chapter 8: Stalag Luft VI (Heydekrug): June 1943-July 1944

Chapter 9: Stalag Luft IV (Gross Tychow): July 1944-February 1945

Chapter 10: Stalag 357 (Thorn and Oerbke); Stalag XIB (Fallingbostel): July 1944-April 1945

Chapter 11: Stalag Luft VII (Bankau): June 1944-January 1945

Chapter 12: The Last Camps: Marlag und Milag Nord February 1945-April 1945

Stalag IIIA (Luckenwalde) January-May 1945

Stalag XIIID (Langwasser-Nürnberg) January-April 1945

Stalag VIIA (Moosburg) January-April 1945

Chapter 13 Operation Exodus: 1945

Chapter 14: Wounded: 1939-1945

Chapter 15: Repatriations: 1943-1945

Chapter 16: Traitors and Collaborators: 1940-1945

Chapter 17: War Crimes, 1939-1944

Chapter 18: War Crimes, 1945

Chapter 19: Introduction to the List of RAF Bomber Command Prisoners-of-War

Photo Gallery

Appendix I: The List of RAF Bomber Command PoWs

Appendix II: Numbering System and Location of German PoW Camps

Appendix III: Periods of occupation of German PoW camps by RAF PoWs, 1939-1945

Appendix IV: RAF Bomber Command PoW losses, 1939-1945: by month

Appendix V: RAF Bomber Command PoW losses, 1939-1945: by aircraft type

Appendix VI: RAF Bomber Command PoW losses, 1939-1945: by squadron

Appendix VII: RAF Bomber Command PoW losses, 1939-1945: by rank

Appendix VIII: RAF Bomber Command PoW losses, 1939-1945: by nationality

Appendix IX: RAF Bomber Command PoW losses, 1939-1945: by target

Appendix X: RAF escapers, 1941-1945

Appendix XI: Comparative British and German Ranks

Appendix XII: The Nazi Propaganda Campaign against Airmen

Appendix XIII: The Nazi Party Security Forces

Appendix XIV: Red Cross Parcels

Plans of some PoW camps used by RAF

Notes to Chapters

Bibliography

Guide

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Contents

Acknowledgements

Glossary

Preface

Introduction

Chapter 1: The Early Camps, 1939-1940

Oflag X (Itzehoe) September-October 1939

Oflag IVC (Colditz) June 1940-April 1945

Oflag IXA/H (Spangenberg) October 1939-April 1942

Chapter 2: Dulag Luft: December 1939-April 1945

Chapter 3: Stalag VIIIB (Lamsdorf): May 1940-January 1945

Chapter 4: Stalag Luft I (Barth): June 1940-May 1945

Chapter 5: Wehrmacht Camps, 1941

Oflag VIIC (Laufen) July 1941-September 1941

Oflag XC (Lübeck) July 1941-October 1941

Oflag VIB (Warburg) October 1941-September 1942

Stalag IXC (Bad Sulza) July 1941-May 1942

Stalag IIIE (Kirchhain) July 1941-May 1942

Stalag VIIA (Moosburg) December 1941-September 1942

Chapter 6: Stalag Luft III (Sagan): March 1942-January 1945

Chapter 7: Wehrmacht Camps, 1942-1943

Stalag 383 (Hohenfels) September 1942-April 1945

Oflag XXIB (Schubin) October 1942-May 1943

Stalag IVB (Mühlberg) June 1943-May 1945

Chapter 8: Stalag Luft VI (Heydekrug): June 1943-July 1944

Chapter 9: Stalag Luft IV (Gross Tychow): July 1944-February 1945

Chapter 10: Stalag 357 (Thorn and Oerbke); Stalag XIB (Fallingbostel): July 1944-April 1945

