~ Chapter Twenty-Eight ~
Capture, Liberation & Tragedy

As an Army Reservist, Sydney was required to rejoin The Buffs shortly before the outbreak of the Second World War in 1939.  In September of that year, he was among the many thousands of soldiers to be sent to France as part of the British Expeditionary Force.  At the fall of France in 1940, he was captured by the Germans near Dunkirk.  For the rest of the War, he was interned in the Stalag 383 Prisoner of War Camp in Germany and used as forced labour in a nearby quarry.

            Stalag 383 was situated in Hohenfels at the foot of the Bavarian Alps.  To illustrate the hardships that Sydney must have endured there, this extract comes from Barbed Wire: Memories of Stalag 383, M.N. McKibbin’s acclaimed account of life inside the camp from 1943 onwards:
The ‘Siberia of Deutschland’ the Huns call it - and, Nazis or not, they're pretty right.

             From my top bunk, I can just see through the frost-smeared windows of the hut. Yes, the snowclad pines on the valley slopes, the grim silhouettes of the watch towers, the massive double fences of barbed wire, and the ramshackle rows of icebound huts, do have a touch of the cinema Siberia.

             According to Goebbels' guide books, the Stalag is situated in a Bavarian valley, about ninety miles from Munich. According to six thousand of us, the camp is stuck in a frozen swamp, goddam miles from any where. We expect a prison camp to be depressing. This place exceeds our expectations.

             For the cold in here is a cold to chill the heart. While my fingers will hold the pencil, let me solemnly write down that all Hun prison camps are refrigerators - refrigerators, of course, minus grub - but that for sheer mind-numbing, soul-shrivelling, paralysing cold, Hohenfels, this winter, outfreezes the lot.

             This place - Hut Sixteen, Nine Company - is typical of the four hundred others inside the cage. The asbestos lining of the walls is coated with ice. So is the roof. There are icicles on the few remaining hut beams, and there are cakes of snow and ice on the floor. Suspended grotesquely from lines all ways across the room are shirts and pants frozen as stiff as boards. Some of them have been 'drying' for weeks.

             There are fourteen men still breathing in here - most of them, head under blankets, barely doing that. We're all N.C.O.s - genuine or self-promoted - we all refuse to work for Jerry - and now, at least, we couldn't really work for anybody. I've said we're cold: I'll add we're hungry. There are times when understatement saves a lot of lurid words.

             For the camp has reached low ebb. Out of parcels; out of fags; out of fuel - and out of action. Organized activities have had to go. The school is now a barrack-room; the concert hall a hospital. The sports field is closed; the icy roads unwalkable. None but a fool would use the gym. Some are too weak to stand on their pins.

             So here, hutbound, we stick, counting the hours crawl on to soup, and killing time as best we may. We're not downhearted - much; but we're empty bellied, razor-nerved, and sick with hope deferred. We've lived here all our lives - and the world outside the wire is just a myth.
            Ken recalls his Uncle Syd after he was liberated in 1945:
He weighed 4 stones when he returned to England.  He said that he worked as a slave labourer and his life had been saved by a German crane driver who had taken pity on him and had shared his sandwiches with him.
            Another relative of Sydney’s, granddaughter Tara Murray Phillips from Amarillo in Texas, also recalls the story told to her by her mother, Inez:
She remembers coming home from school one day in 1945 and someone jumping out from behind the door to surprise her...she was terrified and ran several blocks before they could catch her.  It was her father returning home from the POW camp and she says he looked like a human skeleton.
            But Sydney’s reunion with Sybille and Inez would be short-lived.  After only two months, he left them to live with another woman, whose real name was Florence Mary Hayward, but who called herself Gloria.  It appears that Sydney had already begun a relationship with Gloria before he went to France and had kept in touch with her while he was a POW.

            Sybille is said to have been devastated, repeatedly declaring that she could not live without Sydney.  At one point in March 1946, she managed to persuade Sydney to return home to discuss things with her.  Wanting to play on his sympathies, she staged a suicide attempt just before he was due to arrive.  Unfortunately, Sydney was late and Sybille perished, aged only thirty-six.  This is how Inez described that awful event to Tara:
My Mom has always told us that she was the one to find her mother dead after returning home from school.  She said she had a pipe from a gas heater inside her mouth.  Mom would have been 10 years old, turning 11 in 3 months more.  She says it was her mother’s third attempt at suicide and that she was released to go home each time ... just to try again.
            Seemingly undeterred by Sybille’s tragic end, Sydney returned to Gloria, with whom he would spend the best part of the next thirty years.