Flying Officer Kenneth Elliott

Ken began radio training with the RCAF in 1941. He was then attached to Canadian 6th Bomber Command in England.

On his 30th mission over Germany in 1944, Ken's Halifax plane was shot down over Caen, France. He was taken prisoner and sent to POW camp Stalag IIIA, where he remained until the camp was liberated by the Russians in 1945.

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FULL STORY:

Ken Elliott was attached to 432 Squadron 6th Group Canadian Bomber Command. It was on his 30th bombing raid to Berlin when he was shot down over France. He had on a chest pack parachute and when he jumped out and it opened, it hit his face, breaking his nose badly. He managed to evade the shots being fired at them from the ground by vacillating his parachute to make a moving target, but as soon as he landed, he was taken prisoner. He didn't even have two minutes of freedom.

As prisoners of war they travelled across France and were housed in racing horse stables for two days. Some paratroopers in the next stall saw a hole in the roof and escaped; the rest were lined up against a wall and threatened with a machine gun, but they knew nothing. In Paris they were put into a cage in the main railway station for two days, and then were sent to Frankfurt where they spent five days in solitary confinement and questioned. The Germans had all sorts of tricks to make prisoners lose touch with reality. Ken was in a small cell with only a tiny window so it was always dark. They would turn the heat way up and then turn it down really low. Or they would wake you up in the middle of the night to confuse you between day and night. Once a day dark bread and water were passed into his cell by a small opening in the bottom of the door. They didn't learn much from Ken – he really didn't know very much outside of his own job. They finally let him back into the main prison population.

From Frankfurt, the prisoners were taken to a camp 75 miles west of Krakow, Poland, where they were put into rabbit hutches; the POW camp was just being built at the time. Ken's job was to push a wagon two miles down into the village and haul coal back up the hill to the camp, where it was distributed to each of the huts. It was something to do and it got him out into the fresh air. There were two guards for every five guys, so there was no thought of escape.

They were in this camp from July until January. On January 11th thy were told to be ready to leave within an hour – they  were going on the road because the Russians were coming. So they started walking and they walked for a month. The prisoners had very little to eat: only two or three bowls of soup and five loaves of bread in that time, and what they could scrounge from the countryside. It was very hard and some of the guys just fell by the wayside – no one knew what happened to them. Ken lost about 75 pounds on that march. In the end they walked for 232 miles and it may be the longest prisoner march in the European theatre of World War II. The last few days of the journey they were put into cattle cars because they simply couldn't walk any further. There were 56 to a box car and the doors were locked. They were in these railway cars for two days, packed so tightly together that they had to take turns standing and lying down. Those two days were some of the worst that they had to endure. 

The prisoners were placed in a camp 21 miles out of Berlin, at Luckenwald for five months, and that is where the Russians came and liberated them. Well, they thought they were going to be liberated but in fact they kept them there for 20 days. These front line guys were really wild – they were from Mongolia. The Russians celebrated their victory by getting drunk and driving their tanks in circles around the compound, knocking out the power lines. They used these prisoners as exchanges for Russians prisoners – one on one exchange, one allied prisoner for one Russian prisoner. They thought we were all allies but I guess the Russians didn't see it that way. Anyway, they all got to walk across the River Elbe.

The way it worked in Nuremberg, each officer was given twenty-five men to make sure they found their way somehow back to England – no easy task at that time. Ken managed to get his men to Brussels where he talked the crew of a Halifax bomber to fly them back to Redding, England. They then caught a mail car to Bournemouth. There they were deloused, debriefed, and had to be put on a special diet because of their weakened condition. They were given two weeks leave and for some this turned into a little more, but no one was too bothered by that. They knew darn well that nothing would be done about that.

Ken’s mother passed away while he was at war, and it took some adjustment for him to return and not find her there. There were a lot of adjustments in many ways for guys like him. But he did survive and he did made plans for his future.