"The next day, Sun 20-5-45, saw us up and out quite early. We drew our rations and after breakfast Bill and I went out to explore. We learnt that no planes had come in the day previous on account of bad weather and judging by the clouds and wind it looked quite hopeless still.
We roamed around encountering someone here and there whom one of us knew. We came across some German planes standing on one side of the airfield and spent some time examining these. One of these in particular was interesting - a Stuka I believe. It had a gun fitted on each piece of the undercarriage which I can only think to call ‘legs’ for the moment. The guns were similar to our Bofor and one on each of the two legs was something new and interesting to us.
There were large workshops around the field and several lorries parked in front. We noticed a large number of Frenchmen there too who were awaiting transport like ourselves. We drew rations for mid-day and were still hoping planes might come in.
Our hopes were raised towards evening when we heard planes approaching and everyone rushed to their groups. There were several groups in front of us and that day 40 planes left but still there were 24 groups in front of us. That was that, we couldn’t go and so went back to our quarters very dejected."
from the PoW diaries of my dad Bert Martin (well I guess he's now, at last, an ex-PoW)
I think those guns that looked like bofor were 20mm cannons - that was standard armament for german fighters besides the 7.62 machine guns.
So your Dad was rescued by Patton's 3rd Army? Not bad at all.
@doblaine That's interesting re the guns & Patton's 3rd Army.. I am pretty ignorant of any technical details of warfare. I also know that for a long time my dad was interested in anything to do with WW2 having been incarcerated & just getting rumours of the main action and not really knowing what was going on.
So your Dad was rescued by Patton's 3rd Army? Not bad at all.
http://www.patton-memorial.cz/en/museum/ with pics of the town in 1945 so thanks.