The weeks have flown by, and we're coming up to the end of Aline's internship cataloguing the Second World War neurosurgical case notes of Norman Dott. In her final blog, she reflects on a group of fascinating and unique cases:
The Brain Injuries Unit (BIU) set up by Norman Dott at Bangour
General Emergency Service Hospital during the Second World War accommodated
service men and women from all around the world, including many soldiers, ATS
members and pilots from Poland, the USA, Canada, Australia and even Norway.
But Bangour BIU also received soldiers from ‘enemy countries’, that is to
say prisoners of war from Germany, Italy and Austria. The case notes can give
us a great deal of valuable information about them.
To begin with, a little information about prisoners of war
in Britain during the Second World War might be needed to place the case notes
into their historical context. After D-Day, when there was no longer a threat
of a German invasion on British soil, many German and Austrian prisoners of war
were sent to Britain. At the end of the war, there were more than 600 PoW camps
in Great Britain, and as many as 400 000 prisoners from Germany. Strong Nazi
supporters, including SS members, were sent to remote camps in the Scottish
highlands to be put on agricultural work on farms. Under the Geneva Convention,
prisoners of war had to be treated humanely: they were allocated the same food
ration as British service men and given access to medical care, which is why
some of them were sent to Bangour Hospital. Unfortunately, according to the National
Archives, ‘few lists survive of prisoners of war in British hands and there is
little documentation which provide biographical information’. This is why any
records concerning them, including in the Norman Dott collection, are very
valuable.
In the case notes I have been cataloguing as part of the
project “Cataloguing Norman Dott's neurosurgical case notes (1920-1960)” I have
come across 34 prisoners of war - most of them were German, but a few were
Italian or Austrian. The last prisoner examined at Bangour was seen at the end
of 1947, well after the end of the war: it is not surprising since in Britain
the first prisoners of war to be sent home left in 1946, and the last ones in
1949. Each case note gives details about these soldiers’ nationalities, their
ages when first examined, their ranks and units in their respective armies, their
PoW numbers, their civilian occupations, what they did during the war, and the
reasons that brought them to Bangour BIU. Sometimes the PoW camp where they
came from is indicated, which is precious information since the documentation
about these camps is somewhat limited. Quite logically, the prisoners in
Bangour Hospital seem to have come from Scottish camps: two German PoW came
from Gosford Camp, Longniddry, in East Lothian, one came from the camp at 123
Dalmahoy, Kirknewton, in West Lothian, and an Italian soldier came from North
Hill Camp in Laurencekirk, in Kincardineshire.
Example of case note of a
German prisoner of war treated at Bangour in 1944. Sensitive personal data has been redacted (LHB40 CC/2/PR3.1511)
The records of these enemy soldiers look like any other case
notes in the collection, except for the fact that sometimes there aren’t many
details about their previous history and family situation. However, it is
likely to be due to the language barrier, as shown by this comment about an
Italian PoW: ‘this patient has no sufficient English at his disposal to give a
satisfactory history’ (PR3.1579). These prisoners seem to have been treated
like every other patient, despite the fact that they were ‘the enemy’. We could
even go further and say that some of them seemed quite happy about their
situation at Bangour, as we can read in several case summaries: ‘This
man is most cooperative and apparently glad to be in a British Hospital’
(PR3.1465), ‘he [another PoW] is very pleased with himself and happy and says
that he is extremely well off in hospital here’ (PR3.1478). An Italian PoW
treated for a prolapsed intervertebral disc even sought to extend his stay:
‘this PoW gives the impression of deliberately not performing well in order most
likely to enable him to remain in the hospital where he is quite happy’
(PR3.1310).
As we can learn in the typed case summaries, most of these
soldiers were being treated for wounds that happened during battle in France
after the Allied invasion, where many of them were captured by British or
American soldiers. They were then sent to British hospitals or PoW camps. The
case notes sometimes describe fascinating life stories, like the story of
this 19 year-old Austrian prisoner of war, ‘an organised social democrat’, who
was wounded in Russia and then sent in a military hospital in Austria. But later
he was displaced to a hospital in France, where he was captured and sent to
Britain (PR3.1510):
Story of a young Austrian prisoner
of war before he arrived at Bangour in 1944. (LHB40 CC/2/PR3.1510)
Despite the fact that prisoners of war records represent a
very small percentage of Bangour BIU case notes, the detailed
information they contain represents an invaluable source for genealogists and
WW2 specialists.
Sources:
