Alice
Dionne of Linden wants to share her father’s World War Two story because she has
lived with the effect the war had on him. She believes her father suffered from
Post Traumatic Stress Disorder after he returned from the war in 1945, and that
he was bitter POWs were not acknowledged as they should have been.
“They
might not have made the ultimate sacrifice but given what they lived, that was
often worse than being dead,” she says.
Her
father, Andrew Darragh, enlisted with the North Nova Highlanders Regiment in
1942 at the age of 18. On D-Day, June 6, 1944, he landed at Dieppe and the next
day, he and 102 others were captured by German soldiers. He was a prisoner of
war for 11 months.
“Over
the years, we’d ask questions but he wouldn’t talk about it,” Alice told me.
“We only knew about four things: that he never received a [Red Cross] care
package, being shot at in the box cars, the forced marches and being in front
of a firing squad.”
One
evening a year before he died in 2007, Alice’s father told her the story of his
war experience and she wrote it down; those notes along with certificates and
newspaper articles she has collected are now in a large binder.
Wanting to
share her father’s POW experience, she read out loud the notes she made about his
story.
About
his capture: ‘They were in a box car for 28 days. They had a ten gallon drum
for a toilet. This was in July during very hot weather. They were shot at. They
went down to Bordeaux, France, sat locked in box cars...for 11 days. They were
fed once a day, part of a loaf of bread. The box car in front of them was full
of sergeants and officers and they escaped by ripping up the floor of the box
car. The Germans were furious.’
About
life as a POW: ‘From November 1944 to
April 1945. They worked from 6 am to 6 pm along with the German coal miners. He
was befriended by two German brothers who told him to sit. Whenever they saw
the light coming, they told him to get up and work because it would be the pit
boss coming. The only breakfast he would have had is if he had saved something
from supper the night before. At night, they would get pumpkin soup, dog meat,
and they would get one or two potatoes once a week. There were about 35
Canadian POWs and the Germans volunteered five to go in the mines. Dad was one
of them. They had to go down 400 feet and there was hardly enough pit props and
the roof was always falling in.’
About
the night Andrew Darragh and three others escaped during a forced march (May
1945): ‘Towards the latter part of the war, when it became obvious the Allied
troops were coming for the Germans, they marched the POWs out of Falkenau. They
marched only at night and slept during the day wherever they could find a spot.
They marched probably a week, he thought, then one night some of them just
walked away...They were right at the border when they met the Germans who, when
they found out they were POWs, let them go. They spent the night in a hay
mow...’
The five
escapees spent a few days at this farm, unable to eat the milk, pies, eggs and
bread because the food made them sick. They listened to the sounds of machine
guns and bombs and then a Sherman tank drove up to the farm’s picket fence.
This
rescue by the Americans marked the end of the war as well. Alice’s dad was
flown back to England and admitted to hospital weighing 100 pounds. He stayed
there for ten days and when discharged, he went to stay with an English family
Alice believes he met during the year he’d spent in England training for D-Day.
After returning to Canada, to Cumberland County, he married Iona Read in 1946. Alice
is the oldest of their four children.
“I’d
like to have his experience recognized,” she says. “I just feel he suffered so
much and we did, too, as a family because he couldn’t keep a job,” which she
now attributes to PTSD. “We moved all over the place. I didn’t go to a school
for a full year until I was in Grade Nine. I think Mum had a really hard time.
If it hadn’t been for her devotion, they may not have stayed together.”
And
that’s why Andrew Darragh’s war story didn’t end on May 7, 1945.
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