ÃÛÑ¿´«Ã½

My Dad Frank Hopkins was born on 13th November 1918. This made him one of the first conscripts to be called up in 1939. He was in The Royal Warwickshire Regiment and Enoch Powell was in the same Platoon as my Dad. My Dad was not very impressed with Enoch Powell's performance as a soldier and remarked that every time he shouldered arms he knocked his hat off. Also when the platoon was being sent off on anything regarded as hard a runner would come from senior officers and Private Powell would be called away for 'special duties'. My Dad also said that he never ate dinner with them as he was a friend of senior officers and was always eating with them. It was lucky for him that he was promoted so quickly because my Dad believed that he was the only one from his platoon other than Enoch who survived the war. My Dad spent his 21st Birthday in Whitley Hospital in Coventry as he came down with Scarlet Fever. His family were not to happy with him as he was taken ill on a visit home on leave. His family were quarantined for two weeks. How we won the war was always a mystery to my father as his basic training consisted of learning to dig and live in trenches, followed by the isssuing of a relic from the First World War in the form of a single shot bolt action Lee Enfield rifle. The fitness training was being dropped 30 miles from barracks with a full pack and being threateded with a charge if they did not get back to barracks in the alloted time.
Feeling totally unprepared for war my dad was shipped off to France with his platoon. My dad said it was totally chaotic when they arrived in France. They were eventually put on trains and shipped up to the front to engage the enemy. Dad said that you could hear the Stukers before you saw them. The trains were destroyed and many of his colleagues were killed. Bodies every where, chaos and confusion. When the smoke cleared many of the officers were dead, a senior officer from I think it was the Suffolks but I'm not sure, took command. My dad said he was like something from a comedy with his moustache and stick and comments like 'lets have at the Hun'. This officer found himself a horse and a column was formed and off they set with no artillery only single shot rifles and 50 rounds of ammunition each. They set off marching towards where they believed the enemy was, without any back up of any kind. Most other troops were in full retreat but my Dad's motley crew were going to stop the gerries single handed. They spread out across a field with the Germans in the distance. The officer was in the front urging the troops forward, when the shooting started everyone except the officer hit the deck and took cover where they could. The horse riding officer tried to encourage the troops to their feet to charge the approaching tanks. My Dad thought that one of the british soldiers shot him by the direction he fell. The german tanks blanket machine gunned the field my father and his company were in. My dad said, 'that the helmet was no protection from a direct shot as the poor man next to me, was shot straight through his helmet.' When the shooting was finished, the german infantry advanced from behind the tanks. A german soldier came towards my father and said to him, 'the war is over for you Englishman, hands up.' My dad was wounded, he had been shot in the hand, arm, shoulder, buttock, thigh and ankle. He was lying on the floor with his hands in the air as getting up was a bit difficult. The details of what happened next are very patchy, I know that dad ended up in a French hospital, but he was sitting outside it for some time as he was not as severely injured as others. He said there was no water and a french nurse gave him and others, bottles of red wine. He recalls that they all got totally drunk and had the hangover from hell the next day. I don't know how long he was in the hospital, but I think it was for some time as his wounds went gangrenous and he was very ill. When he was well enough to be moved he was sent to a marshalling area before being sent off to be used as slave labour for the duration of the war. When they were in the marshalling area Fifth Coloumists were placed in their mist, I suppose the germans did not wish to miss an opportunity to gain any information about the future plans of the British. I know when these people were removed from the prisoners, my father and others were very angry about it indeed. I don't know where my Dad went next as he didn't like to talk about his war time experiences, but I know he worked down various mines, built roads, snow breaks for railways, worked in a forest logging, basically any slave labour the Germans wanted doing for the next five years.

At this point in the War my dad had not met
Frank Draper, who he was to spend the rest of the war with. They became the best of friends, a friendship that lasted a lifetime and he was my very much loved Godfather.
Frank Draper was born in Wigan the son of a miner. He was called up like my dad, at the beginning of the War. He was in The Logistics Corp and was a lorry driver. I don't really know much about what happened to him other than he was captured before Dunkirk. He was supporting The Bolton Rifles, but they had no supplies and he was giving soldiers a ride in the back of his truck driving along narrow twisty French lanes. A shout went up from the back of the truck and all the soldiers jumped out and were running across the fields to the side of the road. Frank couldn't see what the problem was until the bend in the road straightened. Behind him was a very large German tank, adjusting it's gun to get the truck in it's sights. Frank managed to get out of the truck before it was blown to pieces and ran with the other soldiers away from the tank. He was captured soon afterwards and met my dad in the transit camp.
My Dad and Frank Draper spent the war based at Stalag VIIIB but I think they were also based in sub camps as my Dad said they worked down iron ore,salt and coal mines. They also were logging and building snow breaks for the railways.
Towards the end of the war my dad and Frank were coal mining as they described how they had mined the guard hut with explosives stolen from the mine. They had kept back some explosives every time they blasted the coal face so it was not missed. The prisoners were worried that the Germans would shoot them all as they knew the war was going badly for them. The traffic past the camp increased on a daily basis, the prisonerssaid to the guards 'Look you are being left behind, The Russians are coming'.
Then one day the guards ordered the prisoners to get their kit together. The guards climbed into the trucks and drove the prisoners out of the camp away from the advancing Russians. They marched behind the trucks for some time, then on a long straight piece of road the Germans 'floored' the trucks and left the prisoners on their own.

© Copyright of content contributed to this Archive rests with the author. Find out how you can use this.