Description
Object description
Handwritten and illustrated diary (`Tagebuch', in German, 76pp – with typed transcription, 24pp, and English translation, 26pp) for the period January 1944 – December 1946, recording his initial call-up for military service in the German Army with Grenadier-Ersatz-Bataillon (Grenadier Reserve Battalion) 31 at Plauen, active service in northern France with particular reference to his experiences at the time of the Normandy landings until he was made a prisoner of war, June – July 1944, the first stages of his captivity in POW Camps 16 (Aberlady, Scotland) and 18 (Featherstone Park, Haltwhistle, Northumberland) before transfer to Camp 78 at Braintree, Essex, in September 1944, his hospitalisation there with jaundice, noting the frequent passage of V-1 flying bombs over the camp and nearby impacts, German-style Christmas celebrations behind barbed wire, agricultural labour in the surrounding sugar beet fields, receipt of mail and parcels from home, continued captivity after the end of the war in May 1945 when the POWs were also billeted on farms in the area, the arrival in camp of German POWs from the USA and Canada (March-April 1946), the diary ending at the close of 1946 with Wendler still in Camp 78 and working the land under the supervision of a local farmer (noting that he "became a free man" again in September 1947; Wendler subsequently married and settled in England, his original diary also contains poems and other writings, including an account of a return visit to Germany in 1954).
Content description
Handwritten and illustrated diary (`Tagebuch', in German, 76pp – with typed transcription, 24pp, and English translation, 26pp) for the period January 1944 – December 1946, recording his initial call-up for military service in the German Army with Grenadier-Ersatz-Bataillon (Grenadier Reserve Battalion) 31 at Plauen, active service in northern France with particular reference to his experiences at the time of the Normandy landings until he was made a prisoner of war, June – July 1944, the first stages of his captivity in POW Camps 16 (Aberlady, Scotland) and 18 (Featherstone Park, Haltwhistle, Northumberland) before transfer to Camp 78 at Braintree, Essex, in September 1944, his hospitalisation there with jaundice, noting the frequent passage of V-1 flying bombs over the camp and nearby impacts, German-style Christmas celebrations behind barbed wire, agricultural labour in the surrounding sugar beet fields, receipt of mail and parcels from home, continued captivity after the end of the war in May 1945 when the POWs were also billeted on farms in the area, the arrival in camp of German POWs from the USA and Canada (March-April 1946), the diary ending at the close of 1946 with Wendler still in Camp 78 and working the land under the supervision of a local farmer (noting that he "became a free man" again in September 1947; Wendler subsequently married and settled in England, his original diary also contains poems and other writings, including an account of a return visit to Germany in 1954).
History note
Cataloguer SWW