Originally Posted by Charlatan

Wow. That was really cool. For the most part, we in the west, are treated to WWI and WWII POW films like La Grand Illusion, Stalag 17 and the Great Escape (not to mention Hogans Heroes!) and they are always, with fair reason, from the point of view of the Allies in German POW camps.

I think this would make an awesome setting for a film. German POW captured by the Brits, imprisoned in the north of England. At first he finds it difficult to adjust but eventually while working in the town falls in love with a local girl. The conflict arises when some of his more patriotic fellow prisoners want to escape...

It would, at the very least, make a good BBC drama.

Originally Posted by The POW Camp Website

Rudi Lux was born in Pomerania (which is now part of Poland) in February 1929. In the latter stages of WWII the German forces were depleted and attacked by the Russians to the East & the Americans to the West. All able-bodied males were made to fight for their country. Rudi & his schoolmates were given rudimentary training, an armband to replace the uniform & no weapon! They had to fight but were given their choice of foe. Six weeks later Rudi was captured by the advancing Americans aged 16 & the youngest POW in that conflict. He was in other camps before he came to Harperley in 1946.

After WWII Rudi was unable to return to his home town, now in the Communist Eastern Block, but able to live and work in Britain where he eventually married and settled locally. Even until 1961 Rudi still reported to his local Police Station as a Displaced Person and worked as a farm labourer until then. Rudi’s input has been instrumental in recent past, present and future plans at Harperley. He became unwell at Christmas 2003 and consulted his GP only to be diagnosed with a terminal illness from which he subsequently died, 11 th March 2004, in Morpeth. Because he never repatriated Rudi saw Harperley as part of the Germany he remembered. His ashes are scattered here in RUDI’S ROSE GARDEN which is dedicated to his memory.