For the British 1st Airborne Division Operation Market Garden in
September 1944 was a disaster. The Division was eliminated as a fighting
force with around a half of its men were captured.
The Germans were faced with dealing with 6,000 prisoners in a fortnight;
many of them seriously wounded. Somehow the men were processed and
dispatched to camps around Germany and German occupied eastern Europe.
Here the men experienced the reality of the collapsing regime - little
food and shrinking frontiers.
Once liberated in 1945, returning former prisoners were required to
complete liberation questionnaires. Some refused. Others returned before
'Operation Endor' to handle released men and their repatriation to
Britain was in place. Around a third did. However the questionnaires
that do exist give an picture of every day experience for the 2,357 of
these elite troops' time in captivity from capture to release.
They show that German procedures still operating, but that men were
often treated inhumanely, when moved to camps by closed box cars and
when camps were evacuated. Although their interrogators were interested
in Allied aircraft and airfields, their interrogators were also
concerned the effect of the new miracle weapons and with politics, how
Germany would be treated after an Allied victory?
Nevertheless the airborne men's morale remained high; carrying out
sabotage at artificial oil plants, railway repairs, factories and mines.
Some overcame their guards when being evacuated at the end of the War,
in some cases joining the Resistance. They record help received from
Dutch, French and German civilians.
