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River South Tyne

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markkeville

Premium (World), Newcastle upon Tyne

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Airboll 08/11/2020 22:41
Beautiful autumn impressions kindly regards Helmut
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- markkeville 08/11/2020 23:19
  Yes.
  It is a very nice view from this old railway bridge.
  I will tell you something interesting.
  The little green field, or space in the upper right of this picture is the beginning of the site of a world war 2 prisoner of war camp.
  
  Extract below.
  
  Camp 18, Featherstone Park near Haltwhistle was opened in 1944 to house American soldiers arriving as part of the Normandy invasions and later became one of the largest POW camps in Britain, with two hundred huts over four compounds that could house up to four thousand officers and six hundred German orderlies. The camp held a broad range of prisoners from the German Army, Navy, U-boat Officers and Luftwaffe pilots, as well as diplomats and bureaucrats were represented amongst the camps growing population in the mid to late 1940s.
  The POWs of Camp 18 also produced their own German newspaper ‘Die Zeit am Tyne’ that was printed on the presses of the the Hexham Courant. The Northumberland Archives hold original copies along with some transcriptions of issues one to six of the newspaper. Alongside the German newspaper and community work, prisoners in the Camp also held stage plays, radio broadcasts and football matches.
  
  You can still see the remains of some of the POW buildings along this stretch of the river.
  
  It seems to me that there were many worse places than this to sit out the later stages of the war.
  
  Mark.
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- Airboll 09/11/2020 21:21
  Mark,thanks for this interesting lesson in hitorical war facts. But it is good to learn again that nature is stronger than everything else. Nature always wins.
  Greetings Helmut
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- markkeville 09/11/2020 22:48
  Yes - it was a long lecture. (Apologies)
  It seems to me that history is written on to the landscape - including the Roman Wall, medieval castles, old railway lines - and features like the World War 2 fortifications along the coast in England.
  They all take a long time to fade away
  Mark.
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