David Taylor - 4.5 Years: Memoir of a WW2 POW

It is criminal that such a significant and brave action by Scottish soldiers is not afforded its rightful place ... For that reason alone 4.5 Years is worth reading...an honest and realistic account of Dave's experiences as he relives them through the pages of his book.

Scottish Association of the Teachers of History

A fascinating Prisoner of War-Internee-Prisoner of War story. Dave's personality, technical skills, common sense and Scottish entrepreneurial attitude shine through. Interesting asides, explanations and information allow the young modern reader to understand the attitudes, the tensions, the subtleties and the realities of the time.

Don Marshall, Military History Enthusiast

4.5 Years

David Taylor

Editor: Jean Gill

Jean Gill 2017

Ebook Edition

The 13th Sign

This book is also available in print

2nd edition, with new material

First published in 2011

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form without prior permission from the publisher

Cover design Jessica Bell.

For my children

and their children

Foreword by Jean Gill, editor

W hen I wrote to my Uncle Dave, I knew he lived in Canada and that he would be in his eighties, if he was still alive. I hadnt seen him or been in touch since we kept my father company for his last days in York Hospital, over ten years earlier

I was seeking information about his brother George, my father, so I could write Faithful Through Hard Times, based on my fathers uncensored and illegal war diary. When an email popped up in my inbox from an email address that began Largo, I had an inkling that something important had happened. Largo was a beautiful fishing village on the east coast of Scotland where Dave and George spent their childhood. Their Scottish roots remained important to them even though war left both of them changed beyond staying home. Dave emigrated to Canada and George continued with the nomadic life of a soldier.

We shall communicate like this from now on, Dave wrote in his email, and so began a precious friendship. There was always a little rivalry between the brothers and at some point, he asked, Arent you interested in my story? and from then on, I spent my time on two Second World War fronts: researching and receiving news from my father in Malta, and also from my uncle, a Prisoner of War (POW) in France and Germany.

If you have listened to victims of trauma tell their story for the first time, as I have with students in my schools, you will know that the first time they speak out, there is an emotion, a catharsis, that is never repeated. Police and social workers have told me it is a pity the judges do not hear that first telling. If they did, there would be none of the questioning and cross-questioning as to whether it is the truth.

That is how it was for Dave. He was bitter at having lost 4.5 years of his young life. He chose the title and I think he would have added the number of seconds too. It mattered so much to him and underneath his energetic optimism, it mattered too that somebody would read his account and understand what it was like. When you read this book, you are reading a witness statement.

A memoir like this is not a literary work and I deliberately kept it in Daves own words, so you can hear his voice and listen to his memories. You have to read between the lines, know what he is remembering when he gives a spare tale of hardship and horrors. You have to know, as he did after the war, of the gas chambers and the Holocaust, to understand all that he implies.

Most of us know that Jews (if identified) were segregated from non-Jews but Dave also refers to the distinction between a POW and an Internee, between Royal Air Force and ground soldiers, between nationalities, between officers and Other Ranks, all of which could make life more dangerous or just more uncomfortable.

Dave was sometimes considered to be an Internee, sometimes a POW. During the First and Second World Wars both sides set up internment camps to hold enemy aliens civilians who were believed to be a potential threat and have sympathy with the enemys war objectives. Internees were treated differently to prisoners of war and were usually given more privileges.

In describing a soldiers duty to escape and the systems (i.e. escape routes), Dave notes in a matter-of-fact way that RAF officers were given priority because their training made them more valuable. It takes a few seconds before the reader realises that Dave is describing himself as more expendable, meaning that nobody cared about him and he was more likely to rot in jail, or even die, than were the pilots. These distinctions are not just rungs on a career ladder.

Political and national boundaries change daily in a war but what is important in understanding Daves 4.5 years is to realise that at the beginning of his memoir, France was divided into northern occupied (by the Germans) and southern unoccupied territory. As the memoir makes clear, the south of France was not libre (free) in reality but a German ally, increasingly governed by German diktats. Nowhere in France was safe for a British soldier and nobody could be trusted, whether in a camp or on the run, for reasons that Dave makes clear.

When I read Davina Blakes superb novel, Past Encounters, I was struck by the way shed used POWs true stories to construct a literary novel, giving detail to all that men went through in Daves situation but would never express in such a way. If you read the two chapters she has kindly permitted me to include in this book, youll understand all that Dave implies but does not say; the importance of having a mucker(mate), the bond of shameful deeds, and the reception back home that, You had it easy. I highly recommend Past Encounters as a novel that sheds light on the experience of both the POW and the girl left behind, showing both the damage of war trauma and the hope of healing.

Daves story and Georges story shed light on each other and also on their parents in Scotland, waiting for news. Dave says that maybe I can imagine how his mother felt when he thoughtlessly sent a pair of new boots to his home address to keep them safe. Oh yes, I can imagine worrying every day about my two boys missing in action, and then receiving a pair of boots through the post, with no message. Neither wonder she too was changed by the war!

I hope you will read this little book slowly, aware of the amazing history behind each understatement, in respect for men like Dave and all they went through. Sometimes, he seems to be enjoying himself, putting all those inventive skills to solving problems, but he told me there was not one day went by that he did not think about escaping.