Chapter 11: Stalag Luft VII (Bankau): June 1944-January 1945

Chapter 12: The Last Camps: Marlag und Milag Nord February 1945-April 1945

Stalag IIIA (Luckenwalde) January-May 1945

Stalag XIIID (Langwasser-Nürnberg) January-April 1945

Stalag VIIA (Moosburg) January-April 1945

Chapter 13 Operation Exodus: 1945

Chapter 14: Wounded: 1939-1945

Chapter 15: Repatriations: 1943-1945

Chapter 16: Traitors and Collaborators: 1940-1945

Chapter 17: War Crimes, 1939-1944

Chapter 18: War Crimes, 1945

Chapter 19: Introduction to the List of RAF Bomber Command Prisoners-of-War

Photo Gallery

Appendix I: The List of RAF Bomber Command PoWs

Appendix II: Numbering System and Location of German PoW Camps

Appendix III: Periods of occupation of German PoW camps by RAF PoWs, 1939-1945

Appendix IV: RAF Bomber Command PoW losses, 1939-1945: by month

Appendix V: RAF Bomber Command PoW losses, 1939-1945: by aircraft type

Appendix VI: RAF Bomber Command PoW losses, 1939-1945: by squadron

Appendix VII: RAF Bomber Command PoW losses, 1939-1945: by rank

Appendix VIII: RAF Bomber Command PoW losses, 1939-1945: by nationality

Appendix IX: RAF Bomber Command PoW losses, 1939-1945: by target

Appendix X: RAF escapers, 1941-1945

Appendix XI: Comparative British and German Ranks

Appendix XII: The Nazi Propaganda Campaign against Airmen

Appendix XIII: The Nazi Party Security Forces

Appendix XIV: Red Cross Parcels

Plans of some PoW camps used by RAF

Notes to Chapters

Bibliography

Pagebreaks of the print version

i

ii

iii

iv

v

vi

vii

viii

ix

x

xi

xii

xiii

xiv

xv

xvi

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

13

14

15

16

17

18

19

20

21

22

23

24

25

26

27

28

29

30

31

32

33

34

35

36

37

38

39

40

41

42

43

44

45

46

47

48

49

50

51

52

53

54

55

56

57

58

59

60

61

62

63

64

65

66

67

68

69

70

71

72

73

74

75

76

77

78

79

80

81

82

83

84

85

86

87

88

89

90

91

92

93

94

95

96

97

98

99

100

101

102

103

104

105

106

107

108

109

110

111

112

113

114

115

116

117

118

119

120

121

122

123

124

125

126

127

128

129

130

131

132

133

134

135

136

137

138

139

140

141

142

143

144

145

146

147

148

149

150

151

152

153

154

155

156

157

158

159

160

161

162

163

164

165

166

167

168

169

170

171

172

173

174

175

176

177

178

179

180

181

182

183

184

185

186

187

188

189

190

191

192

193

194

195

196

197

198

199

200

201

202

203

204

205

206

207

208

209

210

211

212

213

214

215

216

217

218

219

220

221

222

223

224

225

226

227

228

229

230

231

PLI

PLII

PLIII

PLIV

PLV

PLVI

PLVII

PLVIII

PLIX

PLX

PLXI

PLXII

PLXIII

PLXIV

PLXV

PLXVI

232

233

234

235

236

237

238

239

240

241

242

243

244

245

246

247

248

249

250

251

252

253

254

255

256

257

258

259

260

261

262

263

264

265

266

267

268

269

270

271

272

273

274

275

276

277

278

279

280

281

282

283

284

285

286

287

288

289

290

291

292

293

294

295

296

297

298

299

300

301

302

303

304

305

306

307

308

309

310

311

312

313

314

315

316

317

318

319

320

321

322

323

324

325

326

327

328

329

330

331

332

333

334

335

336

337

338

339

340

341

342

343

344

345

346

347

348

349

350

351

352

353

354

355

356

357

358

359

360

361

362

363

364

365

366

367

368

369

370

371

372

373

374

375

376

377

378

379

380

381

382

383

384

385

386

387

388

389

390

391

392

393

394

395

396

397

398

399

400

401

402

403

404

405

406

407

408

409

410

411

412

413

414

415

416

417

418

419

420

421

422

423

424

425

426

427

428

429

430

431

432

433

434

435

436

437

438

439

440

441

442

443

444

445

446

447

448

449

450

451

452

453

454

455

456

457

458

459

460

461

462

463

464

465

466

467

468

469

470

471

472

473

474

475

476

477

478

479

480

481

482

483

484

485

486

487

488

489

490

491

492

493

494

495

496

497

498

499

500

501

502

503

504

505

506

507

508

509

510

511

512

513

514

515

516

517

Published by

Grub Street

The Basement

10 Chivalry Road

London SW11 1HT

Copyright © 2003 Grub Street, London

Text copyright © 2003 Oliver Clutton-Brock

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

Clutton-Brock, Oliver

Footprints on the sands of time: RAF Bomber Command prisoners-of-war 1939-1945

1. Great Britain. Royal Air Force. Bomber Command – History

2. World War, 1939-1945 – Prisoners and prisons, German

I. Title

940.5’47243

ISBN: 1 904010 00 0

HARDBACK ISBN: 978 1 90401 035 7

EPUB ISBN: 978 1 90916 630 1

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner.

Dedication photo courtesy of verelst, John/National Archives of Canada/C-092414

Typeset by Pearl Graphics, Hemel Hempstead

Printed and bound in Great Britain by

Biddles Ltd, Guildford and King’s Lynn

Author’s note: Some of the revelations in this book may be upsetting to the families of those involved, especially with regard to the chapter Traitors and Collaborators. However, in the interests of historical truth I felt that it was important not to omit the sometimes painful events of those dark days of war. The facts reproduced are the result of extensive research and are based on the evidence in files readily available to the general public.

To the memory

of

R.123313 Flight Sergeant Kenneth Earl Clifford Slack RCAF,

433 (Porcupine) Squadron, Royal Canadian Air Force,

who, aged 21, gave his life on 8 May 1945 whilst

trying to save a German guard from drowning

in the River Elbe near Schönebeck,

and to the hundreds of his fellow prisoners-of-war

who also should have returned home.

‘Lives of great men all remind us

We can make our lives sublime,

And, departing, leave behind us

Footprints on the sands of time.’

H.W. Longfellow (1807-1882)

Contents

Acknowledgements

The following former RAF ‘kriegies’ have been most generous in their help and contributions, not only to Footprints on the Sands of Time but also to the history of ‘kriegiedom’ of over half a century ago. Sadly some are no longer with us, but to all I am very grateful. RAF squadron numbers are shown in brackets after the names, (F) indicating a Fighter Command squadron:

