Speaker Vanessa Morgan:

My father, Francis Hill, joined the Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers in September 1939 and was with the British Expeditionary Force in France until May 1940. They were then told to make for Dunkirk, and it was on his way to Dunkirk that he, and a group of friends, were captured. Sent to a POW camp in Poland he was quickly sent out on working parties for the next four years. He was then part of the ‘great march’ across Europe until being repatriated by the Americans. This talk tells his story, in his words, but not any heroic escapes, just the life of an ordinary soldier. It also includes passages from a book comparing other prisoner of war experiences and the general feeling of what POW life was like.