undermybed.net

Our 70 years of togetherness; Platinum celebration for groom who survived POW camp and his bride

0 Comments | Evening Gazette (Middlesbrough, England), July 23, 2010

Byline: MIKE BLACKBURN

IT STARTED with a wartime wedding, quickly followed by incarceration in a German prisoner of war camp for the new groom.

But the lifelong romance between Stockton couple James “Kit” Whitmarsh and wife Susan endured all hurdles.

And this week the couple are celebrating 70 platinum years together.

Susan was working as a cinema usherette when she met Kit on Stockton High Street in 1939. Kit explained how they wooed the local girls at the time: “The women used to walk up and down and the men used to whistle.”

The couple, both born in Stockton, quickly got engaged and were married before Kit, a process worker with ICI, was called up to fight in the Second World War in 1940.

A sergeant in The Green Howards, he was shipped to North Africa where he fought the Germans and Italians before being captured.

Susan said: “I felt a bit relieved when he was captured because I knew he was safe.”

Kit was transported across the Mediterranean to Italy and then across land into Germany and to Stalag 4B.

“We were there for a time, and then they started to move us,” he said. “We were taken to Poland.”

Kit, now 94, believes the POW camp they were transferred to was near the infamous death camp, Auschwitz.

“I remembered we would find one or two Russians in the camp and said to them ‘How did you get in here?’,” he said.

“They were so emaciated and just wanted grub, so we fed them. They could have been from Auschwitz, I don’t know.”

After a short stay in Poland, Kit was moved back to Stalag 4B where he was eventually liberated by the British and Americans.

The Stockton soldier enjoyed the privilege of being flown out of Germany in a famous Lancaster bomber
survival kit