Gem From The Archive

Archivist Dan Ellin reveals more about a Bomber Command pilot’s diary of his imprisonment

A prisoner of war’s log, 1941–1945

During the Second World War Jim Tyrie (1919– 1993) served as a flight lieutenant with 77 Squadron. He was captured in 1941 when his plane was shot down, and spent the rest of the war in German prisoner-of-war camps – including Stalag Luft 3, the site of the ‘Great Escape’ breakout. The Digital Archive of the International Bomber Command Centre in Lincoln now holds copies of the two wartime logs Tyrie kept. As archivist Dr Dan Ellin explains, they provide a remarkable record of life as a prisoner of war.

Describe The Logs…

Jim Tyrie’s wartime logs are effectively diaries or journals or scrapbooks. They were donated by the Red Cross. The one pictured is from the Young Men’s Christian Association. They’re a fantastic source because he’s got other prisoners to write in there and draw things, and he records pretty much all of his movements and which camps he was in.

One of the pages has a list of all of the people he shared the rooms with. When he was at the North Compound at Stalag Luft 3 he shared a room with Paul Brickhill, who later wrote The Great Escape. There’s a list of the names and addresses of other POWs, presumably so they could keep in touch after the war. Thanks to the work of our wonderful volunteers, a transcription with a list of names is available with images of the log at bit.ly/ ibcc-tyrie. That’s one of the wonderful things that an archive does – preserving an artefact, but also publishing it and making it available for members of the public and researchers to use.

What Does The Log Show Us About Life As A POW?

There’s a page where Jim lists prisoners’ slang. They knew themselves as ‘Kriegies’, from the German word for POWs Kriegsgefangenen. ‘Ferret’ was the name for the guard whose particular job was to try and stop escapes. They had the word ‘foodacco’, a blend of food and tobacco, which was the barter system that they used. There’s another page of the diary that goes into great detail about how many cigarettes you should trade for a tin of milk, a loaf or a bar of chocolate.

Unlike enlisted men Jim and the other officers weren’t made to work. This wartime log is one way that they tried to combat their boredom. There are lots of things in here about food as well, because it was permanently on their mind. They never really knew when they were going to get another food parcel from the Red Cross. As the war progressed the Germans provided them with less and less, and the quality of food they were being given that way was getting worse and worse. There’s a page in the logbook that details the weekly rations and how they used to cook. The huts were divided into rooms and usually one room would cook for themselves. They’d have one person in the room who would cook for the 10–12 prisoners who lived there. Cooking utensils were a bit thin on the ground as well, so the men really had to learn how to improvise.

Jim’s other wartime log gives detailed instructions of how you can make pans by recycling tins. Red Cross food parcels had powdered milk in tins and the brand was called Klim, which is ‘milk’ spelt backwards, and the POWs used these tins for a wide range of purposes. They’d cut the tops off and hammer them out flat, so that they could make them into all sorts of wonderful things.

The prisoners were living in a time of adversity, and one of the things that helped them to get through it was their sense of humour which was sometimes quite dark.

For example, there’s a parody of Rudyard Kipling’s poem

If which I’ve seen copies of in different wartime logs: “If you can do so-and-so, then you’ll be able to escape.”

They also kept themselves going by listing what they wanted to do when they got home: the places they wanted to go, the food they wanted to eat, and the people they wanted to see.

Why Did You Choose It?

I think it says a lot to us about the situation that we’re currently in with the coronavirus pandemic. Our relations who experienced the Second World War are often described as “the Greatest Generation”, but I think they were just normal people in extreme circumstances. If they could get through that, then we can get through the lockdown restrictions that we’re under, which are nothing compared to what they would have faced.

‘One of the things that helped the prisoners was their sense of humour’

What Other Documents Do You Have From Jim Tyrie’s Collection?

We have his flying logbook, two POW diaries, a little bit of correspondence, and photo albums. There are some nice photos of life in POW camps, as well as a picture of Jim and his crew and his Whitley bomber. You can search the collection at bit.ly/ibcc-tyrie-coll.