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Re: POWs Honored At New Memorial

From: POW-MIA InterNetwork

Date: May 15, 2003

"Duke honours prisoners of war at new memorial

Royal tribute: HRH Prince Philip, the Duke of Edinburgh, talks to former prisoners of war at the RAF Museum in ColindaleBy Tom Spender

HRH Prince Philip, the Duke of Edinburgh, unveiled a memorial erected by the RAF ex-Prisoner of War (PoW) Association dedicated to all the PoWs from the British, Allied and Commonwealth air forces.

The statue, at the RAF Museum in Grahame Park Way, Colindale, depicts a PoW trudging through snow after being forced by German guards to leave prison camps in the face of the advancing Russian troops in 1945.

After the unveiling, the Duke chatted with some of the many former PoWs among a crowd of about 250, including two old friends from Cardiff, born in the same street, who met again as downed airmen in the Stalag Luft VII camp in Germany.

One of the two, Harry Winter, described how the hardest part of their imprisonment had been the long march through what was then Czechoslovakia to just south of Berlin, where they were then freed by the Russians.

The Duke was also introduced to air cadets from all over Middlesex, including two from the Hendon Air Training Cadets based in Watling Park, Burnt Oak, before flying off in the maroon Royal helicopter.

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