Propaganda photograph taken in a POW camp, Germany, 1940s
Item Reference : cny03363

Description

The Germans took many propaganda photographs of their war prisoners during the Second World War, in clean and comfortable conditions. Whilst for many British servicemen held inside Germany, conditions were bearable, they were certainly not of the calibre that the Germans wanted UK citizens to believe. POW camp inmates are shown here taking part in health-giving excercise in pristine white shirts. Doris Craig joined the ATS in December 1940. Her first posting was to Bournemouth, where she started out doing clerical work, but went on to assemble 'suitcase packs' for the French Resistance, which contained radio transmitters and receivers, power packs and spare parts. She met Barnes-Wallis, and shook him by the hand. Her husband, Frank Craig, had been captured at Dunquerque, and spent three years in POW camps, initially the notorious Stalag VIII B, where he very nearly starved. In 1943 he was repatriated on health grounds as he suffered from asthma, and was sent to Croydon to retrain as an electrical technician. There he met Doris, and they married on Christmas Day 1944.

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