17/9/17-22/01/07

My father, Ken Latheron, was born in Middlestone Moor, County Durham in 1917, the youngest of three boys, the others being James (born 1914) and Thomas (born 1916). A sister Lucy, born in 1913 did not survive her first year on this earth.

Their parents, Samuel (a carpenter/joiner) and Amy (a schoolteacher), made sure that the boys had as good an education as they could afford. Jim became an architect, Tom became a dental surgeon, and eventually dad began his University studies shortly before the commencement of WWII.

Dad volunteered to join the army in 1940, thinking that with his education and training as a surveyor he would end up in the Royal Engineers. Instead he ended up joining an infantry unit, The Green Howards and went off to basic training at Richmond, North Yorkshire. After several weeks of illness with Diphtheria, missing a draft to Norway where the majority of his unit was destroyed, he was told that because of a weak heart resulting from his illness he wouldn't be sent overseas or have to carry a pack, but, with the German invasion of the Low Countries these words became irony as he and his fellow soldiers were sent to bolster the line in Belgium. After fighting rearguard actions near the Pas de Calais they ran out of ammunition and surrendered to an SS unit (SS Totenkopf) near Cassell (near Dunkirk) who were going to machine gun them, until a senior Wehrmacht officer intervened and saved them.

Despite an early escape bid in France, my father and his comrades were eventually placed in long term captivity at a series of POW camps firstly in France and Germany and later in Poland.

He had a great love of the Polish people, thanking them for sparing a little of their own meagre rations to help keep the Allied POWs alive in very poor conditions. He survived the privations of being a prisoner from early summer 1940 until being liberated at Siegenhain in Bavaria on Good Friday 1945 following several months on the long march from Lamsdorf in Poland during a harsh winter. Hundreds of his comrades fell along the way either due to hunger or fatigue but occasionally due to being shot by their guards for being too slow.

Even after these privations of war and witnessing the evil carried out by the Nazis, my father still counted a number of Germans amongst those who could claim him as a friend, including some of the men who had guarded him in the POW camps who had been POWs in Britain during WW1.

Following his liberation, he anticipated an early release from the army to continue his training as an architect, however the army had different ideas and he wasn't to become a civilian again until 1946, having to kick his heels in various training camps across England until being posted to Steventon in Berkshire, where, still suffering from shell shock he was lucky enough to meet my mother. He finally left the army on 22nd January 1946. My parents married in 1947 and shortly after, moved to Gateshead, where my father worked for the Local Authority and eventually became an Architectural Technician and then Architect.

He had an innate love and understanding of the countryside he had played in as a child, and made sure that his family all went out to enjoy the local countryside, North and South Tynedale, Weardale and Teesdale in particular. When he could finally afford a car he took the opportunity to teach each of us to drive over hill and dale, through fords and over cattle grids and in all kinds of weather conditions.

Perhaps as a result of his time as a POW, my fathers' health deteriorated when he was in his late 50's, and he retired at 59. Always having had a keen interest in art and the countryside of Britain he took up drawing and painting, spending many hours in Teesdale and Weardale or just in the spare room with his easel.

He also took up writing, trying to summarise his life story in notebooks when he was well and on tape when he wasn't. Unfortunately the tapes he used turned out to be blank when checked a few years ago. In 1997, as a present, I bought my father a computer so that he could type in his memoirs, and so he did, hundreds of pages of text. We hope to try and decipher the history of this man from his own words, but in the meantime I hope you will find time to sit down and read some of his poems and when I get around to putting them on the site, look at some of his paintings and sketches.

His book is currently available as a .pdf file here

I saw my father yesterday evening; no longer the man that I used to reach up to when I wanted reassurance when I was a small child. Instead, a small, frightened and frail old man, reached out to my hand in the way I had to his back then.

He was suffering from Vascular Dementia and robbed of his precious recent and distant memories.

This morning at 8:20am he let go, we hope he has gone on to see his parents and siblings once again.

I hope that in these few pages his memories and thoughts will be preserved a little longer for friends and family, strangers and perhaps former enemies to see and ponder on.

Thank you to the staff of Northbourne and the Andrew Smith Unit at Dunston Hill Hospital for their help in recent months.

If you want to help, make a donation to the Alzheimers Society and ask for the money to go to research into Vascular Dementia. http://www.alzheimers.org.uk/

Nick Latheron 22nd January 2007