A. Abels DFC (102 Squadron); J.O. Ackroyd (192) deceased; N.J. Allen (90); P.P. Balderston RAAF (466); J.K. Banfield (207); W. Barber (83); J.H. Barratt (102); D.W. Bateman DFC (77); W.G. Bell (166); D. Berrie (300); C. Birds (10); L.S. Blanchard (77); D. Blew (77); K.K. Blyth (408); F.E. Bowen (58); A.E. Bracegirdle DFM (44); J.J.Bromfield (158); E. Brown (463); F.W. Brown (514); D. Bruce (115); R. Buckingham (107); D.R. Burns (106); P.S. Buttigieg (50); K.W. Campbell (466); R.C. Carabine (578); W.G. Carman (83); C.A. Chambers (51); D.J. Chapman (61); J.A. Cheesman (207); H.D. Church (49); W.T.J. Clark (158); J.H. Clarke (12); L.R. Clarke (12); H.W.N. Clausen DFM (97); D.F. Clement RCAF (189); J.A. Clifford (218); K.R. Coles (139); E.F. Coling (50); M. Crapper (57); B.S. Craske (10) deceased; C.W. Cross (619): W.H. De Viell (619); K. Dobbs (158); J. Duffield (9); A.W. Edgley (XV); D.A. Elliott RCAF (99); D.F. Endsor (50); G.E. Flanagan (77); R.J. Franklin (166); C.N. Fraser (460); R.C.S. Gadd (76); J.D. Garland RAAF (97); K.A. Goodchild (51); R.J. Goode DFM (35); T.C. Guy RCAF (76); G.W. Hall (427); H.J. Hamlyn (76); S.E. Harris (619); C.E. Harrison (10); B.J.F.X. Hayes DFM RAAF (83); R. Heatherington (106); W.S. Hedges (102); R.C.H. Hibben (102); R.E. Hill (207); D.J. Hills (49); M.F. Holmes (463); L.W. Homard (49); J.E. Hughes (625); S.V.F. Hurrell (78); D.A. Jackson (460); J. Jackson RNZAF (142); J.P. Jenkinson (10); W. Jessop (418, 2 Group); R.F. Johncock (101); A.F. Johnson (427); N. Jones (625); P.H. Keeler (576); P.L. Kemp (408); D.M.D. Lambert (35); N.A. Leonard (466); P.A.F. Liddle (460); C.J. Lofthouse (7); R.L. Luce (77); J. MacDonald (626); J.R.C. McGlashan (218); L.S. Milnthorp (623); J.D. Morgan (104); L. Naylor (625); T. Nelson (51); N.F. Oates (9); G.F. Old (76); R.B. Osborn DSO DFC (460); E.W. Perkins (72(F)); E. Poulter (619); R. Pyett (625); E.E. Quick (49); E.J. Raffill (57); C.G.C. Rawlins (144); F.S. Reade (199); S.G. Reed (78); K.J. Reseigh (44); C.A. Room (143, Coastal Command); R.W. Scales (138); E. Scott-Jones (428); P.S. Skinner (158); R. Spencer-Fleet (620); W.E. Sutton (35); S.C. Tait (51); W. Taylor (70, Italy); J.C.P. Taylor (50); J.E.W. Teager (49); G.B. Thomson (XV); R.L. Tomlin (10); R.H.J. Trumble (115); I.L. Ure (10); L. Walker (61); P.S. Walkins DFC (61); B.S. Walley (51); G.M. Ward DFC (189); E.A. Wass (617); O.J. Wells (7); D.R. White (218); M.H. White (12); R.D. White (460): N.E. Winch DFC (7); R.S. Winton (207); J.E. Worsfold (101); R.K. Yeulett (582); C.H. Younger RAAF (460).

The following have also made valuable and much appreciated contributions:

Charles Dick (Army); R.A. Wilson (Army); Bob Baxter (RAF Bomber Command website); Claudio-Michael Becker (Sinn, Germany); Margaret Betty Bird (re her late husband A.W.D. Bird, 635 Sq); Colin Burgess (Author, Destination Buchenwald); P.D. Chinnery (Association Historian, National Ex-Prisoner of War Association); W.R. ‘Bill’ Chorley (Author and Aviation Historian for his considerable help); John Clinch (re affairs in Belgium); Joan Collingwood (re her late husband C.J. Collingwood DFM, 61 Sq); Commonwealth War Graves Commission; Ray Crompton; Group Captain Ivor Easton & John W. Erricker DFC (78 Sq Association); Frank Faulkner (The Wickenby Register); Sam Flynn (USA) (re Dulag Luft); Nino Guiciardi (re Stalag VIIA); Mrs H. Gunton (re her late husband, A.R. Gunton, 77 Sq); Michael Hingston (re his late uncle J.G. Slowey, 44 Sq); Alison Kearns, Helen Pugh & Alan Williams (British Red Cross); Lionel Lacey-Johnson; Neil St.C L’Amie (re Neil Thom, 12 Sq); Eileen Liefooghe and Suzanne J Walters-Liefooghe (re their late husband/father, R.J. Liefooghe, 550 Sq); H.L. ‘Bert’ Martin (RAMC); Dr Eric Massie (re his grandfather J. Massie, 7 Sq); Jan Mulder and Auke Nordhof; National Archives of Canada (M. Brousseau, Researcher Services Division); Bill Norman; Derek R. Parker ACGI BSc (Devizes, photographic expert); Phillip Pennicott (re his late father, F.J. Pennicott, 149 Sq); Public Record Office, Kew; RAF Museum, Hendon (Dept. of Research & Information Services); Wilhelm Ratuszynski (re J. Filek, 300 Sq); R.S. Rich (re his brother’s crew, 218 Sq); Jill Rutter (51 Sq historian); Harry Shinkfield (77 Sq Association Secretary & Historian etc.); Joan Stephens (re her father, C.M. Bradburn, 10 Sq); Ian Stringer (researcher, 100 Sq); Ian Tavender (author The Distinguished Flying Medal); Andy Teal; Linda Toft (re her father, A.C. Law RAF, 460 Sq); Robert Trewhitt (re his late uncle J. Cordner, 12 Sq); Daphne Visser-Lees (re her late father F.J. Lees); Dr. Wagner (Austrian Federal Ministry of the Interior, re Mauthausen); Clive ‘Aardvark Books’ Williams (for loan of book); Jonathan Wroe.

I am also very grateful to John Davies of Grub Street Publishing for his positive enthusiasm in wishing to see this book published, and to the staff at Grub Street. Again, many thanks to Amy Myers for her wisdom and knowledge in putting the script to rights. Finally, to my wife Diane for her considerable assistance and help, especially for the hours glued to the awful microfiche reading machines at the Public Record Office.

Glossary

Preface

The Nazi Party, one of the most repulsive and repressive regimes ever to have existed on this planet, will stand forever accused of its appalling crimes, particularly those committed against people who, simply because of an accident of birth, were deemed by Hitler and his loathsome henchmen to be unworthy of life. One eminent and highly respected aviation author has written that the treatment generally afforded to another, much smaller group – prisoners-of-war – was good On a superficial level this was undoubtedly so, but there is compelling evidence to show that, overall, their treatment was anything but good, and if the Japanese were the worst offenders in this respect, then their German counterparts were not far behind.

