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Re: Brothers Reunited in POW Camp

From: POW-MIA InterNetwork

Date: February 08, 2003

"BROTHERS UNITED IN P.O.W. CAMP

George Horace Smith fought valiantly on the bloody beaches of Dunkirk in 1940. The Matson lad and his comrades-in-arms struggled to hold back the advancing Germans while thousands of fellow soldiers were evacuated to safety.

A corporal with the Glorious Glosters, he was captured and force-marched across Europe to Stalag 20A in Poland. George survived the deprivations and hardships of the grim prisoner-of-war camp for some three years.

He then survived appalling conditions during the subsequent march back across Europe to Germany as the Russians advanced.

He suffered hunger, thirst and exhaustion as he tramped hundreds of miles to eventual freedom in 1944.

But he didn't survive the hidden killer which lurked at the Gloucestershire Railway and Carriage Factory, where he worked for many years.

In November of last year, at the age of 86, asbestos used in the former Gloucester factory, was shown to be the cause of his death.

After the evacuation in June, 1940, George Smith and his brother Harold, who also fought at Dunkirk, were reported missing. And for two years his Gloucester family thought they had both perished on the battle-torn beaches of northern France.

But the two brothers ??? both with the heroic Glosters ??? survived the onslaught and were among hundreds of soldiers captured.

Most of those force-marched to prisoner-of-war camps in eastern Germany and Poland were members of the 5th Battalion of the Gloucestershire Regiment.
It was their unenviable task to fight a rearguard action holding back the advancing Germans while the rest of the British Expeditionary Force was rescued.

Another brother, 69-year-old Dave, said: "George and Harold didn't know whether or not the other was alive, until they both ended up in the same prison camp ??? Stalag Luft 20A in Poland," he told The Citizen.

But towards the end of the war the prisoners were marched west, away from the advancing Russians, across Poland and into Germany where they were finally liberated by the Allied forces in 1944.

"After Dunkirk my brothers were reported missing for about two years and we didn't know whether they were alive or dead," said Dave, who lives in Matson.
"It was only when the Red Cross contacted us that we knew they were alive.
"It had been so worrying for my mum and dad and when another brother Albert, who was 18 at the time, was killed in an accident in Gloucester, she was heartbroken.

"Sadly she died in 1943, before she got to see George and Harold again."
A resourceful POW, he taught himself the accordion while incarcerated and learnt German well enough to become a spokesman for other prisoners.

But when the pair finally got back to England and the bosom of their large Gloucester family "seven boys and one girl" Dave recalls "they didn't want to say much about their experiences."

He said: "They had been through a great deal - especially when they were marching from one camp to the other.

"They had no food and water, only what they could find en route."
But in November of last year, Mr Smith, a former vice-president of Matson rugby club, died of asbestosis, a grim legacy from his many years working for the company known as the Waggon Works.

Cotswold coroner Lester Maddrell said on Wednesday that Mr Smith's death in Cheltenham last November was an "almost classic case" of death by industrial disease.

A post mortem carried out on the pensioner, who died at the Sue Ryder home on November 13, revealed he had a "huge amount" of asbestos in his lungs.
In March last year, he was diagnosed as suffering from mesothelioma, the cancer caused by exposure to asbestos.

"There is no doubt he died of industrial disease," said Mr Maddrell. It's almost a classic case for a man of that age who worked in that place during those years. There was no protective clothing and it wasn't realised asbestos was a danger.""