In late February 2020 I was asked a question from a New Zealander about one of my distant relatives who was a Prisoner of War in World War I. I had previously researched Mark Strelley Fryar in a previous blog and also posted his story on The Lives of World War One Imperial War Museum memorial site. I think this was how I was found. blog link He was one of 24 who escaped through a tunnel they had excavated at Schweidnitz POW camp on the night of 19th March 1918. All were re-captured and sent to the much more notorious Holzminden POW camp ("Hellsminden") to serve solitary confinement and then to wait out the rest of the war.
It
seems many of the men returned to their families and did not talk about their
time. They moved on and lead their lives in a variety of different ways and
sometimes didn’t disclose the story until much later in their life, if ever. My
research into Mark was limited to a few ancestry records and family photos and
I had glossed over the mention of being a POW.
Soon,
my new NZ friend introduced me to the others who were in on the research. There
were a brother and sister from Canada, two researching in England and me from Australia.
Who would’ve thought that their lead and their teamwork would bring about a
concerted effort to conserve, preserve, honour and retell the story to future generations?
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| Transcribed Report by Mark Fryar |
#CovidProjectSorted………. There was my COVID lockdown sorted- such an interesting story. I found there was more to Mark’s story when I was sent Court Martial documents to hook me in. My Kiwi contact baited me with a few names and a spreadsheet. Five of the POWs were from Oz and the rest of them from England , South Africa, Canada and New Zealand.
Talk
about baiting me and reeling me in. I
researched each person on the spreadsheet to get my head around them and formed
up little trees to build a story about these men. Another member had done similar for another project. A tree attached to Ancestry attracts hints,
collects and holds data, more family members through the message button and is an excellent data base for the whole
team to view.
We
also recognised how important it was to link up with current family members. We
all know that trees are great “cousin bait” and although we’re are not related
it’s is an important tool in this project. The project is important – oral
family history will be lost in three generations and it’s already been 100
years. How many generations have the papers, photos and medals been passed
through? (not to mention the skip bins, fires, family breakups etc.
As Anzac Day was near, I decided to write the story from an Aussie perspective. Blog writing is my one skill I find suits my research and opens my eyes to what’s out there and what’s missing.Anzac Day Blog here There's more to come.
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| First Blog story about the Anzac Escapees |
#lookingforcompellingstories
I tackled a couple of POW books such as “The Real Great Escape” by Jacqueline Cook and “I Escape” by J.L.Hardy. #covidreadingsorted A few months later it’s given me a feel for the kind of information that might be ideal to collect and the similarities in stories. For example, Jacqueline Cook’s book included back stories- things like what did our POWs do before and after the war? Military records, war histories, medals awarded to them can sometimes elicit an interesting story of circumstance, bad luck or sheer rat cunning. Newspaper accounts of the time recorded stories in a far more human way than today and usually gave lots of insight into the family and how those at home longed for snippets of information about the details of the battles and injuries of their loved ones. She also highlighted the role of the Red Cross in supplying parcels of food and letters. Hardy a multiple escapee from several Camps gave details of the devious preparations and comradeship in helping fellow officers (mostly himself) to escape.
We
are all very different researchers with different interests, motivations and
expertise. Whether its military research or genealogical now is the time to
take advantage of free offers too. Access to places like The Australian War
Memorial is closed or limited during Covid. Resources such as digitised
resources of the National Archives of Australia and Trove newspapers are most
invaluable. (and free in Australia) Resources such as the National Archives in
the UK are being offered free for the Covid period. Ancestry is allowing the
library subscriptions to be viewed from home. Some subscriptions have been
offered at discount or trial rates. All the usual free births, deaths and
marriages sites get a workout.
#becomingastalker For the Aussie POWs we’ve
extensively used the Ryerson Index, Trove and Newspaper archives to build family
trees to the present day. This in combination with consulting Ancestry public
trees, Electoral rolls, Google searches and social media such as Facebook and
Linked in has been invaluable in chasing down current living relatives. This
has paid off in unearthing treasured photos, memoirs and medals. Can I say that
relatives have been wholehearted in their enthusiasm for the project as we have
been able to give them some context. Let’s face it it’s an amazingly unknown
story. Even though we’ve passed the
Centenary Celebrations there’s a lot of willingness to be kept informed by the
current generations.
