The Courier & Advertiser (Fife Edition)
‘Fond memories’ of time at prison camp
Prisoner-of-war camps are not considered the greatest of places but children of the inmates look back on the one near Alyth with warmth.
Leven man Ronnie Kimmel is actually grateful that his German father Alwin was held at the Balhary PoW camp two miles south of the Perthshire town.
It meant that Ronnie would come to enjoy the best of both worlds – a life in beautiful Blairgowrie while retaining close links to his German roots.
“My dad had really, really fond memories of how he was treated by the guards,” says Ronnie. “He was wellknown and liked in Blairgowrie and in the local pubs.”
All that remains of the camp is a water tower on the edge of a wheat field close to Balhary house.
Back in the 1940s it housed up to 800 prisoners – initially Italians then Germans from early 1945 – in removable wooden and prefabricated huts.
After the war it was used for years as a farm work camp for displaced people who could not return to Eastern Europe.
The buildings survived until the 1990s, when everything bar the water tower was removed.
Alwin Kimmel had been born in the RhinelandPalatinate town of Jockgrim, 11 miles from the French border, in January 1927. In 1944 the 17-yearold joined the German heavy tank battalion.
He was captured by US soldiers at the Battle of the
Bulge in the Ardennes region of Belgium.
Towards the end of the war he was transported to the Balhary camp, between Alyth and Meigle.
“Believe it or not he had fond memories of Balhary,” says Ronnie. “The guards used to give him money and a list for him to walk into Alyth and he picked up sweets and food before coming back to the camp.”
After the war Alwin worked for farmer Charlie Mann on land in Blairgowrie’s Balmoral Road that is now housing.
He met Nora Hamilton who was working at a nearby mill. They got married, stayed in Blairgowrie and became parents to Linda in 1950.
Four years later the family moved back to Jockgrim. Ronnie was born in 1954 and all was settled
until Nora returned to Blairgowrie in 1960 for a holiday and decided she no longer wanted to live in Germany. Six months later the family were back living in the Perthshire town, first in George Street and then in Myrtle Park.
In 1981 Alwin and Nora moved back to Jockgrim while Ronnie stayed in Scotland, where his jobs included a CID officer in Fife and a private investigator.
Aged 65, Ronnie works at Diageo’s Johnnie Walker whisky bottling plant in Leven. Alwin passed away in Germany in 2013.
“I realise how lucky I am,” says Ronnie.
“I grew up in a great place like Blairgowrie and I have a lot of friends here but being able to go back to Jockgrim means I have the best of both worlds.”
Fellow prisoner Friedrich Kehrer arrived at the Balhary PoW camp in early 1945 and one thing created an abiding memory.
“It was the smell of bread baking,” says his son Fred.
The unmistakable aroma had come from Italian prisoners who were being moved on as the Germans, including Friedrich, arrived.
“Maybe the Italians were taken to another camp,” Fred adds, “because the Germans and Italians were never together.”
Friedrich was born in 1925 and grew up in Stockstadt am Main in Bavaria. He was called up to the German army at 18 and trained to be a paratrooper but ended up spending a year “marching” in France.
The following year he was deployed in the
Netherlands as a “spotter” but was captured by Allied soldiers in December 1944.
He was in a group that arrived at the former Alyth Junction Railway Station.
“From there they marched to Balhary,” Fred says. “It must have been some sight to see them all marching down the street.”
Once installed, prisoners worked at local farms during the day and at night returned to Balhary, where there was a shop at which prisoners could use “camp money” to purchase goods.
“They were respected by farmers because they were hard-working and many farmers stayed in contact with the prisoners until their death.”
By 1947 Friedrich was at Dron Farm in Longforgan where he met Mary Clark, whose job was milking cows at Northbank Farm.
Mary, who was in her early 20s, had a son John, whose father Jock Clark was killed by a horse while working at Dronley Farm in Angus. When they got married later in the decade Friedrich still had to notify the police.
The couple had son Martin, now 72, and daughter Irene, now 66, to their family. Fred, now 62, was born in 1960.
They moved around, with Friedrich working at various farms in Coupar Angus, Auchterhouse and Errol before he settled into a job at Baledgarno Farm in Rossie Priory, Inchture, where he worked for 27 years until 1986.
The couple moved to Glencarse, where Mary passed away in March 1997 and Friedrich died in October 2019, aged 94.
Fred settled in the Abernyte area. He is a joiner and father to Lee, 37, Dean, 34, and Sally, 28.
Local people also had fond memories of the camp. Percy Caroline lived in Burrelton. He served in the Seaforth Highlanders in the First World War.
During the Second World War Percy was an officer in the Wellbank Home Guard and his day job was a greenkeeper, where he met Balhary prisoner Herbert Fillinger who was allowed out of the camp to work at the bowling green.
The pair struck up a lasting friendship, with Herbert even staying in Percy’s home occasionally.
Herbert was a Luftwaffe airman who was shot down over the UK.
Dundee man Stewart Ross, one of Percy’s four grandsons, said: “He and my grandad became quite close friends – I imagine veterans share a special bond”
Herbert was released in 1947 and sent a hand-made thank-you card to the Caroline family when he got home to Neustadt in the Black Forest.
“He kept in touch for years after the war, sending cards for birthdays and the like,” adds Stewart, 61, who is now retired after working as a features writer at DC Thomson.
“The ultimate irony is that my grandad had four grandsons, I’m one of them. The youngest joined the army in the 1980s and was sent to Germany.
“He’s been out of the army for many years but he stayed and settled in Germany and is still there – and his son is now serving in the Germany army.”