A really unusual story from one of the other places that I post . . .

[Jock Elliott]

It is an unusual true story about how shortwave listeners provided hope to my family during WWII.

WWII Radio Letters: A real-life shortwave story

Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, Jock Elliott, who shares the following guest post: A real-life shortwave story By Jock Elliott, KB2GOM On July 25, 1943, a Royal Canadian Air Force Wellingto…

swling.com

Cheers, Jock

 

[Richard]

I just read through that piece and found it very interesting. Did I understand correctly that the governments participating in WWII would broadcast lists of their prisoners of war for the benefit of the families back home? And if so, was that a regular thing on both sides?

-R

 

[Jock Elliott]

I just read through that piece and found it very interesting. Did I understand correctly that the governments participating in WWII would broadcast lists of their prisoners of war for the benefit of the families back home? And if so, was that a regular thing on both sides?

-R

I don't know if it was a regular thing on both sides, but there may have been a bit of "nah-nah-nah, we've got your guys" on the part of Germany. For sure it was a regular thing from Radio Berlin.

Since I wrote that piece, I discovered that there have been two books written about other families experiences with the shortwave radio monitors:

WWII Radio Heroes, Letters of Compassion -- World War II Radio Heroes: Letters of Compassion, 2nd Edition: Spahr, Lisa L., Camacho, Austin, Dave, Williams: 9780989191401: Amazon.com: Books -- I bought it and just started reading it.

Waves of Hope -- Amazon.com: Waves of Hope: 9781735555102: Negra, Ronald Edward: Books -- written by a man whose mom was one of those radio monitors. I have ordered that book, and it is enroute.

Cheers, Jock

 

[Richard]

Reading one of the book reviews, it seems that the naming of names by Radio Berlin was part of their propaganda mission and intended to demoralise the families of the captured servicemen, so not the humanitarian gesture I first thought.

Also, I'm guessing that the exchange of lists of prisoner names, and allowing families to send letters and parcels was part of the Geneva Convention rather than governments doing the right thing in wartime.

To change the subject somewhat, when my parents were in their 60s and 70s they would go on motoring holidays to Germany and Austria. They used to love it - they went year after year and my mother is still in contact with some of the guest house owners where they stayed some 30 years later. On several occasions they found themselves chatting to older German men, genial old boys with good spoken English and apparently fond of England and the English. After talking for a while they would announce that they had been held as prisoners of war in England during WWII. There would be a slightly awkward moment, and then they would go on to explain that they had been treated well, and had worked on a farm in Dorset (or somewhere pleasant like that), got to know the local families and so on. In short, they'd had quite a nice war (after being captured), certainly compared to their compatriots fighting on the Eastern Front. My parents had three or four such encounters over a ten year period and spoke about them quite often - "You are from England? I was prisoner of war there..."

-R