A Prisoner Looks Back
Charles Edie – WW2 Commando
By Susan Higgins
Dear family,
I’m going off – “don’t know where, don’t know when” – on a new official mission with another officer and about 30 men. It is terribly hush-hush.
This is taken from a letter written by Charles Edie, written 19th April, 1940.
Charles was born in Aberdeen in 1916, though much of his early childhood was spent in Cape Town, South Africa, where his father worked as a university professor. After the death of his father in 1927, the family returned to Aberdeen, where Charles eventually studied theology at the university. However, his studies were cut short when, at the outbreak of World War 2, Charles volunteered to serve in the army. He became a lieutenant in The King’s Own Scottish Borderers and was immediately posted to the Regimental Headquarters at Berwick-Upon-Tweed. Despite the gravity of the global situation, there must have been an element of romance amidst the wartime atmosphere – Charles met a young woman at Berwick called Eileen Kirk, who was serving as an ambulance driver in the Territorial Women’s Transport Service. They fell in love and became engaged in February 1940.
Separation has always been a part of war, so it will have come as little surprise that, only two months after the engagement, Charles received news that he was to be sent overseas. What he may not have expected was that it was to be part of No1 Independent Company, the forerunners of the Commandos. They were to be sent on what was to become the ill-fated defence of Norway and Charles, being a fluent German speaker, was snapped up to be part of this group of chosen men.
Dear family,
A short final note to say that the big move has come and very suddenly, so much so that only an immediate reply will get here in time. It is a special mission and we are selected men (only two officers from KOSB) to do a job which has never been attempted before. We are No1 Independent Company in the Allied Forces. It is all very exciting and dangerous work and we have been told to make our wills. I have made a little code with Eileen and she will let you know more definitely when we go. If we are a success other similar companies will be formed, so you see we have a responsibility on our young shoulders.
Now you look after yourselves. Mum had better get OK immediately – she seems to be quite a good patient. All my love and many, many thanks for all you have done for me in the past,
Charlie
It was not to be a success and, in May 1940, Charles was wounded and taken as a prisoner to a Norwegian hospital for treatment. Once recovered, he was taken to a Prisoner of War camp in Germany. There, he created many diaries of his experiences and feelings in confinement. The diaries are small and written mainly in pencil and Charles’ handwriting (which is quite difficult to read even in his letters home) is tiny and faint. Fortunately for us, he went through all of his diaries when he eventually made it back onto British soil at the end of the war, ruminated on his experiences further, and compiled a typescript version of diaries-turned-memoirs, entitling them ‘A Prisoner Looks Back’.
How quickly one forgets. Five years ‘in the bag’ and how remote it all seems now. 20% of one’s life spent behind barbed wire, and yet now, looking back, it is all a bad dream, a nightmare, a thing of the past, an experience never, we hope, to be repeated. And yet surely, after all, some good must have come out of it. They say that even the worst of us has some redeeming quality, the murderer, hard bitten and unrepentant, who loves animals, the double-crossing spy who caresses the violin. And because I am convinced in my own mind, that I have learned something of inestimable worth as a result of prolonged captivity, I have decided to try and discover for myself just what it is, and so I invite you to accompany me along the shady paths of these inconsequential meanderings, journeying where I know not, but resting awhile in some sequestered spot where memory lingers.
Charles typed these memoirs, based heavily on his diaries kept in the POW camp, soon after his return home in 1945. The prisoners were liberated by the American Army. He said of that time that, for him, release did not feel like a time “of wild buffoonery”, but a time of further contemplation and processing of all that had happened over the previous half decade. Indeed, he never even showed the memoir to anyone. It was only discovered after his death and his family realised its value as both a record of his personal experience and that of other prisoners of war. He had returned home from the war, typed over 100 pages of his memories and reflections, and then put them in a box in the attic where they remained for the rest of his life; the purpose in writing it was not for public scrutiny, but to unravel his experiences during that time, to revisit the ground, to give himself some sense of catharsis.
His writing tells us much about the day-to-day activities in the camp, the boredom, the loneliness, but also the difficulties that arise when confined with a group of people you would otherwise not choose to be with. He speaks about the things they would do to keep their bodies and minds active, and also the difficulty of feeling lonely but never being able to actually have any privacy. One of the things Charles kept with him through his time in the camp (and also brought home with him, eventually ending up in our archive), was a book about Bridge playing. He seems to have devoured the book with so much enthusiasm that he became known as an expert Bridge player.
After the war, Charles became a huge asset to the Church of Scotland. He was ordained in 1946 and became known for his faithfulness and ability to relate to people – perhaps a skill that had stayed with him from his time of imprisonment. He was a gifted preacher, a tone which is evident in his writing. He clearly never forgot the lessons he learnt during that period and spent his life preaching peace and understanding. World War 2 may have been over, but Charles recognised the need to continually strive for better human relations, on both a global and individual scale, in a world where there will never truly be peace.
Too often our sense of values becomes distorted as though in a hall of mirrors, and the only sure way of regaining the true perspective is to re-adjust ourselves. This can be done only by a reconstruction undertaken wholeheartedly when removed from malicious influences which turn us aside from our path as steel destroys the accuracy of a compass. And however true such sentiments might have been some years ago, the need for such drastic action is becoming more imperative in view of the deterioration in national and international affairs.
And so I come to what I consider to be the most profitable lesson acquired from those dark shades, and that is the overwhelming need for TOLERANCE today.
Everyone copes with trauma differently and, for Charles, it seems that quiet contemplation was what he needed, along with time to enjoy the simple pleasures of freedom.
I wanted to say goodbye to it all, not to think of Germany and camp life. It had been over-present for such a period and now I could well do without it, if I was allowed to, but that didn’t always happen. Most people were very understanding, and realised that I should be allowed to go my own way, it was no good forcing him. Personally I couldn’t stick crowds, the very idea of going to a picture house was loathsome, I needed the open spaces, to get away from people, to feel that I had some privacy of my own, and could do what I liked and when I liked. To know that ablutions could be attended to in private, that a bathroom door had a key, and you could be alone, to be in private for the first time for literally years. The last time I had been in a bath had been in Norway, in hospital, when an attendant had to help me, encumbered as I was with plaster. Not to be shouted at was wonderful, to listen to people talking in quiet natural tones, was bliss after the guttural bellowings, even if their bark might be worse than their bite. Home meant peace and quite and that was what I needed and got. No crowds, no noise, “far from the madding crowd’s ignoble strife”, that was what the doctor advised, and fortunately it was available.
The need for quiet contemplation is echoed in the fact that he never showed anyone his manuscript – a fantastic accomplishment of writing and memory, only to be read by others after his death. Charles Edie died on 28th January 2001, only four weeks after the death of his dear wife Eileen. They had been happily married since 1945.
The journey was over, we had arrived, safe and sound, requiring merely minor adjustments, all of which could easily be accomplished with kindness and in a matter of time. No longer a mere number, XB 934, but a person, real and living.