Immeasurable cruelty – far, far beyond the bounds of human decency – was shown by the Germans to their Russian prisoners, to whom the thin cloak of protection afforded by the 1929 Geneva Convention was unavailable. The following, early incident, witnessed by British Army PoWs in either November or December 1941 at Stalag XVIIIA (Wolfsberg) in Austria, was typical of the Germans’ inhumanity. A trainload of Russians – ten of whom were soldiers, the rest ‘peasants’ – had arrived at Wolfsberg:

‘The train was kept at Wolfsberg station for nearly a week. During this time the Russians were kept locked in cattle trucks and given nothing to eat or drink. When the doors were opened about 300 were found to be dead. The rest were driven to the British POW’s delousing centre. The British POW’s witnessed the scene from behind the wire. They were about 10-20 yards from the Russians.

‘It was bitterly cold and there was snow on the ground. The Russians were stripped in the open, before entering the delousing hut. Hextall and Lewis described them as looking like skeletons. One Russian fell to the ground dying (he died in a short while); while he lay on the ground a German guard tried to make him rise and beat him about the head and face with the buckled end of a belt.

‘The British POW’s were roused to a pitch of intense horror and anger at this scene; one of them, Sgt Ian Sabey, sprang forward against the wire cursing at the German and shouting to him to stop. The German guard then ran towards Sabey and, pushing his revolver against Sabey’s stomach, threatened to shoot him. Sabey told him he didn’t care and continued to curse him. By this time the anger of the British prisoners was so aroused that a German officer ordered the guards to drive them away with fixed bayonets.

‘Those of the Russians left alive were set to work in the neighbourhood. Their rations were so meagre that many died. The others used to conceal their deaths as long as possible, by supporting their dead bodies between them, so as to draw the extra ration of food.’¹

Cruelty on such a scale was never shown to Allied prisoners-of-war, but Footprints on the Sands of Time will demonstrate that many individual war crimes were perpetrated against RAF (and American) airmen both inside and outside of a German prisoner-of-war camp and that almost one in every twenty RAF airmen who fell into German clutches never returned home alive.

Many newly-captured prisoners felt shock and shame at their sudden change in fortune and a very few, whether it was for this reason or because of fear or of their own misguided ideals, chose to collaborate with the enemy. These men were sifted out by German Air Force Intelligence, usually at their infamous interrogation centre, Dulag Luft, the place to which nearly every captured airman went at some time or another and where the Germans discovered so much about the British and American air forces (see Chapter 2).

The wrongdoings of these RAF traitors and collaborators are exposed in this book, which also offers a brief history of the several PoW camps in which RAF airmen were held, with information as to when they were open, and for how long (see also Appendix III).

The answers as to what happened to the RAF PoWs still in Germany at the end of the war, how wounded PoWs were repatriated during the war itself, and how the many millions of life-saving Red Cross food parcels were delivered to the prison camps are also given. If Chapter 14 concentrates at some length on the treatment of wounded airmen, it is because this is an area that has hitherto received little publicity, and deserves to be brought to light if only to highlight not only the inadequate medical facilities throughout Germany but also the selfless devotion of many British and Commonwealth medical staff in the face of impossible conditions.

Though some less well-known PoW incidents and individual stories are included there are only brief references to such famous episodes as the ‘Wooden Horse’ escape or the ‘Great Escape’ which resulted in the murder of fifty RAF airmen. These stories have already been covered in a number of excellent books (see Bibliography), films and television programmes.

It is impossible to write a book primarily about PoWs of RAF Bomber Command without there being reference to men from all RAF commands and to the thousands of Americans who were also captured. Although the RAF PoWs were usually separated from the Navy or Army prisoners, and from the American airmen, there was an inevitable intermingling over the course of the war, and especially as the fighting drew to a close and the Third Reich grew ever smaller.

Brief details of the 11,000 or so RAF Bomber Command PoWs who ‘failed to return’ from the 8,325 aircraft shot down on 364,514 sorties² are included in a list at the end of the book. It has not been possible to fill-in many of the gaps in this list because access to records of individual airmen is given only to close relatives of those airmen.

In any work of this nature, undertaken sixty years after the event and in which so many men played a part, there will inevitably be errors and omissions. It has to be borne in mind, too, that what happened to one man in a particular camp, or en route from one camp to another, did not necessarily happen to his fellows. PoW camps were large places, some holding well over 10,000 men, and not everyone shared the same experiences. Even out of the camps at the end of the war, when the prisoners were being marched in long and straggling columns across war-torn Germany, what happened at the front may never have been known about at the back, and vice-versa.

At the end of the day, the customary German greeting to a new PoW of ‘For you the war is over’ could not have been further from the truth. The war for every prisoner lasted right up to the very moment when he could eventually say that he had been liberated.

Whilst every effort has been made to ensure that the myriad facts and details are accurate, it is appreciated that there will be errors and omissions. Any additions, corrections, comments or positive suggestions, therefore, as to what did or did not happen would be welcomed via the publisher.

Introduction

Although war with Germany was declared on 3 September 1939, RAF Bomber Command was ordered to ‘avoid targets on land; it had also been ordered not to drop bombs on any ship lying alongside or close to a quay, and it did not do so.’¹ It was not until the night of 19/20 March 1940 that bombs were dropped on German soil by aircraft of RAF Bomber Command, and then only on the seaplane base at Hörnum on the North Sea island of Sylt.

Until then Bomber Command crews had had to contend themselves with ‘bumph’ raids² on Germany during the atrociously cold winter of 1939-1940, but all that was to change with the German attack on Norway in April 1940, and on the Benelux countries on 10 May 1940, this latter attack culminating in the fall of France in June 1940 and in the capture of 40,000 British soldiers. The German Army was unprepared for such a haul, and the captured soldiers would experience for themselves the savagery of their victors when ‘prisoners captured on the Western Front were obliged to march to camps until they completely collapsed. Some of them walked more than 600 kilometres with hardly any food; they marched on for 48 hours running, without being fed; among them a certain number died of exhaustion or of hunger; stragglers were systematically murdered.’³

By contrast, the German Air Force, in the first eight months of the war anyway, was not over-taxed by the piecemeal arrival of so few RAF PoW aircrew,⁴ whose treatment on capture was, by comparison, quite civilised, due in no small measure to the chivalrous nature of the Commander-in-Chief of the Luftwaffe, Reichsmarschall Göring.

