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Private J. D. Caves: The Long Journey Home

Foreword: — Tracing Grandad's Route

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Foreword:
Tracing Grandad's Route

My late grandfather, John Denis Caves, known as Denis, and as Grandad to me and my brothers and cousins, fought for New Zealand in World War II. This was something of which I was immensely proud while growing up, without knowing any specifics about what that actually meant or what his experiences might have been. As children, my brothers and I played with an old wooden rifle and a wooden Tommy gun but I didn't realise that these were the types of weapons Grandad used in the war.

The project to research Grandad's war experiences commenced in 2002 with a stack of wartime letters faithfully kept all these years by my grandmother, Jean Caves. Passages transcribed from these letters form the heart of this work. To complement them I've borrowed liberally from a number of published works, particularly the New Zealand Official War History which has provided much detail about the exploits of Grandad's 24 Battalion and the events relating to New Zealand prisoners of war.

One of the things I most wanted to understand about Grandad's wartime experiences was to know where he'd been, and for me that meant being able to trace his route on a map. Identifying the route, a task that at first might seem so simple, surely just a matter of reading off placenames and dates from his letters, proved to be one of the most challenging.

Not only is handwriting difficult to read 60 years on, yielding ambiguous spellings, but sometimes the place names Grandad recorded may have been approximations based on what he heard, rather than the correct spelling. Even then, placenames in modern day Poland and the Czech Republic are changed from the 1940s. Many of the POW locations were not major cities or towns, but obscure railway junctions or villages. Complicating the task further, but only to be expected, some placenames relate to more than one location.

At the outset I knew little more than that Grandad had fought in North Africa, been captured before the famous Allied victory at El Alamein, as a prisoner of war had been marched around Europe, and returned to New Zealand at the end of the war. I had heard it mentioned that he was variously in Germany, Italy and Poland and I wanted to know precisely where he had been.

Now I know that Grandad first served in Fiji, before sailing to North Africa, where he fought at the famous Battle of Sidi Rezegh in November 1941, narrowly escaping with his life. For the first six months of 1942 his brigade was assigned to northern Syria, guarding the Turkish frontier. In July 1942 and back in Egypt, Grandad's brigade was thrust into the Alamein Line and fought at the Second Battle of Ruweisat Ridge where he was captured.

To trace Grandad's travels as a POW, we collated a list of placenames, dates and other information such as POW camp numbers, and sequenced them chronologically. Through a process of research, poring over maps and a fortunately-timed visit to Poland, I have been able to determine a reasonably accurate representation of the route Grandad must have taken.

For example, Stalag 344, where Grandad was held for a time in 1944, was one of the largest POW camps and located at Lamsdorf in Silesia, yet Lamsdorf does not appear on any modern map. The reason is that Silesia, part of Germany up until 1945, was awarded to Poland at the end of the war, in recompense for Polish territory to the east which Russia claimed. Silesia today has Polish placenames, and in the case of Lamsdorf the nearby village is renamed Łambinowice, pronounced, roughly, "Wambinovitz".

However, understanding that Lamsdorf is now called Łambinowice didn't answer the riddle as to the location of Stalag 344 because Łambinowice also didn't appear on any maps I had available. Two breakthroughs solved the mystery. Firstly, I discovered the website for The Central Prisoner-of-War Museum in Łambinowice which described its location as being near the city of Opole. Secondly, I stumbled upon a detailed Polish roadmap in a Krakow bookstore, unfolded it, found Opole on the map, and the nearby name Łambinowice leapt out at me.

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I bought the map, rented a car, and two days later navigated my way around the back roads of Silesia to the little country village of Łambinowice and located the museum on the site of Stalag 344. The challenge in locating even such a major landmark as Stalag 344 illustrates the difficulties I faced.

Having identified the main POW camps where Grandad was held captive 1942-1944, one big challenge remained. That was to trace his route from when his camp was evacuated in January 1945 to his liberation by American soldiers hundreds of miles to the west in Bavaria in April. Most of this distance was travelled on foot with little food or shelter, during one of the coldest winters on record. Called The Last Escape by author Nicholls, many POWs referred to it simply as the death march.

Books such as the Official History of New Zealand in the Second World War and The Last Escape include maps and descriptions of the general routes taken by typical groups of POWs during these evacuation marches to the west in 1945. But few offer any specifics as to where Grandad actually marched, or shed any light on the mysterious placenames Grandad recorded in a notebook during these months: Altendorf, Runewold, Jagsdorf, Schmudou, Paslawitz, Sternau, Lellau, Muglitz, Regetz.

My Rosetta stone was the 1883 Ravenstein Map and Gazetteer of the German Empire, which included practically every town, village and parish of the 19th century German empire. I knew I was onto something when I found this map and saw Lamsdorf clearly marked. Knowing that POWs walked approximately 20km each day, I was able to trace, day by day, the early weeks of Grandad's march matching his recorded placenames to likely localities on the Ravenstein Map. Thus Ronewald matched to Konewald, Schmudou to Schmitzau, Lellau to Littau, and so on. Some of my matches may be erroneous, and in fact a number of placenames I have been unable to identify: Bismark, Rattovity, Radim, Bastawitz, Hosten. But the placenames I traced for the weeks immediately after evacuation mark a clear and steady route westward from Oderburg near Stalag VIIIB at Teschen.

It is difficult to pinpoint exactly where Grandad was during most of March 1945, perhaps the darkest period of the 'death march', but I was able to pick up the trail again in April in Bavaria in the last weeks before his liberation.

So now, to the best of my ability we have Grandad's route traced on a map of central Europe. In the process I learned more than I would have liked to about the terrible experiences he must have endured as a POW, particularly in that final westwards march before liberation. But I feel a mystery has been solved.

I would like to acknowledge the assistance of my grandmother Jean Caves, uncle Michael Caves and mother Judi Grey in helping me recount Grandad's war experiences. Insights shared by Jean and Michael together with scanned documents and transcriptions provided by Judi enabled me to piece the puzzle together.

This volume is a loving tribute to my grandparents, Gran and Grandad, Jean and Denis Caves.

Paul Grey

December 2004