Letters should be addressed ....... Prisoner of War Post, Stalag XVIII.A. Germany .... stories of a P.O.W.

 It’s always in the detail, so while you need the “big picture” which places everything in the past into a context, it’s the little bits which give meaning to the grand sweep of history.

And this letter to a Mrs. Hirst of Caldecott Road Higher Blackley is no exception.  It was sent by the Red Cross at the beginning of April 1945 and concerned her son Frank who was a P. O.W. in Germany.

The Red Cross was “very glad that your son’s camp address is now known [and] letters should be addressed to him as follows, Prisoner of War Post, Kriegsgefangenenpost, Gnr. Frank Hirst, British Prisoner of War No: 9611 Stalag XVIII.A. Germany”

Stalag XVIII.A was in the southern part of Austria near the town of Wolfsberg.

Just when he had been captured is unclear, but his family will no doubt have been relieved that they had a contact point to send letters.

And to know that he was entitled to Red Cross parcels which went via Geneva to the camps.  

Mrs. Hirst also received a leaflet which detailed the contents of a typical parcel which" are specifically planned to supply what is most needed in the Prisoner of War Camps.”

These included biscuits, cheese, jam, milk, and cold beef, and variations provided by the Indian Comforts Committee of the Indian Red Cross Society and contained “curry, lentils, certain spices and rice”.

Added to these there were supplies of tobacco, cigarettes and soap.

The leaflet also offered advice on what to include in the letter as well as information on how prisoners could correspond with family in Britain.

But and there always is a but the Red Cross acknowledged that due to “the present conditions in Germany, the dispatch of all individually addressed parcels to prisoners of war had been suspended by the G.P.O.  for the time being, but the International Red Cross Committee at Geneva will continue to deliver Red Cross food parcels to all camps”.

This was after all the closing stages of the war. The western allies were fighting their way across Germany, while the Red Army was moving to occupy Vienna and capture western Prussia.

All of which meant that on that April day the war in Europe had just over a month to run.

As yet I don’t know what happened to Frank Hirst, when he was liberated and how his life after the war played out.

He was born in January 1921, had an elder brother and his parents ran a fish and chip shop from 75 Milton Street in Southport.  

They were from Huddersfield and by 1939 had moved to Higher Blackley.  

By then his father appears to have given up battering fish and described himself as a “power loom woollen weaver, unemployed”.

In time more about the family will come to light, but for now it is this letter which offers up so much detail about the fate of P.O.W’s and which will have relevance to anyone who had a relative captured by the Germans in the last world war.

Location, Southport, Manchester, and Austria.

Pictures; Red Cross letter, 1945, courtesy of David Harrop.