Marsden, H G
Horace George (Bootch) Marsden
From: Michael Marsden
Sent: Tuesday, July 15, 2014
Could you please add my father’s name to those you have listed as being Prisoners of War at Lamsdorf during WW2: He was Horace George (Bootch) Marsden.
My father, known as Bootch Marsden, was a South African, with the armored cars of the 7th Reconnaissance Regiment in North Africa. He was captured in 1942 and shipped across the Mediterranean to Italy. After the Italians surrendered, he escaped into the countryside but was recaptured by the Germans in a vineyard. He was railed to Germany ending up in Lamsdorf.
With the advance of the Russian army the Germans forced them to march to the West in the dead of winter skirting Dresden and eventually being released by the American 3rd Army on Easter Sunday 1945. The Americans treated him really well and I still have the fleece lined leather jacket they gave him. His first meal was porridge and when I visit the United States, I am always instructed to bring him back the porridge the Americans gave him on that Easter Sunday (Aunt Jemima’s Porridge).
He was flown to England and recuperated at Brighton for a number of months. During this time, he met my mother in the little English village of Gnosall and she followed him out to Cape Town, South Africa, where they were married and raised a family. My father died a few years ago aged 92.
Although he rarely spoke about his experiences as a Prisoner of War they shaped him in many ways: he could never abide wasted food to him it was a crime, he was always sympathetic and generous to the poor and hungry, a jar of Marmite was cherished for its Vitamin B, he donated regularly to the Red Cross, he was a great collector of twine, wire, string and other cast off articles that may be useful, he was appalled by the treatment of the Russian prisoners of war, he retained a lifelong admiration for the Americans for the generosity with which they treated him on his release and he frequently spoke of the debt we owed to the Russians for their huge sacrifices in helping defeat Nazi Germany.
He made some lifelong friends as a Prisoner of War and was in contact with them frequently until regretfully they all recently passed on. His friends from his Prisoner of War days were Cyril Medley and John Slater
I trust this is of some interest to the readers of your site. I discovered the site recently and shared it with my sisters and my daughters. We appreciate the effort made to preserve the memory of the Prisoners of War of Lamsdorf.
Suggest an improvment to this record