Walter,
Yet another feast of details, each one begging for comment ! First out of the trap:
...providing much the same effect as we would have had with a real radio play..
Truly: "Necessity is the mother of Invention !"
...One or two gifted lads made a radio, most ingeniously, from scrounged parts and various bits of scrap...
As one whose technical knowledge here begins and ends with the on-off knob (remember them ?), this fills me with wonder and admiration.
...he proposed that we two escape as soon as possible. He made a jacket from an old, grey blanket he had acquired...
What a range of skills there seems to have been in the camps ! (tailors, skilled forgers and many other trades used them to assist the escapees).
Never having been in the position, it seems to me that escaping from the camp would be the easy part. The hard bit would be the getting out of Germany to a neutral border, or to an occupied country, where there were brave people willing to risk their lives to help you.
...I became Fusilier James Leslie, an Irish soldier, of 74 Great William O'Brien Street, Cork...
Congratulations on your change of nationality !
My ancestral home: the O'###### come from County Cork.
...in the Irish Free State!...
I believe is is a matter of record (although I cannot quote one) that in WWII there were more
volunteers per head from the Republic than from Northern Ireland (although there were naturally far more
conscipts per head from there).
They did not receive a hero's welcome when they came home after the war was won....
Cannot resist retelling this little story (from Readers Digest) which explains the paradox: The ferries ran Holyhead-Dublin throughout the war. In late 1940, R.D. correspondent chats over taffrail with an athletic young man in tweed jacket and grey flannels:
"Why don't you Irish give the British the use of your Channel ports ?"......"We hate the British !"...."So do you want Hitler to win this war ?"...."Of course not !"....."So what are you doing about it ?"......"I fly a Hurricane !"
"
Collapse of stout Party" as Victorian "Punch" used to say.
More, more !
Danny.