Flight Sergeant Winston Churchill Parker

Winston Churchill Parker was born in Calgary, Alberta, Canada, on July 31, 1918, and enlisted in the Royal Canadian Air Force on Sept. 4, 1939. Sergeant Parker, serial number 60366, who trained as a wireless air gunner, went overseas in June 1941. On his 13^th operation in a Royal Air Force Wellington bomber, he was shot down over Germany on April 9, 1942. Captured a day later, Parker, who was 23 years old, was interrogated and transported to Stalag VIIIB on April 15, 1942.

Parker had spent almost three years in the reprisal camp before the advancing Russian army caused his German captors to open the gates of Stalag VIIIB. On Jan. 22, 1945, the POWs were marched in columns of 1,500 men. Parker walked approximately 1,000 kilometers, in all kinds of weather including sub-zero temperatures in the Death March.

The POWs were herded like animals with German guns pointed at them continuously. In weakened physical condition from years of incarceration, they no longer received Red Cross packages to boost their frail health.

Some nights the Germans would bring in big tubs of soup called keebles. Other nights, they’d get a ration of bread, but still other nights there was no food. With so little to eat, they were starving to death.

The raw edibles the POWs scrounged from the fields and barns caused terrible dysentery. Adding to their misery, all the prisoners became lousy after Russian prisoners joined the column.

In mid-February 1945, the POWs were fairly close to Dresden when approximately 1,300 Allied aircraft dropped more than 3,900 tons of high-explosive bombs and incendiary devices on the city, the biggest single raid of the war. After ordering them to lie down in a field during the fray, the German guards kept their guns trained on the POWs. For days afterward as they marched on, the prisoners watched the flames of Dresden burning on the horizon. Sadly, the POWs left many comrades dead on the side of the road as the conditions worsened.

Because the Germans considered the POWs the lowest form of life, they were kicked off the road whenever they met others. Once, when a group of about 300 Jewish women and girls dressed in gunnysacks were herded toward them, the females were forced off the road to let the POWs pass. Afterward, the POWs wondered if the women and girls were marching to a death camp because Lamsdorf, the train station closest to Stalag VIIIB, also served the Jewish extermination camp Auschwitz.

The POWs awoke on April 11, 1945, to find their guards had fled. General Patton’s army liberated the surviving POWs like Parker. The American GIs kindly offered the pathetic prisoners K-rations, but that made the POWs became terribly ill because they could no longer digest fortified food.

When Parker arrived at a Canadian hospital near London to recuperate from the ordeal, he weighed less than 98 pounds. His weight had been approximately 175 pounds when he had enlisted in 1939. Feeling lucky to be alive, Parker made up his mind to make the most of his life, which he has done.

References

Read more about Parker’s story in his autobiography, “Saddles and Service,” which is available on Amazon. Proceeds benefit student scholarships.

Parker’s route and description of the march are from transcribed oral interviews that he reviewed for accuracy.

Parker reviewed and approved this copyrighted © overview prepared by Elaine Thomas, who assisted him in telling his life story in the book “Saddles and Service.” For more information, visit her website: www.elainethomaswriter.com

More

His account of life in Stalag VIIIB, recorded when he was 100, can be viewed on https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nKMexEMTmT8

His account of the long march, recorded when he was 100, can be viewed on https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cxtLrPL6gVo