‘He was a bit miffed’ over St Valery snub, says daughter in poignant POW tribute
● As pipers honour the 51st Highland Division, a daughter remembers a hero
It was a poignant tribute to her father – a solider who fought at St Valery and later escaped from a prisoner of war camp in Poland, running through the night and surviving on turnips pulled from the fields.
On Diane Chisholm’s doorstep in Edinburgh yesterday, a neighbour and piper played The Heroes of St Valery at 10am to honour thousands of Scottish soldiers captured following the British Army surrender in the French port town 80 years ago on 12 June 1940.
Ms Chisholm’s father, Lance Corporal Colin Chisholm, a Seaforth Highlander in the 51st Highland Division who later served as an Edinburgh fireman for 25 years, was among them.
The lament was played simultaneously by hundreds of pipers around the world, with the commemoration led by the Duke of Rothesay at Birkhall, his home on the Balmoral Estate. At Edinburgh Castle too, the tune held the air.
For Ms Chisholm, a retired teacher of Restalrig Avenue, yesterday’s commemoration for the men left behind in France following the evacuation of Dunkirk just over a week earlier was long overdue.
Ms Chisholm said: “My dad was a very mild-mannered man, but what did irk him was that Dunkirk was always commemorated, but nothing was said about what they went through at St Valery. ‘Why does no one mention it?’ was his view. He was a bit miffed about that.
“Not a lot of people seem to know about the men who were left, the men who were still fighting. Churchill could paint Dunkirk as a success, but my suspicion is he wanted to bury the surrender at St Valery as bad news.”
The 51st Division had become separated from the rest of the British Expeditionary Force who made it out of France and, as they spent the next week or so trying to reach the coast, became surrounded by German tanks on the cliffs at St Valery-en-creux.
An evacuation was planned, but fog and poor communication hampered the rescue and on 12 June, Major General Sir Victor Fortune followed the French and surrendered.
Ms Chisholm said: “On the day their commanding officer told them to lay down their rifles, Dad said the men very much felt ‘we haven’t come all this way to surrender’. The soldiers were crying.”
Following the surrender, Lcpl Chisholm, a farmer’s son originally from Strathpeffer, was taken to STALAGVIII-B prisoner of war (POW) camp where he spent almost five years digging roads and canals.
Ms Chisholm said: “It was filtering through to the POW camp that the British and Americans were advancing. Dad said they were already hearing aircraft above and his view was that he hadn’t survived more than four-and-ahalf years in there to now be blown up by the Americans.
“He decided he wanted to get out and said ‘who is coming with me’. A young Irish lad said he wanted to go too. I am guessing at the end of the working day they managed to somehow slip the guard. They travelled by night and ate turnips out in the field.”
The young soldier was back on the family farm before the end of the war and, after demobilisation, moved to Edinburgh to join the fire brigade.
He served as a city fireman for 25 years and lived with his wife, Marjorie, of Leith, a motorbike dispatch rider for the Fire Service during the war, in Mcdonald Road.
Ms Chisholm said: “The fact that he wanted to escape says a lot about my dad. The fact that he didn’t moan about it also says a lot about him. He had a lot of resilience, which I feel he has passed down through his family.”
She said that as children they would never be allowed to leave any food and that not even the smallest piece of soap would go to waste.
“You take soap for granted and me and my sister used to laugh about it but my dad would never throw the end of a bar of soap away,” she said. “He would collect up all the ends and boil them up all together on a primus stove to make a new piece. It was things that he didn’t have during the war that very much mattered to him.”