CAMP 21 COMRIE

POWS AND POST-WAR STORIES FROM CULTYBRAGGAN

Also known as Cultybraggan, the camp is situated in an area of high seismic activity – Comrie is also known by the colourful name ‘Shaky Toon’. The camp was constructed in the summer of 1941 and was originally intended to be a training facility, but a surge in prisoner numbers in 1943 from the North African theatre led to its conversion to a POW camp. A similar influx of prisoners would also swell the number of inmates following the Normandy landings in 1944.

Valerie Campbell has tackled the job of putting together a history of the site, focusing not only on the POW period but also on its function during the Cold War. Most people, I suspect, will be very interested in the stories of wartime prisoners, and the book devotes most of its pages to their tales.

There is plenty of information in this book, with an especially strong chapter on the provision of education and re-education for the mostly German prisoners. Life inside the camp is often brought to life with telling insights. Despite a decent library, for instance, it was difficult for prisoners to read due to the tremendous din inside the corrugated iron Nissen huts. A shortage of cigarettes, meanwhile, led to prisoners improvising with dried tealeaves and handmade pipes, so the huts were filled with noxious smoke as well as noise.

Perhaps unfortunately (everyone loves a good escape story) the prisoners at Camp 21 were not particularly motivated to get away. The harsh Scottish landscape acted as a deterrent, and most of the prisoners were content to sit out the remainder of the war. There was drama, however, especially in a string of deaths, which the author investigates here.

Despite the great amount of research that has clearly been undertaken, there is a sense that the book is sometimes merely presenting facts rather than weaving them into a coherent narrative. Figures on POW numbers and the detailing of the populations of each of the various compounds within the camp are regularly recited, as are details of the ‘teachers’ offering classes at various points. Reports from camp inspections are clearly a valuable resource, but presenting them as little more than lists of facts and figures can make for dry reading at times.

Digressions also serve to distract the reader from the main subject of the book. The strongest chapter, ‘A Soldier’s Story’, dealing with the experiences at Camp 21 of Rolf Weitzel, also includes great detail on his wartime service, which is interesting in its own right but not relevant to a study of Camp 21. Likewise, a fascinating chapter on Rudolph Hess teases the reader, before the killjoy statement, “He was not, at any point, held at the Comrie camp” is dropped in, begging the question of why his story was included in such detail.

Author: Valerie Campbell Publisher: Whittles Publishing Price: £16.99

CAMP 21, BASED AT COMRIE IN PERTHSIRE, HAS A RICH HISTORY THAT CONTINUES TODAY THANKS TO ITS STATUS AS THE BEST-PRESERVED PRISONER-OF-WAR CAMP IN BRITAIN AND A VALUED TOURIST ATTRACTION