Camp 30 Mess Hall - a photo on Flickriver

Camp 30 Mess Hall

            Battle of Bowmanville

The Battle of Bowmanville is said to be the closest Canada ever came to the fighting in WWII but it is probably one of the strangest war battles you will ever hear about. This battle was not fought with guns and bombs it was fought with baseball bats, hockey sticks and anything else they could find. This battle occurred between Saturday, October 10th, 1942 and Monday, October 12th, 1942.

What caused this battle? Well the shortest, easiest way to explain it is that Hitler gave the order to have Canadian PoWs shackled. So Britain said that they would do the same and sent the order to the Canadian government that German P.O.W.s would be shackled as well and the shackles would not be taken off until the Germans removed the shackles from the Canadian P.O.W.s. So when the word came down to Camp 30 that it was to shackle 100 German prisoners the head of the camp met with the highest ranking soldiers within the camp and asked for volunteers to be shackled. I'm sure you can imagine the response this request received. There were no volunteers and the next time the guards went into the camp to for a roll call they found that the P.O.W.s had barricaded themselves into the buildings and refused to come out.

The Camp 30 guards then called in reinforcements, commandos in training from Kingston and Barriefield. These young trainees were eager to fight the Germans.It took two attempts to regain control of the Mess hall, this is where a few Canadian soldiers were injured, one was struck in the head with a jar of jam. During the second and successful attempt to regain control of the Mess hall soldiers also chose to retake House 4 at the same time. Their approach for this building was much different than the one used for the Mess hall. For House 4 soldiers set up a fire house and poured water into the basement of the house (where the prisoners were hiding). The German soldiers eventually gave up and came up the stairs 2 by 2 with their hands in the air. After this the remaining Houses were taken back without much incident.

After the battle of Bowmanville the soldiers remained shackled until December 11, 1942. Although, it is said that much earlier as a guard was leaving he dropped his keys so that P.O.W.'s would be able remove their shackles during the day and put them back on for roll calls.

Taken on: May 22, 2012

Tags:

camp 30

POW

mess hall

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Sets appears in: • Camp 30

Groups appears in: • RUSTY and CRUSTY • Abandoned more » • Buildings/Architecture • !Catchy Colors • The Light Fantastic • Industrial Decay • Emptiness • Photomatix • Old Buildings & More..... • HDR Unlimited • Old And Beautiful (buildings ,barns, shacks, and abandoned homes • Nikon HDR • HDR-Imaging • Abandonded Urban Decay • Abandoned Dark Creepy • abandoned beauties throughout the world • Camp 30 (Bowmanville) « less

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