Life in the various PoW camps was at first relatively good, if one could forget the shortage of food, the lack of heating-fuel in the winter months and the mind-numbing boredom. Nor was overcrowding a problem for the first two to three years, though this slowly changed in 1942 with the arrival in England of the American 8th Air Force which, by the middle of 1943, was capable of putting 1,500 or more heavy bombers and fighters into the sky over Germany each day.⁵ It was also at this time that the tide of war turned against Germany, and the time when the treatment of Allied PoWs began to worsen.

For as long as they had been winning the Nazis had paid lip-service to the Geneva Convention but, after the defeats in 1942 and 1943 and long since morally bankrupt, they threw what was left of the rule-book out of the window. These cruel, sadistic men now brought their venom to bear upon the Allied airmen who, by day and by night, were causing such terrible damage to the German people. Against the airmen, particularly from 1943 onwards, the Nazis fostered a deliberate propaganda campaign of murder (see Appendix XII).

Its effect was such that by the end of the Second World War approximately one in every twenty captured RAF aircrew and one in every eighty Americans had been murdered ‘in violation of the laws and usages of war’.⁶ Encouraged to do away with the ‘luftgangsters’ and ‘terrorfliegers’ the people of Germany strung them up on lamp-posts, pushed them off bridges and cliffs, beat them with hammers, sticks or bricks, or simply shot them at point-blank range. The die was well and truly cast when Hitler himself, in one of his lunatic rages, ordered the killing of fifty of the airmen who had escaped from Stalag Luft III (Sagan) on the night of 24/25 March 1944.

In the summer of 1944 the German authorities reminded their prisoners that escaping was no longer a sport. It had always been a dangerous world beyond the wire of a PoW camp, but now it became more so with each passing day, not least because the Nazi leaders themselves continued to encourage the killing of the airmen. For over a dozen years the German people had rejoiced in the Führer’s promises and had eagerly digested the spirited rantings of his demented subordinates. Now, when told by their leaders that it was right and proper for captured airmen to be attacked and killed, it was only too easy for some of them to exact the most awful revenge on the helpless captives.

Though they took the law into their own hands safe in the knowledge that they would not be punished by their own people, many of them paid for their excesses with their lives when the Allied Military Courts sought justice in the troubled post-war years. Britain’s Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs announced to Parliament on 28 March 1949 that of the 937 persons charged before British military tribunals with ‘crimes against the laws and usages of war’, 230 were sentenced to death, 24 to life imprisonment, and 423 to shorter terms of imprisonment. The rest were acquitted.

Many crimes went unpunished, many probably never even known about, but by the end of the long and fearful war every prisoner who went home did so in the knowledge that he was lucky to have survived. The odds against survival lengthened when, in the freezing winter of January and February 1945, thousands of PoWs, already weak from months and years of poor and inadequate rations, were compelled at bayonet point to set off on foot away from the advancing Soviet hordes. An unknown number of men perished directly as a result of these marches, though had it not been for the prodigious efforts of the Red Cross in supplying millions of food and medical parcels the final tally would have been so much worse.

The story of RAF prisoners-of-war, however, begins in September 1939 when the war in the west was still ‘phoney’ and RAF Bomber Command took photographs and dropped paper instead of bombs.

CHAPTER 1

The Early Camps, 1939-1940

‘I am speaking to you from the Cabinet Room of 10 Downing Street. This morning the British Ambassador in Berlin handed the German government a final note stating that, unless we heard from them by 11 o’clock that they were prepared at once to withdraw their troops from Poland, a state of war would exist between us. I have to tell you now that no such undertaking has been received, and that consequently this country is at war with Germany.

‘You can imagine what a blow it is to me that all my long struggle to win peace has failed. Yet I cannot believe that there is anything more or anything different that I could have done and that would have been more successful. Up to the very last it would have been quite possible to have arranged a peaceful and honourable settlement between Germany and Poland.’

Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, 3 September 1939

Only a few hours after those tired words of the British Prime Minister had been broadcast, RAF Bomber Command mounted its first wartime raid on units of the German fleet at sea. Keeping to the agreement made on 2 September not to wage unrestricted warfare, the orders for the attack were unequivocal: ‘The greatest care is to be taken not to injure the civilian population. The intention is to destroy the German Fleet. There is no alternative target.’¹

In the event the raid was poorly conceived, no target was found before dark, and no bomb was dropped in anger. The following day, 4 September, fifteen Blenheims of Bomber Command tried again to attack ships of the German Fleet in the Schillig Roads near Wilhelmshaven. Four Blenheims of 107 Squadron (ten killed, two PoWs) and one of 110 Squadron, N6199, (all four killed) failed to return, the latter crashing onto the training cruiser Emden. The pilot of N6199 was Flying Officer H.L. Emden!

On the same afternoon, fourteen Wellingtons were sent to attack Brunsbüttel, No. 9 Squadron losing two. All ten crew members (not an officer amongst them) were killed.

The capture of Sergeant G.F. Booth and Aircraftman 1st Class L.J. Slattery of 107 Squadron marked the beginning of the history of RAF Bomber Command’s prisoners-of-war in the Second World War. They were followed into captivity five days later by all five crew members of a Whitley which had been lost on a ‘Nickel’ operation. Two officers – Squadron Leader S.S. Murray and Pilot Officer A.B. Thompson – soon found themselves in a Berlin hotel shaking hands with Reichsmarschall Hermann Göring, Commander-in-Chief of the Luftwaffe, who jokingly ‘complained that they had disturbed his sleep and had obliged him to take shelter. He assured them, however, that he appreciated the chivalrous way the Royal Flying Corps had fought in the last war and said he intended to see that Royal Air Force prisoners were treated correctly.’²

Whether or not the Luftwaffe was unprepared for the piecemeal arrival of RAF prisoners-of-war no Luftwaffe-run permanent PoW camps existed until July 1940, and consequently Murray and Thompson were despatched to a camp for Polish officers – Oflag X (Itzehoe), some 50 kilometres north-west of Hamburg – which was run by the German Army. Joined there over the next few weeks by several more air force officer PoWs, on 16 October 1939 all were purged to Oflag IXA (Spangenberg bei Kassel), some 25 kilometres south-east of Kassel.

