Captain James Trevor Stewart (retired)
#23214
6th Field Regiment
N.Z. Artillery 3rd Echelon
2nd N.Z.E.F.

• Born 9th December 1914 in Auckland.
• From 1928 to 1931 was in the Cadet Battalion at Auckland Grammar School finishing up as Corporal.
• In 1932 at the age of 17, he enlisted in the territorial force in the 1 8th 60 Pounder Medium Artillery Battery as a signaler.
• October 1932, he qualified by examination as a signals instructor and was promoted to Bombardier. (Two stripes)
• In 1934 was promoted to Sergeant in charge of Battery Signalers and H.Q. staff.
• In 1936 the Battery lost the 60-pounder guns and was re-armed with 3-inch high angle anti-aircraft guns. These were new to NZ and there were two each in Auckland and Wellington.
  He was posted as N.C.O. in charge, Instrument Section, Predictor and Height Finder.
• In 1937 he passed examination for commissioned rank and early in 1938 was gazetted 2nd Lieutenant.
• In August 1939 the officers and senior N.C.O.’s of the battery were medically examined and attested for war service. At the outbreak of war on the 3rd September 1939, the Battery was mobilized to provide antiaircraft defence for Auckland Naval Base and dockyard.
• 1st February 1940 he transferred to 6th field Regiment, N.Z. Artillery, 3rd Echelon, 2nd N.Z.E.F. He was posted as Regimental Orderly Officer and early in March was promoted to Full Lieutenant.
• Easter 1940, he married Phyllis Kate Kerr and in August 1940 he sailed for Egypt on the “Mauretania”.
• Also in August 1940, he was posted as Adjutant for training at a new unit, Artillery Training regiment, formed in Egypt as a base training unit for reinforcement drafts from N.Z. and wounded soldiers returning from hospital.
• January 1941, promoted to Captain.
• March 1941, rejoined the 6th Field Regiment as Adjutant not long before they sailed to Greece.
• Served in Olympus Pass and also in Servia Pass before they were pulled back to Thermopylae, 17th-19th April 1941. This period of time in Greece, especially the retreat, was marked by constant bombings by the German Air Force.
• Evacuated from Greece on board the ship ‘Glengyle’. In the night of 24th-25th April, they experienced a Stuka raid at sea and the ship was damaged.
• May 1941, while in Egypt, back home in N.Z. his eldest daughter, Judith Anne, was born.
• Early November, he was placed in command of F Troop, 30 Battery, 6th Field Regiment, which consisted of 4 x 25 pounders (field guns).
• Was involved in the heavy fighting against the German tanks, which marked the Crusader Campaign as the N.Z. division advanced into Libya around the 18th- 21st November 1941.
• 1st December 1941, he was taken P.O.W. when they were over-run by the German tanks near Belhamed. About 2 weeks later the officers were taken by German submarine to Italy. When Italy collapsed 2 years later they were taken by cattle truck to Germany.
• At the end of the war when Germany surrendered they flew back to England in Lancaster bombers. He spent about 3 weeks there before getting a berth on a ship back to N.Z. arriving back here in July 1945.

In a recorded conversation, Captain Stewart was willing to talk about his experiences when first captured and life as a P.O.W. However, of the few weeks preceding his capture, (the N.Z. division entered Libya about the 18th -21st November 1941, in the Crusader Campaign), and of the intense fighting against the German tanks and infantry which hallmarked this campaign, he was unwilling to talk. For a good account of this campaign I recommend W.E. Murphy’s 2nd N.Z. Divisional Artillery. Here is some of what Captain Stewart did share.

Left: A 6th Field Conference in Libya. J.V. Masefield, J.T. Stewart (back to camera), M.G. Oliver, Panaho Smith, A. J. Edwards, J.R. Prisk.

In the few weeks before your capture, you were involved in some major antitank fighting. In one part, you are mentioned in Murphy’s book as being forward in your pick-up truck and directing the fire of F Troop against the German tanks and then ordering ‘Gun Control’ as the range dropped and the guns were fired over open sights. Would you like to say anything about this?

"No nothing to say, we just did our job".

You were captured on the 1st of December 1941 near Belhamed. Could you tell us how you were captured?

