Ian Henry Duncan 1911-1979 Sgt RASC-ACC WW2 POW 1942 - 1945

These pages are dedicated to the memory of my father who kept a war log/ diary detailing his experiences as a POW of both the Italians and the Germans during World War 2.

As a child growing up in the 50's and 60's I was sort of aware of our father's wartime experiences . From my childish perspective I'd placed him in the hollywood comic book world portrayed in The Great Escape , Stalag 17 and the like. Dad rarely mentioned the subject and it wasn't until his death in 1979 that I was able to look carefully over his diary . Brief as the text content is the diary clearly outlines a story more interesting than film versions of WW2 often show. Basic survival, food, companionship and relief from boredom were plainly the issues that confronted our father over 3 years of captivity.

Dad was 30 when this happened again as a child that seemed ancient, fully grown. Though now as an adult of 47 I can look back and see 30 as the time when a young (ish ) person is settling down establishing themselves and often enough immersed in a family of their own. Having all that taken away and replaced with being a POW must have been devastating.

In brief , our father enlisted , trained was shipped to South Africa then to North Africa , was captured almost immediately. Shipped to Italy, nearly killed en route by our own navy in a torpedo attack, swims to safety unlike many others ( 146 lost out of 300 ), moved about Italy. Escaped for 4 weeks, recaptured, moved ahead of the advancing allies. Then just as liberation seemed likely with the Italian surrender, relocated to Germany by the ever efficient Germans who took over the camps. He spent the remainder of the war in Germany surviving a further allied attempt at death by friendly fire ( USA aerial bombing this time ) finally being liberated by the American 30th Infantry Division, 9th Army, on 12th April 1945.

The log appears to have been acquired towards the end of his captivity and the main narrative part is written all of a piece at the beginning. The bulk of the rest of the diary being made up of drawings , pasted pictures ,clippings and other ephemera.

It seemed to me like a story worth sharing , brief on detail but full of suggested drama.
I've got plenty of books about WW2 full of charts, orders of battle, the big picture. My fathers war log and others like it fill in the details, the ' what was it really like ' parts.
I dare say there are thousands of records like my fathers, stored away, in attics, trunks, in piles of family history. Personally I'd like to see more of them shared and the internet makes the perfect medium.So if this site encourages you get scanning !

In order to make the log readable online I've scanned each page or section and placed it on a page of its own . Each page is then represented by an icon , just click on the icon to load and read the page..
Some of the pages will have added content ( when I get around to adding it ! ) above the log page .You'll notice that there are pages not there, apart from a couple with personal info, there were many pages with nothing in/on them.

Finally I've made the whole log available as a single zip file which you can download , unzip and read offline at you leisure. More details on the Zip page.

One specific page I've not put online is a list of names and addresses of fellow POWS from England.Publishing addresses didn't seem like a smart idea , however if anyone is or is related to anyone in the log I'd love to hear from them .To that end I've added a page which gives the names and countries of all those mentioned .

I've attached a guestbook to the site please leave an entry if you visit the site. If you've any conection to or information about the people ,camps ,places events mentioned please let me know . E.mail address is post@ww2log.co.uk.

On the links page there are ( or will be ) addresses of some web-sites and or organisations of relevance and interest. I would welcome any other suggestions for relevant links , also happy to put reciprocal links to other peoples sites about members of their family and wartime experiences.

I hope you find the site of interest and maybe, like me, you'll end up counting your blessings that you live in such comparatively peaceful times.

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