Their new prison was a twelfth-century castle perched on a hill overlooking the villages of Spangenberg and Elbersdorf. It was ‘built of grey stone, with a clock-tower and small turret, and surrounded by a deep moat with a drawbridge’,³ and the ‘outside walls fell over a hundred feet into a dry moat in which roamed three snuffling wild boars.’⁴ A Red Cross report of July 1941 noted, as if writing for a travel brochure:

‘Before the war it was used as a forestry school and its interior has been thoroughly modernised with central heating and electric light, although traces of its former magnificence may be seen in the wood carvings and monumental fireplaces in its interior. Every window, as well as the walk running part way around the castle between the walls and the moat, affords a fine view of beautifully wooded semimountainous countryside.’⁵

Also arriving at Spangenberg a few days later was Wing Commander H.M.A. Day GC, known familiarly as ‘Wings’, who had been shot down on 13 October 1939. Day was destined to become a central figure in the lives of many RAF and Fleet Air Arm PoWs over the next five and a half years. It was not long before he, a former Royal Marine himself at the end of the First World War, welcomed Lieutenant G.B.K. Griffiths, Royal Marines, and Lieutenant R.P. Thurston, Royal Navy, into the intimate fold. They had an interesting story to tell.

On the afternoon of 14 September 1939 the 5,200-ton British steamship Fanad Head, making a zig-zag course for Belfast, was sighted by U-boat U-30, commanded by the redoubtable Oberleutnant sur Zee Fritz-Julius Lemp,⁶ who ordered her to stop. When the Fanad Head failed to comply with the order, the U-30 fired a shot across her bows from 2,000 metres. As the steamer heaved-to and the crew took to their lifeboats, the wireless operator signalled their position and the news that they were being attacked by a submarine.

The distress call was picked up by the Royal Navy’s aircraft-carrier HMS Ark Royal, which at 1500 hours ‘turned to close at high speed and hurriedly ranged a striking force of three Skuas’ of 803 Squadron.⁷ At that moment another U-boat, the U-39, fired two torpedoes at the Ark but, spotted in time for the helmsman to take avoiding action, they exploded harmlessly in the ship’s wake. The escorting destroyers Faulkner, Foxhound and Firedrake saw to the end of the U-39, the first U-boat to be sunk in the war. Its forty-three crew were picked up by the Faulkner.⁸

Lemp, meanwhile, had no sooner put a prize crew aboard the Fanad Head than the Ark’s three Skuas suddenly appeared on the scene. Leaving the Fanad Heads lifeboats bobbing on the calm sea, Lemp ordered a dive which was executed so fast that two of U-30’s gunners were left in the water. At 1725 hours Griffiths ‘attacked the submarine and sustained damage to the tail unit of my aircraft from fragments of my anti-personnel bombs. My 250lb. bomb did not explode when it hit the water alongside the submarine.’⁹

Both Griffiths’ and Thurston’s aircraft were forced to ditch:

‘The remaining Skua continued to circle the Fanad Head and was rewarded twenty minutes later by seeing the submarine … once more rising to the surface. Unfortunately the Skua had expended her bombs, but dived on the submarine, firing her front gun and forcing the U-boat to dive. As his petrol was running low the pilot had to return to the Ark Royal.’¹⁰

Griffiths and Thurston, who had been floating about in their dinghies, were recovered aboard the Fanad Head,¹¹ but when U-30 surfaced again all aboard the Fanad Head were ordered to jump into the sea and make for the submarine. The Fanad Head was then sunk by torpedo.

The Ark Royal had also despatched a flight of six Fairey Swordfish to support the Skuas, and they arrived just as the U-30’s torpedo struck the Fanad Head amidships. Diving to the attack, the Swordfish crews believed that they had scored a kill. The U-30, however, with some of her crew wounded, was still very much seaworthy, and on 19 September reached Reykjavik (Iceland), where Adolf Schmidt, who had been severely wounded, was put ashore. Continuing its patrol the U-30 reached Wilhelmshaven (Germany) on 28 September.¹²

On 14 October Griffiths and Thurston were sent to Oflag XIB (Brunswick), a camp for Polish officers, before being purged to Oflag IXA on 21 October 1939. Joining them at Spangenberg were Flying Officer R.D. ‘Bacchus’ Baughan and Pilot Officer R.M. ‘Gonga’ Coste, two of the four survivors of five 144 Squadron Hampdens which had been shot down on 29 September attacking the German navy off Heligoland.¹³ Coste did not in fact reach Spangenberg for five weeks, on 11 November 1939, as he had broken his right leg and badly lacerated his knees when shot down and was being treated in the Naval Hospital at Wilhelmshaven.

Adding to the trickle of RAF PoWs at Spangenberg in the early days of the war were four of the crew of Whitley K8947, 77 Squadron, one of four such aircraft of the Squadron operating from their forward base at Villeneuve-les-Vertus (France). They had set off in bad weather on the evening of 15/16 October 1939 to drop leaflets over Germany. The first of the four to take off was K8947 skippered by Flight Lieutenant Roland Williams. Shortly after they were airborne the operation was cancelled due to the bad weather, but half an hour had gone before staff at base passed the message on to K8947, by which time wireless interference was so bad that the message never got through.