“Well, just captured by the Germans following up the tanks. I was in a slit trench with my, what they call an OPAT, Observation Post Assistant and we couldn’t get communications to the guns. My signaler further back was trying to do it. The truck was about a couple of hundred yards further back with a telephone line to a handset in our hole and then the truck was on radio to the gun line, but the gun line chap was being blasted by the gunfire down there so we didn’t actually have communications. The original orders I got from the Colonel were to shell Sidi Resegh because that’s where the Germans were. They had chased us out. I got this observation post but I didn’t get the communications to the guns so we couldn’t shell Sidi Resegh and then of course we got collected. We were in the trench and the tanks came through and we couldn’t do much about that and the next thing there was a clink on the ground, the rattling of equipment and a rifle pointed like that (he points his walking stick into my face). It was pointing about here and you didn’t have much option. He was a German infantryman following up the tanks and I don’t know what he said. I didn’t speak German, but I knew what he wanted. Ha! Ha! But they were alright. I stood up and they searched me for weapons and then indicated over there and that was all there was to it. When we were rounded up they segregated the officers and the soldiers into two groups. Officers here and soldiers there. Side by side and we had to walk all day. They just moved us around and after a few hours the Germans handed us over to the Italians and we just kept on walking until night`.

So your guns didn’t even fire at the tanks?

Oh yes they did! They fired at them and a lot of the gunners were killed by the tank fire, machine-gun and shell. Oh yes they fired at them all right! Our brigade’s group, the 6th Brigade, we copped it badly. But there were a few of them that did finally get away.

How long did the battle go for?

Oh, no idea really. It was only a matter of hours. What actually happened was we saw the tanks coming but they were British I tanks which the Germans had captured and then the German Mark IV tanks came in behind them and that’s when the firing started.

After being taken prisoner they put you in one of their transit camps, Benghazi. What did they do with you from there?

From Benghazi we went by submarine to Taranto in the toe of Italy. They took the officers from the Captain upwards. There were about 40 of us in this submarine. It wasn’t very pleasant. We heard some depth charging against another sub. We could hear the ripple of the thunder, so we weren’t very happy about hearing all that. We were about a day and a half going across I think. There was a place called Bari Campo P.G. 75. We were there for quite a while and then I went to hospital and when I came back all the crowd I’d been with had been moved up north. I was back in Bari for a couple of days with a N.Z. doctor and then we went to a place called Arezzo, P.O.W. Hospital, up in the hills by Florence. Campo P.G. 12. It was an old monastery and had been all wired up and was a prisoner of war cage of course and we were there for several months and then they moved us to a place called Modena. Campo P.G. 47. We were there until the Germans took over us when Italy capitulated in 1943 and they took us up into Germany.

How did they get you to Germany?

They took us through the Rebeni pass by cattle truck. They were box wagons and we just sat on the floor. We had no idea where we were going and all we could see was out through the little grill window and that’s all. There was round about 40 or 50 of us in each truck and we just sat there for a couple of days. They didn’t stop and let us out for anything. No food or water, no roast dinners or anything like that. Ha! Ha! There was nothing much you could do about it. We tried to cut our way out of it but we didn’t have much except the odd small knife. We tried to cut a hole and get out but we couldn’t do very much and nobody actually got away. The camp I finished up in was in a place called Weinsberg, Oflag VA, although we went through several other ones. We had Australians and the South Africans taken in Tobruk, ourselves and a lot of English, It was all officers and in Germany we had a N.Z. hut. All New Zealanders with a few English as well. It was quite a big camp”.

Were you thinking about escaping a lot?

Oh you’re thinking about escaping all the time. In a prisoner of war camp, if they saw anybody trying to get out they might shoot him. You couldn’t just walk out or go over a roof or anything like that. There were guards around the perimeter and they had high wire, barbed wire, all around and then they had guard towers with search lights and machineguns and also there were guards with rifles who used to wander around inside the place”.

Did anyone ever escape and get away?

Quite a few tried. We had a couple of fella’s get out in Italy, but they were caught and brought back. We had a few try in Germany. Charles Upham was one of them. He tried to get away but he got stuck in between the two lots of wire. They had two lots of barbed wire and he got over the first and was in the middle and they caught him. Fortunately they didn’t shoot him, they just took him out and took him back. Captain C.H. Upham, V.C. and Bar went to Oflag WC at Colditz. Many officers who were regarded as ‘habitual’ escapers or as a source of continual trouble were sent there.

What did you do during the day?

With the officers they can’t make you work. I was a commissioned officer, a Captain and they can’t make you work. The soldiers can be sent out on work parties, that’s quite legal, but with the officers they can’t so we had to make our own amusements. We used to have lectures from various ones amongst ourselves and we turned on entertainment in the way of plays and things like that. Quite a bit of the time, most times, I played the violin. And some of the time I was playing the violin there’d be a tunnel going on somewhere near where I was and they could hear me. If I stopped playing they knew one of the guards was coming and they’d quieten down and when I started playing again they realized they were all clear. There was quite a lot of that.

Did you have much interaction with the guards?

