Anzac Day 1944 in SLIII
During the Solemn Requiem Mass held at St Mary’s Cathedral on 25 April 1944, Father O’ Brien told the congregation that ‘Today Australia is deep in thought as well as in sorrow for the 70,000 men dead, prisoners of war, missing and wounded.’ If some of those prisoners were also deep in thought, they weren’t letting on. They were making the most of the day.
In Stalag Luft III’s East Compound, a church service was held in the theatre by Padre Thompson, a British Methodist padre who had been captured in North Africa. Afterwards, the Australians and New Zealanders staged a sporting carnival which included basketball, soccer and golf. The prisoners of war may have been denied many liberties during their incarceration but the Australian sports lovers were better off than their home front compatriots: in early April, Prime Minister Curtin had announced in early April that organised sports meetings were prohibited on Anzac Day. Gerald Carroll, an army orderly was proudly nationalist and noted when the Australians beat their New Zealand opponents.
The Australians in North Compound also mixed faith and sport. There, Padre Walton—‘a Church Army type from NZ’, as Harry ‘Gobi’ Train recalled him—conducted a service for the Australians and New Zealanders. After that, HauptmannHans Piebertook some group photos. As well as gathering for the North Compound photo, the Australians divided into state groups, including the West Australians and New South Welshmen. Copies of Pieber’s photos appear in a number of books and the collections of many of the North Compound Australians such as Laurie Simpson, Ken Carson, Ronald Baines, Len Netherway, and Torres Ferres.
Those recently dead Australians had not yet been added to Australian casualty lists and it wasn’t until 17 May 1944 that Albert Hake’s wife received the telegram advising that her husband had lost his life on 25 March 1944—one month before his former friends gathered to remember all war dead—‘while attempting to escape from confinement of a prisoner of war’.