Cloud base was down to 3,000 feet, and any attempt to fly higher resulted in severe icing on the wings of K8947. Corporal Ron Gunton RAF, the wireless operator, recalled that:

‘this was alright for the Jerries who had a field day as we passed over a well-defended area. We gave him a helping hand by having our navigation lights on and firing a flare with the colours of the day. There was short pause and then all hell was let loose. We thought that we were still over France but were in fact 100 miles too far north.’¹⁴

Four of the five crew managed to escape, but the body of the pilot was found lying beneath one of the Whitley’s engines at Gross-Gerau, half way between Darmstadt and Mainz (Germany). Ron Gunton, with a damaged left hip, saw a light in the distance and headed towards it, wondering at the French and their careless blackout:

‘It was not my day, for as a chap in uniform opened the door I saw on the wall behind him a large photograph of dear old Adolph surrounded by a display of the Swastika … I had only walked into the damned Police Station …’¹⁵

At their reunion at Stalag IXA a fortnight before Christmas the crew ‘came to the conclusion that the Met boys had not only miscalculated the wind speed in their forecast but also the direction.’¹⁶

In mid-December 1939 most of the French and British officers and other ranks were purged from Oflag IXA (Spangenberg) to the newly-opened Luftwaffe interrogation centre at Oberursel, a dozen kilometres north-west of Frankfurt-on-Main.¹⁷ Their places were soon filled by survivors from the armed merchant cruiser Rawalpindi (sunk by the German battle cruisers Scharnhorst and Gneisenau on 23 November 1939) and from HM Submarines Undine and Starfish, lost on 15 and 20 January 1940 respectively.

On 4 February 1940 a mixed party of Royal Navy ratings and RAF NCOs and other ranks departed Spangenberg for a work camp at Wildflecken, some 85 kilometres to the south, near Bad Sulza. The men had spoken to the Senior British Officer, pointing out that, although they could not be made to work, they would like to do so as they could gather information with a view to escaping. The SBO gave his blessing, and the work detail duly went on its way.

Their first job was labouring on a building site, on the roof of a building some six storeys high. In one of the coldest winters for many a year with deep snow lying all around they nevertheless did what they could to sabotage the building work. They decided to undermine the building’s foundations so that when the thaw came the melt water would flood into the cellars where, hopefully, any further frost would have a detrimental effect on the concrete.

After two months, when it had dawned on the Germans that the PoWs would never complete the six-storey building, they were moved to another camp, at Weimar, and quartered in stables on the outskirts of the town. The Germans believed that as Weimar was in the middle of the Reich it would be too difficult to escape.

The PoWs were put to work on another building site near Weimar, but when they discovered that they were helping to build a ball-bearing factory they remonstrated with the Feldwebel in charge of their party, and told him in no uncertain terms that under the Geneva Convention they could not be made to do work that would assist the enemy’s war effort. This caused much confusion in the enemy’s ranks, but their answer to the problem was to move the PoWs to yet another camp, this time further east, to a small camp at Schocken (Skoki) in Poland, some 30 kilometres north-east of Posen (Poznan).¹⁸

Most of the PoWs were then sent to ‘a derelict house near the river and close to a Jewish internment camp at the football stadium’.¹⁹ From there they went to Fort VIII, one of the twenty-four steel and concrete fortifications that ringed Posen (Poznan) in Poland. Their humiliation was complete when the Germans forced the people of Posen to watch them stagger the five kilometres to the fort and to listen to a van driving up and down the column broadcasting that these were the men who had laid down their arms for Churchill.

The tired and hungry prisoners found that the old fort ‘was constructed as a pentagon and the roof was level with the terrain outside. It was surrounded by an outer wall topped by spiked railings. This was surrounded by a vertical moat formed by two vertical walls 30 feet apart and 15 feet high.’²⁰

At Fort VIII were some 3,000 soldiers from the BEF who had been captured at Dunkirk – and a ghost. A number of soldiers claimed to have seen a ghostly figure dressed in a long, Polish cavalry coat disappear through a brick wall at the end of a dim and dank passage. When the brick wall was later demolished, so the story goes, a skeleton was found – wrapped in the remains of a Polish officer’s coat.

Ron Gunton was not ‘one for sitting idle for too long’, and in August 1940 he and three others – Sergeant G.J. ‘Spike’ Springett RAF, Aircraftman Paddy O’Brien, and Petty Officer Bennett, ‘a Naval man’ – decided to escape. They made a rope ladder and with it they:

‘climbed up an ammunition shaft to the roof, which we found was covered by earth and vegetation. This took place whilst another Naval man called Shippo created a diversion by staging an impromptu concert some distance away from where we were working. We climbed down into the moat and, using a long pole which we had made by binding short pieces of wood together, we managed to hook the rope ladder onto the spikes of the railings.’

The plan was to head for the Baltic and find a Swedish ship. Travelling by night and resting by day they had made about 130 kilometres (80 miles) when they decided, for the first time, to walk through a village. Challenged by a German patrol they were forced to scatter. O’Brien chose to stay and fight it out, but was soon overwhelmed. On his own, Ron Gunton continued northwards until he came to a railway line where he ‘noted that an occasional train had to stop about a mile further up the track and as this seemed a good opportunity to make up some miles I jumped a train that night and was very fortunate that this took me to some marshalling yards very near the Baltic coast.’²¹

Having been ignored by an SS guard he bumped into a Polish worker who, realising that Ron was an escaped PoW, rushed off to tell the Germans. Soon found by a search party his three weeks of freedom were over, and it was back to Fort VIII again, where the Germans had failed to discover how the original break had been made. Some weeks later, therefore, Ron decided to try again, this time with Sergeant ‘Jock’ McGregor and ‘Buck’, a ‘South African squaddie’. Their target was an airfield a couple of kilometres from the fort:

‘We armed ourselves with cudgels intending to stow away on a plane and then jump the crew after takeoff. Ambitious indeed. We had walked about half way to the airfield when it started to snow quite heavily and of course the night-flying programme was stopped.

‘Feeling just a little dejected we decided to abandon our escape attempt and to break back into the fort to wait for another chance of freedom … Unfortunately, having got back in, Buck let us down badly when the next night, and without telling us, he used the ladder again and made his escape. He was caught two weeks later whilst living with a Polish woman at Posen and, under interrogation, he told the Germans of our escape route, which was then immediately sealed off.’²²

Their days at Fort VIII ended when they were purged, via Stalag XXIE (Wollstein), to Stalag VIIIB (Lamsdorf).

