The interviewee's father, Alec George Blakeman, was born in Cowley and served in Oxf & Bucks Light Infantry 1939. He was captured at Dunkirk, and spent five and half years in Silesia, now Poland. The only thing he brought back from war was a tin (pictured) which the interviewee finds spooky. It contains a POW tag is STAG VIIIB, then changed to 344, and what he thinks was Blakeman's WWII cap badge. Blakeman marched back and escaped, as a lot did. He linked up with Americans. Having been a PoW for over 5 years, he obtained a reasonable grasp of German so was used as an interpreter. On liberation, the Americans overfed him and made him very ill, having eaten turnips, etc. He was generally better fed than others as he was supervised by Polish guards, and was a young, fit guy in his early twenties. The interviewee thinks he got better food than some others did. The interviewee wondered if he had joined Territorial Army, but determined it was in fact straight Oxf Bucks. The battalion is unknown. At the time of joining, he was twenty, and was working for the Co-Op (as a grocer). He volunteered to join up straight away at the Cowley Barracks; he was born very close to the barracks. He couldn't go home but could almost see his house. He went off straight away, and was captured in June, before his twenty-first birthday; his birthday was 11 June 1918 . He was captured at 'Cassel', 5 miles from Dunkirk or a bit more than that; he was captured in the town. He was not wounded, and surrendered there. Little was said, but they were surrounded; since so many were captured, the order was just to surrender. Blakeman escaped on the march, on the way. He was hungry. He did say that it was the time to escape easily because people were dropping, including guards. He didn't think the guards would shoot them. Lots of the guards were impressed Poles, and he had an affection for them because they treated him well. He was found by the advancing Americans. As the Americans were capturing Germans and releasing Allied prisoners, they used ...