Love Letters from a WW2 hero
02 February 2010
With the moniker ‘Fearless’ the late Sqn Ldr Frank Barton Day may have been a ‘hard arser’, but his enduring love for his wife during a three years of captivity as a PoW gives an interesting insight into the heart of a man who was part of the greatest escape story of World War II.
Frank was in the second group of escapees from Stalag Luft III who were expected to sleep rough during the day and travel by night in freezing conditions, in a bid for their freedom.
Their forged documents were not as good as those in the first group – who could speak German or French – and who had a supposedly better chance of getting back to Britain.
As such, Frank and his group had a harder task – and so were nicknamed ‘hard arsers’.
If the conditions in March 1944 weren’t harsh enough, Frank had no thumb, damaged fingers and a smashed kneecap, injuries he had sustained after being shot down in his Spitfire over Crete.
Letters to and from his wife Antoinette had kept his spirits up in the camp and during the infamous Long March where PoWs were force-marched more than 60 miles away from a Russian advance in 1945.
Frank had obtained a special dispensation to marry Antoinette, a code breaker in the WAAF, during the Coventry Blitz in 1942.
Months later he was flying reconnaissance missions with 2 Photographic Reconnaissance Unit (PRU) over Crete, when his aircraft was attacked by German fighters.
In memoirs Frank wrote for his family he said: ‘I felt a bang at the back of my neck – it was a cannon shell or something which hit some armour plating. Bullets started coming through the floor. I was kneecapped.
‘Then the control column was hit – that’s when my right thumb was shot off, and all the fingers in my right hand were broken.”
As the Spitfire went down, Frank bailed out and spent nearly 24 hours floating in the sea. He was saved by his life jacket known affectionately as a ‘Mae West’.
He was eventually picked up by an Italian doctor in a boat and handed over to the Germans, who tortured him during interrogation.
Stitches in his knee were ‘popped’ in a bid to get him to talk. He was then sent to Stalag Luft III in Sagan (now Zagan in Poland).
PoWs were allowed to write three letters a month.
In one letter he told his wife, who gave birth to the couple’s first son Jonathan while Frank was in captivity, ‘My only passion is your photograph at the moment, plus one pair of trousers.
‘I hope to hell it won’t be long till I see you, All my love. Frank.’
In others he talks of how receiving letters from Antoinette kept his morale up.
Of the 76 PoWs who escaped through the tunnels – called Tom, Dick and Harry – only three made it.
The rest were captured and of those, 50 were executed on the orders of Hitler.
Frank was caught in Harry at a crossover point named Piccadilly Circus.
Along with the others caught, Frank was sent to solitary confinement for three weeks as punishment.
In 1945 following the Long March, Frank was released and his last letter describes his joy.
He wrote: ‘I’m nearly hysterical – hope to be home within the week. All my love Darling, Frank.’
Frank died in 2008 at the age of 91, but his second son Michael is presently writing a book of his exploits that include guarding Hitler’s Deputy Fuhrer Rudolf Hess, who was captured after bailing out of his aircraft over Scotland.
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