Stalag 383's BEE PLATOON
A Scottish soldier and his comrades were PoWs who refused to work for the Germans, yet instead of being shot by the Nazis they were allowed to try their hand at beekeeping as...
IT is one of the most unlikely images of the Second World War – a Scottish PoW showing off the prized bees he has nurtured in a grim German camp.
With a forbidding razor-wire fence as a backdrop and under the watchful eye of a hostile guard, Company Sergeant Major James Hamilton Savage proudly holds up a honeycomb.
Incarcerated for most of the war, he was permitted by the Nazis to raise bees as a way of keeping himself and other prisoners busy and of keeping their spirits up.
Building hives from old wooden crates, they captured passing bees to build up their stocks, and even sacrificed their own rations to keep their colonies well fed.
Now, more than 70 years later, researchers have unearthed photographs and documents that shed light on the long-forgotten and extraordinary story of the beekeeper of Stalag 383.
After the war, CSM Savage continued his interest in bees and rose to become head of beekeeping at the West of Scotland Agricultural College, now Scotland’s Rural College. Librarians at the college have uncovered archives relating to his time there and, with the help of his grandson, have pieced together his remarkable story.
He was captured in 1940 at St-Valery-en-Caux in northern France after the 51st Highland Division was left behind following the Dunkirk evacuation.
There followed a forced march across Europe to Poland, where CSM Savage and hundreds of other prisoners were told they would be forced to work on farms, in factories and even down mines.
Citing the Geneva Convention, many refused and were instead transferred to prisoner of war camp Stalag 383 near Hohenfels, in Bavaria. Despite PoW camps having a reputation as places of brutality, CSM Savage persuaded the guards to let him keep bees.
In 1942 he founded the Captive Drones Association using skills he learned from his father in Ayrshire.
The association’s president was his close friend Captain Kenneth Grant, a Catholic clergyman who went on to become Bishop of Argyll and the Isles.
According to CSM Savage’s grandson, Trevor Pocknell, who lives in Northamptonshire, the Nazis ‘could have just shot him’ when he refused to work for Hitler.
He said: ‘It ended up being tens and then hundreds of NCOs [noncommissioned officers] who the Germans couldn’t get to slave for them. They refused and were chained up and thrown into prison – but they wouldn’t change their minds.
‘They ended up in Stalag 383, a camp for NCOs who refused to work for the Germans.
‘There, they organised themselves very well. It’s been called a “barbed wire university” because all sorts of education went on.
‘They talked the Germans into providing things in exchange for cigarettes and things from their Red Cross parcels. My grandfather was taken to meet a beekeeper in the neighbouring village of Hohenfels. ‘The beekeeper wasn’t impressed to start with, because Grandad was a soldier, but when he realised he was a knowledgeable beekeeper they got on like a house on fire. ‘In fact, the German provided the first hive and bees.’ CSM Savage soon began making hives from Red Cross crates sent to the camp, and caught bees he found buzzing round the place to help bolster his stocks.
His grandson said: ‘He would have learned from his father, and further educated himself because they were able to get books through the Red Cross and the YMCA.
‘The British Beekeeping Association helped them, including in examinations – my grandfather was teaching other beekeepers.’
Yet the prisoners were allowed only a little taste of the honey with their meagre rations.
Most of it stayed with the bees to help them survive winter and the PoWs even gave some of their own sugar rations to the insects.
For them, beekeeping was a vital source of entertainment rather than food. Mr Pocknell said: ‘It was keeping them interested in something rather than their situation.’
CSM Savage left the Army after the war. His work as the college beekeeper was informed by his time in Stalag 383. He died in 1985.
As a soldier in the Queen’s Own Cameron Highlanders, he was awarded the Military Medal for bravery in Palestine in the 1930s.
Despite the horrors of war, he remained ‘soft-spoken and never had an angry word’, said his grandson, adding: ‘He came across as a very loving family man.’
Professor Jamie Newbold, of Scotland’s Rural College, said: ‘The story of James Savage and his “Captive Drones” is among the most fascinating to emerge from our archives.’
‘Chained up and thrown into prison’