No not really. No. Except a few special blokes would talk to the guards and they’d try and get them to do something and then once you got him doing that, “alright chum, we want this done, we want something else done”. Blackmail in other words. It was underhand stuff but that’s what happened. I mean like we used to get red cross parcels, food parcels, and just a few special blokes would do this, and they’d say “well here have a cup, here’s a tin of coffee for you”, on the sly you know and once the Sentry or his blokes had accepted that you could get them to do things because alright you don’t do it and we’ll let them know that you’ve had this coffee and that’ll be bang for you, you’ll be shot. Oh yes. They liked our stuff, it didn’t matter what it was. If they accepted it you could blackmail them. We had radios and we’d want a part so, alright we want a valve for this thing or a whatever it was, part of it to make one, stuff like that. We got radios from bribing the guards to get them. They had to be hidden so you’d keep it in a hole in the ground. We listened to the BBC so we knew how the war’s progress was going.

How did you handle being captured? Did people crack up or withdraw into themselves?

No not in the initial stages. Some of them, not very many in the latter stages got a little bit … ah … we used to call it bomb-happy. Not through bombs or anything but some got a bit lackadaisical, they’d let themselves go. Now we had one chap with us, an Englishman, and to get him to shower we virtually had to take him along and undress him and put him in the shower to make him wash. He didn’t lose his mind, he just stopped caring. He didn’t give a damn. You had to force yourself to do things, to keep your self-respect really. You had to do something no matter what it was. Such things as polish your boots or wash your clothes, have a shower, a shave. We used to get a hot shower about 2 or 3 times a week. It was essential to spruce yourself up, try and keep clean as much as possible. Hang on to your self respect.

What was the food like?

Very scarce in the early days and then we got the Red Cross parcels. They were taken for the camp and they’d have tins of meat and tea and coffee, stuff like that and we’d get something like a bit of chocolate and biscuits or cheese out of it. I think that was what kept us alive. The rations in the camp were pretty poor. Your family could send a parcel to you every so often and they used to send things like razors or soap, anything really. Phil used to send me a parcel with the big sticks of chocolate, which was very welcome. We had a fellow who took over the cooking side of things with a few of our own soldiers to help him. He used to make all sorts of things up out of bits and pieces of what he got. There was never enough of it; we were always hungry. We used to get a German bread, which was several months old, and it was sour, but it was food and something to eat

Were you allowed personal things?

Oh we had our clothing and anything we had. I had a violin and quite a bit of music. The music I got through the Italians in Italy and the violin I got in Germany. We had to buy them because we used to get an allowance. I’m not exactly sure how much it was. The Germans paid us officers so much a week and their idea was that they would reimburse themselves at the end of the war. But they overlooked the fact that they weren’t going to win the war. Ha! Ha! We never handled the money. They gave us the credit and then charged us for board and lodging. The rest of it if you could do anything with it, all well and good, but there wasn’t much you could do with it.

Can you tell us of your release?

We actually were released from Munich, Stalag VIIA at Moosburg. When the allies were advancing the Germans decided to move us by train from Weinsberg to Munich. We said we’re not going unless the trains doors were open so we could get out if need be as the air force was bombing all the trains. Also we had to have the union jack painted on the train roof. They agreed provided we would not try to escape. Well at that stage of the war there was no point in trying to escape because we knew it would be over in a matter of weeks. So we went by train. In the daytime the train was stopped and we just got out and wandered around the countryside and at night-fall we came back and carried on. The only food we had was what we carried with us. Mind you it was only a short run, 4 nights and we were in Munich. We knew the Americans were coming and we heard the battle and heard the news. The Americans said it was the heaviest battle they’d had since they’d crossed the Rhine. We thought if that’s what they call a heavy battle, Lord knows what they’d have thought of the stuff we went through in the desert.

But anyway, the Germans cleared out and the Americans came in and that was the finish. We went by truck to an airfield to go back to England by air and there were a lot of the old D.C.3 planes and they were starting to take off taking people back, and then one of them couldn’t get over this elevated roadway that ran across the airstrip and it hit it and crashed and burst into flames. So they cancelled that and we stayed the night there and the next day we went by truck to another airfield further out and we flew back to England on Lancaster bombers. When we came out from Germany we passed over some of the towns and they were just heaps of rubble, nothing else. We’d seen bomber raids come over. A thousand bombers come over like that (hand signals) at different heights and they’d all converge. We saw one raid on a place quite close to where we were and we saw the planes in the air search-lights dropping bombs. We never actually hated the German nation as a whole. I mean there are good Germans and bad Germans, the same as there are good New Zealanders and bad New Zealanders.

Captain James Stewart today aged 89. Captain Stewart is well respected by his Grandson John who admires not only his war time service but how he has dealt with the effects of the terrible treatment he received as a POW in WWII.

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Captain Stewart returned to New Zealand in July 1945 to his wife and eldest daughter who he hadn’t yet seen. He later had two more daughters, Frances Mary and Margaret Ruth. He has 7 grandchildren and so far 8 great grand-children.