PoW Recapture Stories

The above documents don't detail PoWs by name, so I have written the below information including the PoW names:

The first two POWs, who got away from the camp, to be caught were Karl Ludwig and Heinz Herzler. They had planned to get aboard a truck, the type of which passed Island Farm most nights. These trucks were usually bound for Cardiff Docks where their contents were loaded on to ships and sent across the channel to France. Unfortunately, on the night of the escape, there were no trucks passing the camp. Failing to get aboard a truck the two POWs decided to try and catch a train at Bridgend railway station.

As Ludwig and Herzler made their way, they encountered a drunken man returning home. Ludwig and Herzler decided to hide in a nearby garden, but unfortunately the garden they chose to hide in belonged to the drunken man. As the man entered through the garden gate he decided that his call of nature was too great and decided to urinate into one of his garden bushes. Unfortunately, this was the hedge which Karl Ludwig happened to be hiding! Having relieved himself the drunken man went into his house unaware that he had done something to a German that many people in Britain would have given up 10 years of their lives to do!

Upon reaching Bridgend Railway station, the two men hid in a goods wagon, but the train's progress was slow and was, unbeknown to them, going in the wrong direction. When it stopped at a little marshalling yard they got off, tried to get their bearings but were lost. They had ended up in Llanharan only 8 miles from Bridgend. Hoping to reach a main road going to Cardiff they started walking and unfortunately encountered a policeman (PC679 Phillip Baverstock) who was on patrol who arrested them.

In the police station, what intrigued Baverstock most, was the tail of a shirt. On it was a map, drawn with painstaking accuracy showing the main railway lines and ports in southern England and Northern France. During WWII all roadsigns across Great Britain had been deliberately removed in the hope that it would confuse the Germans if they ever invaded or parachuted in to Britain. However, when the POWs had been escorted to Island Farm initially, one of the POWs had noticed that a map of Great Britain, and its rail system, was on the wall in one of the railway carriages. Thinking that this map would prove useful, in the event of an escape, he had traced the map on to the tail of a shirt.