German POW's at Camps in Broadwell & Chepstow (General)

by Jefff , West London, Middlesex, Wednesday, October 25, 2017, 15:45 (2383 days ago) @ Jefff

I've just stumbled-on some interesting items of personal mail which have just been listed on a well-known auction website. They were sent by a German prisoner of war Unteroffizier Friedrich Aschke; his rank was roughly equivalent to our Corporal, probably from the German Air Force but possibly Army too.

The first item is an official postcard dated February 1946, sent from a Camp at Chepstow. It is addressed to a town on the southernmost edge of Germany, which was apparently within the American Zone.

The second item was a longer letter dated May 1946, sent from Camp 61 at Wynol's Hill, which is how I stumbled across it. This one is addressed to the same person & town as the earlier card. Is there any significance at all that it's written in red ink ?, which is a shame as red fades easily and is also difficult to scan or photocopy.

The third and perhaps most poignant item is another letter dated November 1946, sent from Camp 59, Sawtry, Huntingdon(Cambridge)shire. This one is sent to the same person, Frau Aschke, but this time addressed to Potsdam in the Russian Zone. In 1946 Potsdam lay just outside West Berlin, so became part of the German Democratic Republic. I cannot speak German so cannot read the letters, which are legible on the auction page scans, but one can only imagine how concerned Friedrich must have been on discovering his loved one, maybe mother or wife, was now apparently under Communist rule.

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I hadn't realised there was a P.O.W. Camp at Chepstow, perhaps not a surprise seeing as this excellent article states there were hundreds of camps across the UK, needed to house 400,000 P.O.W.s of WW2. It lists dozens of known camps, the Camp at Chepstow was number 197, at the Mount, Chepstow. It lists another 8 more in Gloucestershire, mostly in the north of the county especially around Tewskesbury and Moreton on Marsh, presumably as these areas needed agricultural labourers.
https://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2010/nov/08/prisoner-of-war-camps-uk#data

Also see this list (Island Farm was the camp in Brigend where 70 German prisoners escaped from in early 1945. All were recaptured soon afterwards, including a few on Ruardean Hill).
http://www.islandfarm.wales/LIST%20OF%20UK%20POW%20CAMPS2.htm

It seems that some of these camps were not just P.O.W. camps but also Polish Resettlement camps, including one in Gloucestershire, (which explains to me some of the background for the Father Brown tv series "in" the Cotswolds).
http://www.northwickparkpolishdpcamp.co.uk/
There were two camps in Herefordshire including one at Ledbury.

Camp 197 at Chepstow is another that wasn't just for enemy P.O.W.s. This article shows how a Scottish solder who had been a P.O.W. in Italy escaped and eventually found himself at Chepstow.
"he was so badly malnourished that he had to be hospitalised. His family were told he was alive, but they didn’t see him till many months later. We understand from army papers that he was in Camp 197, Mount Stuart, Chepstow. We have a photo that shows him after having been ‘fattened up’—dad was never that size. He was fed very small amounts of food, chocolate, and milk until he recovered."
https://camp59survivors.wordpress.com/2016/04/06/thomas-penman/

These personal memories of WW2 in Chepstow includes mention of the camp;
"Prisoners of War were in the camp at Bulwark (where Critchcraft now stands). They were used to arrive at a stop away from the main Railway Station at Chepstow. This was at the end of Caird Street, in Garden City. My young brother and his friends, complete with home made wooden guns - not many toys in the shops at that time - would march behind the poor prisoners, all the way up to Bulwark Camp. I think most of these men were glad that their part of the war was over. We used to go and chat to them (as best we could) through the fences, and if we took some raw materials, and a few cigarettes, they would make us the most lovely slippers, and wooden toys in exchange. Later on there were German prisoners camped at what is now St Lawrence Hospital - they were mainly officers I believe. "
http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/ww2peopleswar/stories/02/a4066102.shtml

"An interesting aspect of the period concerned the use of Chepstow Racecourse. The entire property was requisitioned early in the war, the stables being converted into a Prisoner of War Camp for the German Army with a portion of St. Lawrence Hospital being set aside as a Prisoner of War Hospital where severely wounded prisoners were treated. It so happened that the Royal Army Medical Corps Colonel Commandant of the Hospital was the father of a friend of mine with whom I was at school. As a result of this I spent a considerable time up at St.Lawrence during the school holdays."
http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/ww2peopleswar/stories/96/a4065996.shtml

During my engineering Apprenticeship at Ranks Mitcheldean we spent a day in 1978 visiting the Army Apprentices College at Beachley. I enjoyed this, partly as I'd considered joining the Army Engineers, and partly as it's location under the Severn Bridge had always intrigued me with it's ski slope etc. Sadly the lasting memories are trivial - seeing 16 year olds like us literally dangling off massive wrenches trying to remove 6' wheels from huge tractors, and the excellent canteen dinner... The College was set-up in 1924, posssibly using the same buildings that had previously been a P.O.W. camp set-up as part of the ill-fated National Shipwards plan. There are German & Italian P.O.W. graves at Beachley churchyard. The site is currently the Barracks for 1st Battalion The Rifles.

http://armyapprenticescollege.homestead.com/Newsletter_2017.pdf
http://tidenhamhistory.co.uk/beachley/
http://www.tidenhamparishcouncil.co.uk/parish-history/
http://www.chepstowsociety.co.uk/aspbite_protect/imagemod/fck/ww1.pdf

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I hope Admin don't mind me placing this link to one of the auction items. If anyone reading this is interested in them, please be assured I'm not connected in any way with the sale, and I will not be bidding.
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/1946-P-O-W-mail-written-in-German-camp-No-61-Broadwell-Colefo...