War and fleece: the amazing story of POW Jim Simpson
Jim Simpson was a dyed-in-the-wool Aussie – and he knitted a rug to prove it while behind bars in a German prisoner-of-war camp. Sue Smethurst tells his fascinating story.
Jim Simpson was so determined to be the very last person to hold the precious rug he knitted when he was a prisoner of war during World War II that when the local historical society put the fragile knit with its intricate map of Australia on display, the then 93-year-old kept his hand on it until the very last moment before the curator sealed the glass frame forever.
“I reckon if his house burned down that would’ve been the one thing Jim grabbed,” says the late soldier’s lifelong friend, Angus McLean. “So it was a pretty special day for him when the museum put it on display. He had tears in his eyes and he got very emotional. He was very proud.”
The rug is one of the most popular attractions at the Man From Snowy River Museum in Corryong, near the NSW and Victoria border, but the story of how it was made is arguably the greater work of art.
Hearing the call of war
With enlistment posters shouting, “Let’s Go – Wings for Victory”, it’s no wonder Jim and thousands of young Aussie men like him raced to the frontline of World War II.
At the grand old age of 21, James O. Simpson, from Corryong, in Northern Victoria, was full of Anzac spirit when he arrived in Europe in 1940.
The young sheep farmer was designated the role of flight navigator. In the days before hightech GPS, navigators were the eyes and ears for RAAF pilots during bombing raids, spotting the dreaded Luftwaffe and any incoming fire.
Jim had trained for months, only to be shot down on his very first mission, during a bombing raid high above the German city of Hanover.
“I got out at about 6000 feet, just as the tail came off about two seconds later. I landed in Germany by parachute,” Jim said in an interview with historians before his death in 2012.
Jim made a lucky escape – he ejected from the burning Lancaster bomber just in the nick of time, landing in a forest under cover of darkness. When dawn broke, unaware of where he was, he began walking to find shelter, but instead, walked straight into the arms of the Germans. He was marched off to the notorious Stalag IV-B prisoner of war camp near Dresden.
“They told me I’d be there for the rest of the war,” Jim recalled. For the first few days, he was locked in isolation, the “dog box” as it was
known, and tortured him in order to force him to give up battle secrets. He was starved and the
Germans kept the lights on day and night so he couldn’t sleep.
Yet Jim wouldn’t break.
“He was having none of that,” says Angus McLean. “He could hear the Germans’ boots thumping towards him on the wooden floor, so he scurried to the door and, as they opened the little wooden viewing slot to see if he was still there, he poked them in the eyes. It’s a miracle he lasted a day beyond that, but he did.”
The Aussie larrikin quickly made friends with his fellow prisoners. On his first night out of isolation, “the Yanks”, as he affectionately called them, warned him the Germans would soon come and take his woollen uniform. Australian uniforms made from prized merino wool were a soughtafter souvenir to keep German troops warm on the Eastern Front in Russia. It was common for POWs, who would endure sub-freezing German winters and sodden camps buried in snow, to be stripped of their clothes and their dignity.
Jim told his new comrades, “By God, I’ll be having none of that.”
Determined he wouldn’t aid the enemy by keeping them warm, he quietly went off to the toilet and sat unpicking the jumper, reducing it to a large ball of wool. The Americans were perplexed. “Where are your clothes?” they asked.
In a poetic act of defiance, the cheeky airman proudly pulled out a huge ball of wool he had stuffed in his pants. “I’ve undone it, so they can’t have it,” he said. “If they want it, they can make it up again themselves.”
The farmer hid the wool away to make a blanket in tribute to his mum and to remember loved ones back home. Jim encouraged other prisoners to help him source wool and traded smokes for any scraps he could get – for a few cigarettes, he would score a pair of woollen socks he’d then unthread. After 12 months of gathering scraps, he had enough to begin knitting.
“The boys would come in with worn-out guernseys,” Jim explained. “The fronts had all fallen apart and the arms had come off, but the back had the best wool. We had to boil the darn things because they were full of lice, but they got enough wool for me to start. The Canadians got sent hockey socks, so I was able to get some red out of some of those.”
Jim made needles from the metal handles of dixie cooking pans, beating them flat with stones, then grinding the tips.
The two-metre square knitted rug he made features an intricate map of Australia and Jim even managed to include the coats of arms. “It took six weeks’ knitting to make the map,” he said.
“I knew my geography pretty well and I drew the map, but I made a bit of a mess from Byron Bay up near the Queensland border down to Newcastle. But, other than that, it’s pretty right.”
Jim remained at Stalag IV-B until it was liberated at the war’s end in 1945. His mate, Angus, recalls the sweet victory. “Jim ran out of the camp and grabbed a pig from a nearby farm. He took it back, butchered it and cooked it up for all of the prisoners, so they had a decent feed. It was the first meal they’d had in a long time, so he was a popular fellow.”
When Jim returned to Australia, with his needles and knitted map, he went straight back to the family farm, putting his ordeal behind him. Yet he always kept his rug close, not only for comfort, but to remember the good times and bad of Stalag IV-B.
For many years, the map sat over the corner of a lounge chair in Jim’s farmhouse. When his health began to decline, he decided to donate it to the local museum. Today, the knitted map takes pride of place in the museum after local people, aware of how precious this piece of history is, raised thousands of dollars to build a display room for it. “The rug nearly got burnt a couple of times,” Angus says, once when Jim’s electric blanket caught fire and also from him using it as a knee rug in front of an open fire. “It’s had a few lucky escapes, but it’s in remarkable condition.”
Jim was always modest about his handiwork. “It’s a complete map with all the mountains, rivers and lakes,” says Marita Albert of the
Upper Murray Historical Society. “He’s got a coat of arms for each state above the map. It’s an internationally significant item, an example of the courage and versatility of these prisoners.”
“He was a character,” Angus recalls. “He loved an argument. He used to say, ‘A good argument keeps you young’, and he loved arguing with ‘the Jerries’, as he called the Germans. It’s a miracle he made it out of that camp alive, let alone with the rug intact.”