During the freezing winter of 1939-40, as RAF Bomber Commands offensive operations fell away, no airmen became a PoW during either January or February 1940. Nine in March and twenty-five in April, however, brought the total Bomber Command PoWs for the entire war up to the end of April 1940 to sixty-three, most of the newcomers being sent to Oflag IXA. When a further 141 Bomber Command airmen were taken prisoner in May, only forty-three of them being officers, the Germans were obliged to find alternative accommodation for the other ranks, and sometime in June 1940 they were purged from Oflag IXA.

In the first half of 1940 those RAF NCOs and other ranks not at Spangenberg had been held at Stalag XIIA (Limburg), a Wehrmacht-run camp 50 kilometres north-west of Frankfurt-on-Main. Sergeant T.K. May was the senior NCO there until the arrival early in the summer of 1940 of the more senior Flight Sergeant E.L.G. Hall. Hall, the ‘new boy’, temporarily deferred to May’s experience.²³ The RAF at Limburg shared the camp with a number of soldiers of the BEF who, in their ignorance, wondered where the RAF had been while they were stuck on the Dunkirk beaches. There was some unpleasantness until the soldiers were moved to other PoW camps.

Then it was the turn of the eighty-five or so RAF to be moved Hall protested when they were packed into one cattle-truck, nominally for forty men or eight horses, but got a poke with a bayonet for his trouble. En route, one man squeezed through the floor of the truck, but was re-captured and soon joined his comrades at Stalag VIIIB.

The British defeat in Norway in April and May 1940 yielded yet more prisoners for the Germans, who brought them to a new barbed-wire encampment at the bottom of the hill below Spangenberg castle, in the village of Elbersdorf.²⁴ Five days after their arrival the ‘Norwegians’ were moved to the upper camp, the castle, where they ‘found some R.A.F. officers, some of whom had been shot down in the first weeks of the war; a few of the Royal Navy, mostly from Submarines, but including survivors from the Rawalpindi and H.M.S. Glowworm; and about a hundred French.’²⁵

The upper camp (the castle) officially became the Hauptlager whilst the new, lower camp, in Elbersdorf, became the Zweiglager (literally ‘branch camp’). Oflag IXA was now Oflag IXA/H. The camp continued to receive a few RAF and yet more British army officers, the latter arriving in such numbers as 1940 wore on that, around late September or early October 1940, they were moved to the lower camp.

This at least eased the overcrowding in the castle, but nothing had been done to repair the primitive plumbing which had been badly affected by the harsh winter of 1939-40. Repairs had still not been effected by the summer of 1940. There was dampness everywhere, but by the winter of 1940-41 steam heating had been restored.

Life slowly improved during the summer of 1940:

‘The Germans had been persuaded to allow the use of a small piece of ground near the castle as a football kick-about area. A gymnasium attached to the castle had also been made available. Two plots of ground had been set aside for the prisoners to cultivate. A pleasant medieval-style room served as a library … German daily newspapers and illustrated periodicals were delivered to the camp regularly.’²⁶

It was whilst on his way to the gym in August 1940 that Pilot Officer H.D. ‘Hank’ Wardle, a Canadian in the RAF, climbed a high barricade and escaped. Recaptured, he was so severely beaten by German soldiers that he was left with impaired hearing and a limp.

Two other Canadians in the RAF, Pilot Officer F.D. Middleton and Flying Officer T.K. Milne,²⁷ also made good their escape from Spangenberg in the same month:

‘dressed as painters complete with buckets of whitewash and a long ladder, which they carried between them. They had waited for a suitable moment when there appeared to be a particularly dumb Jerry on guard at the gate, marched up briskly, shouted the only words they knew in German and filed out. Having passed the gate, they continued jauntily until they were halfway down the hill on which the Schloss reposed. They then jettisoned ladder and buckets and made a bolt for the woods …

‘None of the three travelled very far before recapture and it was, alas, only a matter of hours before they were back behind the bars. They suffered badly at the hands of their captors, being severely kicked and battered with rifle butts. The local population were bitter and revengeful.’²⁸

All three Canadians were purged to Oflag IVC (Colditz) on 30 October 1940.

Information, faulty as it happens, reached the German authorities to the effect that German officer PoWs in Canada were being held in an old fort known as Fort Henry. It was, apparently, quite unsuitable for German officers. As a reprisal, therefore, all healthy British officers of all three services were taken from Spangenberg to Stalag XXA (Thorn) in Poland on 6 March 1941. Spangenberg Castle itself was closed down, but some sixty or so ‘convalescents from hospitals, with a few doctors and chaplains, were left in the Lower camp.’²⁹

Though the stay in Thorn was to prove to be relatively short, it was nonetheless unpleasant, as the Germans had intended that it should be:

‘Many of the rooms were underground and all windows were boarded up. The senior officers … were placed in the worst room next to some underground latrines. Sanitation was primitive, water only being obtained by pumping from a well, which was in a room next to the cesspool … In each room of about twenty inmates an empty jam tin was provided.’³⁰

Despite the conditions spirits were high, and a combined Army/RAF escape was planned. Five Army PoWs and Flying Officer Peter Tunstall RAF were to be escorted through the front gate of the fort by Flying Officer Milner RAF wearing a home-made German NCO uniform.³¹ A dangerous German guard known as ‘Scarface’ was lured away from the gate and the ‘German NCO’ and the six ‘orderlies’ passed through unchallenged.

Tunstall and Milner reached a nearby aerodrome. After a likely-looking aircraft failed to start they tried another but Luftwaffe personnel, alerted

Reviews for Footprints on the Sands of Time

[mhstevens · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

For those interested in the saga of the thousands of Bomber Command aircrew who spent time as a Prisoner of War, venture no further. Oliver Clutton-Brock's masterwork is the bible on the subject. He lists each individual airman, the date and aircraft he was flying when shot down, as well as the various POW camps in which he was held. The author clearly spent years reviewing the files at England's National Archives, because the depth of research is evident from the very first glance. And Mr. Clutton-Brock unearths some of the very best stories of resistance and escape.

Make no mistake, this is a mighty work of reference, the best and most comprehensive I've ever seen on this topic. My copy remains marked up with tens of post-it notes!