Flt Lt Oliver Philpot to Mrs Nathalie Philpot

13 December 1948.

This extract from a letter to his wife from Nazi prison camp, belonged to my mother Rosemary S Andrews, Oliver’s cousin. I am 85 now.

Oliver was one of the famous escapees from Stalag Luft III by using a wooden vaulting horse used over the entrance to the escape tunnel (see Imperial War Museum collection].

He made it home solo via a ship from occupied Danzig to neutral Sweden. His book of this escape is called Stolen Journey. He was the pilot of (I think) a Beaufighter when shot down and had to ditch off the Norwegian coast. All his crew survived and boarded a large rubber dinghy. They had difficulty keeping warm.

Transcript:

Well! I am writing this on the 13th; it was just a year ago this morning that we sat up and lo and behold there was a line of high dark cliffs 3 or 4 miles away with the heavy seas pounding at their base and throwing the spray yards high as at Land's End. And then what we thought at first were factory chimneys merged into ships bearing down on us.

A Flak ship put her helm hard over when she saw us and most skillfully pushed her bows just past us, putting us in her lee. At one moment there was a row of sailors within arm's length as they leaned over the rail, and at the next they were far away above us as we sank down the side of the ship in the pit of the waves, the seas still being very heavy.

"Ah! Englanders" they said as they grabbed us one by one. They nearly pulled my arms out of my sockets as my turn came, last, since the dinghy got caught in my Mae West hook and the seas receded leaving the sailors holding my arms, with me, wet and heavy, spreadeagled on the side of the ship with the dinghy hanging on to me!

A few good heaves did the trick.

It was nice getting below in the dry and warm, and the hot soup was good.

A year ago! how time flies.

Tagged:
PoW

Contributed by:
Michael L A Andrews

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