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| Part of Eric Fulton's memoir |
#masteringDropbox Setting up an effectively sorted Dropbox and shared Cloud based repositories is crucial to sorting, sharing and retaining the findings. Besides the trees being repositories of information we needed to record/organise the plethora of information found in the searches for all to share. To minimise the number of emails and repetition we created a file for each man with subsets of files recording all information pertaining to each sub-category.
Sub-categories
included
·
Births
Deaths and Marriages
·
Capture
and Pow
·
Census
·
Photos
·
Family
research
·
Red
Cross Records
·
Service
Records
·
Newspaper
articles
·
Other
Docs
One
of our members devised a template of record files and another set up about
collecting all the information from Ancestry, emails and archives into Dropbox
files for us all to have access which is especially good when we are
researching in different time zones.
The
end result is a comprehensive set of records and the ability to cross check
stories, prisoner movements and definitely to build up the story of the escape.
#we’reorganised
Basically, between this organised and comprehensive share drive and the
Ancestry trees we have a Genealogical database recording these military history
and tracking their relatives and descendants
#Celebratingsuccesses
As
we are all working in different time zones something is always happening.
Emails fly across the world backwards and forwards celebrating the successes of
our research. So far we’ve got almost a complete set of photos of each of the
individuals.
One
relative has offered group shots of the men awaiting their release after Armistice
at Holzminden POW. Not content to stick to the 24 we are now investigating
their mates and their POW stories!
I can’t speak highly enough about how
important it is to document stories from the older generation. We’ve turned up
memoirs long and short, letters, medals and historical details of planes,
battles and POW life.
This
project is uniting families, honouring those who bravely put their name forward
to fight in the Somme and even learn to fly in those early days of flight.
Who’s
the last man standing? #findingthepersonwiththeknowledge
The
task now is to bring the family trees forward to 2020. We still feel the need
to investigate who is holding the medals, photos, snippets and memories. Photos
inherited or saved by the families and others are now crucial to the
preservation of the story of courageous men. Some of our men died young with
little or no offspring not to mention what
happens in families to disrupt the inheritance of memorabilia such as
rifts, immigration, divorces, skip bins etc. Armed with my family trees and
their hinting leaves we have resorted to stalking uncles, aunts, sisters,
brothers, nephews, nieces. Sometimes 5 generations to today of these 24+ men #thenetisclosingin
It is more difficult moving forward generations than going backwards with copyright issues, privacy limitations on newspapers, birthdays and marriages and privacy provisions on Ancestry trees. You don’t appear on an online tree until you are dead.
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| Ancestry's messenger gets a work out |
The
Ancestry message service is getting a workout and bringing results. Up-to-date
contacts have been made on a number of the men and some others we have been
found to be associated with them.
Some
cemeteries have been cooperative in passing on our emails to their confidential
clients with pleasing results. Facebook searches have even allowed us to make
contact. Oh and we can be quite innovative – enquiries with historical societies,
churches, clubs, school and work archives- we stop at nothing. #feellikeastalker
Some
have found “us” through the blogs and our trees and through messages on forum
type webpages and Facebook groups.
Where
to from here?
Someday
this information may be found in a documentary,
a book, a film or an exhibition. Perhaps it will just be information given to a
child for a school project or the provenance attached to some military medals
or memorabilia. Some more of the men have been
written about in my Robyn and the Genies Blog #Schweidnitz POW escapees
We
are building up the stories of each man through from their childhood but then
we are tracing them though their Military or Flying Service to their capture,
their experiences in camp, escape attempts and their repatriation. We’re interested
in their career experiences and family. By hook or by crook we will gather little
snippets of their memoirs, letters etc to give us insight into camp life
conditions, the mindset of the prisoners, their thoughts and their fears and
how it maketh the man.
When
you’re full on into a Covid-19 project suddenly it’s been six months and we’ve
come such a long way.
#almostadocumentarymaker
#i’mnotwritingabook!
A blog dedicated to the Schweidnitz research right through to repatriation now exists at
https://schweidnitzpowcampwwi.blogspot.com/
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