Captain Denis Swinney

	General experience and audio clip.
	Includes inventory.
	This page: includes diary extracts.

His Royal Highness The Prince of Wales admires some of Denis Swinney's artwork on his visit to the Centre in February 2001.

Diary Extracts - Brunswick 1945

19th Feb

The art club is producing a book and John Dugdale has asked me to contribute. As he wants each artist shown in the book we all have to draw each other. "Smudge" Smith who is doing me starts tomorrow - fortunately he has a distinctive face but I cannot say that I am looking forward to the job.

March 8

Very feeble now and always cold.

By keeping still it is possible to live on this, though not possible to avoid thinking of food all day, but it does not provide any warmth. The heating system works only at weekends.

The lights go out every evening at eight because of the constant air raids, and we sit in greatcoats planning wonderful meals in the dark.

After the air raid: Brunswick.
" There was an aircraft and engine works beside the camp and the Americans destroyed it on 24 August 1944. All the German barrack buildings were destroyed and many German guards killed. This sketch was made at the time as soon as I had washed at the leaking fire brigade hose. The prisoners made holes in the hose themselves to get water to wash in."

2nd April

I have been gathering some clothes together for a camp near here of ORs who have walked from Poland.

They were marched away when the Russians attacked and walked for 40 days and sleeping in the open or in barns and eating bread. They are now in a very bad state without proper clothes or parcels.

The Allies are about 70 miles away, but they are still coming on.

If only the Russians would start now.

A camp theatre production: "A School for Scandal" Oflag 79, Brunswick, 1944

Diary Extracts - Brunswick 1945

12th [April]

Noise all night but the rumours are that part of Brunswick is occupied by the American 9th Army. . . .

After breakfast I was out in the bathroom shaving when there was a shout. Some French workers ran along the road outside. Then there came a great moaning shouting cry and everyone ran out of the buildings.

I went out and ran up to the top of the camp, where hundreds and hundreds of prisoners were running to the gate shouting. Into the main gate came a small grubby American sergeant carrying an automatic rifle.

At the gate stood a Jeep which in an instant was covered with men like a branch under a swarm of bees.

Liberation April 1945. "Second army fighting towards Mannover painted in great excitement at the time. The painting shows the Autobahn to Berlin."

Soon there were two thousand men round the gate making a high babble of excited talk, which was cut to silence by a double crash.

In an instant everyone disappeared but the mortars stopped and the party began again.

The Americans said afterwards that they did not know that the camp was here. They had seen the buildings across the plain and not liking the look of it they debated taking it to pieces. . . .

I went and touched the Jeep - just to be sure, but it was the smell of exhaust smoke that really got me.

13th

Since the Americans came we have just eaten and eaten.

I cannot write of all the small things that mean so much to us. Just cutting a thick slice of bread, wonderful!

We cannot eat very much at one sitting, but on the other hand we are always hungry. Already I feel much stronger, and at last really warm.

Parties of officers have been out in the town collecting supplies all day.

A page from Denis Swinney's P.O.W logbook - part of the entry for April 13th, 1945

The Russians are drunk already and chasing the population round. I do not blame them in the least after having seen how they were treated.

At Mooseburg (?) the Russians were put into the next compound to us when they were taken out of the train. They were locked in box cars for a month. One lot had not been fed for ten days and as they marched along they would dive down and scoop up water from pools on the ground. We threw them tins of food and they went for it like wild animals. Because of this their officers wrote a very good letter thanking us, and asking if we would send the food in bulk so that they could issue it properly.

'These men are maddened with hunger' they explained, 'also some of them are from Siberia and are not educated'.

We did send supplies but the Germans soon stopped this. After that we arranged a piece of pipe through the wire and poured German soup through to them in bucketsful.

The Germans never went into the compound without their dogs, but one day a dog got in with out his keeper.

Soon after the Russians threw the skin back over the wire.

In spite of all that the Germans could do to them the Russians were never defeated, as the French often were. They worked so slowly that it was impossible to see any progress. When they settled in they were set to work cutting wood. So much of this was got through the wire to us under the nose of the sentry that the wood pile got smaller every day instead of larger.

Now they are free and at the moment in complete control of Brunswick.

The Germans of course brought women and children in the box cars as well as soldiers. Millions of Ukranians were packed in trains and have worked here as slaves for years there are 12,000,000 foreign workers here of whom about half are unpaid slaves like our 'Russian grandmothers'.

At the top of the camp the Luftwaffe had a small workshop in which worked some of these Ukranian women. They looked cold and old shuffling about in rags.

They stand outside the wire now about a dozen women some old men and lots of children. They are completely silent.

Now they have clothes, food, everything, but for them I think it is too late. They do not seem to be able to smile.

	General experience and audio clip.
	Includes inventory.
	This page: includes diary extracts.