German POWs in Herefordshire Were Sent to Pick the Hops — Most Never Wanted to Leave
His Majesty's Guests
247 views
#ww2 #germanpows #prisonersofwar
At half past five on a wet morning in October 1944, a lorry turned off the Hereford road and stopped at the gate of Camp 27, outside Ledbury. In the back was a German corporal who had come through Normandy and the cage at Kempton Park, and who did not know whether his father's workshop in Bamberg was still standing.
Every film on this channel is in one place, in the order they were made — if this one was worth your time, start here: Every Film — His Majesty's Guests
Anton Reiss and Walter Peart are invented. The camp, the hop yards, the rules and the numbers around them are exact, and the sources are below.
0:00 The lorry at the gate of Camp 27
1:07 Taken in Normandy: how German POWs reached Britain
3:23 Italians built the camp first, in 1942
6:51 What he expected, and what he got
8:15 Roll call, screening and one word on a form
12:28 Bread for England, hops for Herefordshire
14:44 Ledbury, Bosbury and two miles of lane
16:17 Six weeks of silence, then a kitchen table
18:48 What the files count and never describe
21:00 The war ends and nothing happens
23:30 Mines, bombs and the Convention Britain broke
25:33 The winter of 1947 and the snow on the hop poles
26:46 Repatriation, and the offer to stay
29:18 What going home meant in 1948
30:56 The school on the Southend, and the cup of tea
CAMP 27. Italians built it first, in 1942, and two years later the Germans arrived at a machine that was already running. One of the Italians is buried in Ledbury cemetery; he was twenty-four.
HOPS AND BREAD. In the years of compulsory cropping, when English fields were ploughed for grain, Herefordshire's hop yards were kept. Beer was protected on purpose.
TEA. Tea was rationed at two ounces a person a week — about twenty cups. A farmer who poured one for a German prisoner was pouring it out of his own week.
THE WAGE. A farmer paid the government close to the agricultural wage for a prisoner's labour. The prisoner got a small allowance in camp tokens worth nothing outside the wire.
STAYING. The war ended in May 1945 and the men did not go home. Most were still in Britain in 1947. By the spring of 1948 Camp 27 was emptying, and about twenty-four thousand German prisoners chose to stay.
PHOTOGRAPHS. Imperial War Museums, Geograph and Wikimedia Commons images, plus public-domain archive film. Where the archive held nothing, the frame is an AI reconstruction and is not archival photography. The faces of Reiss and Peart are generated. I would rather tell you than let you find out.
#ww2stories #ww2documentary #worldwar2 #militaryhistory #untoldww2stories
1 Comments
German POWs in Herefordshire Were Sent to Pick the Hops — Most Never Wanted to Leave
His Majesty's Guests
247 views
#ww2 #germanpows #prisonersofwar
At half past five on a wet morning in October 1944, a lorry turned off the Hereford road and stopped at the gate of Camp 27, outside Ledbury. In the back was a German corporal who had come through Normandy and the cage at Kempton Park, and who did not know whether his father's workshop in Bamberg was still standing.
Every film on this channel is in one place, in the order they were made — if this one was worth your time, start here: Every Film — His Majesty's Guests
Anton Reiss and Walter Peart are invented. The camp, the hop yards, the rules and the numbers around them are exact, and the sources are below.
0:00 The lorry at the gate of Camp 27
1:07 Taken in Normandy: how German POWs reached Britain
3:23 Italians built the camp first, in 1942
6:51 What he expected, and what he got
8:15 Roll call, screening and one word on a form
12:28 Bread for England, hops for Herefordshire
14:44 Ledbury, Bosbury and two miles of lane
16:17 Six weeks of silence, then a kitchen table
18:48 What the files count and never describe
21:00 The war ends and nothing happens
23:30 Mines, bombs and the Convention Britain broke
25:33 The winter of 1947 and the snow on the hop poles
26:46 Repatriation, and the offer to stay
29:18 What going home meant in 1948
30:56 The school on the Southend, and the cup of tea
CAMP 27. Italians built it first, in 1942, and two years later the Germans arrived at a machine that was already running. One of the Italians is buried in Ledbury cemetery; he was twenty-four.
HOPS AND BREAD. In the years of compulsory cropping, when English fields were ploughed for grain, Herefordshire's hop yards were kept. Beer was protected on purpose.
TEA. Tea was rationed at two ounces a person a week — about twenty cups. A farmer who poured one for a German prisoner was pouring it out of his own week.
THE WAGE. A farmer paid the government close to the agricultural wage for a prisoner's labour. The prisoner got a small allowance in camp tokens worth nothing outside the wire.
STAYING. The war ended in May 1945 and the men did not go home. Most were still in Britain in 1947. By the spring of 1948 Camp 27 was emptying, and about twenty-four thousand German prisoners chose to stay.
PHOTOGRAPHS. Imperial War Museums, Geograph and Wikimedia Commons images, plus public-domain archive film. Where the archive held nothing, the frame is an AI reconstruction and is not archival photography. The faces of Reiss and Peart are generated. I would rather tell you than let you find out.
#ww2stories #ww2documentary #worldwar2 #militaryhistory #untoldww2stories
Anton Reiss and Walter Peart are invented — a German prisoner and a Herefordshire farmer that the record makes plausible, not two named men. Camp 27, the hop yards around Ledbury, the tea ration, the camp tokens and the twenty-four thousand who stayed are all real, and the sources are in the description.
If someone in your family picked hops in Herefordshire, took a prisoner on at harvest, or lived near a camp — tell me where, and what they said about it. That is where the next film comes from.