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Since 1941, bookseller and stationer, Joseph John Waterfall and his wife Edith, of “Lyndhurst”, 26 Skipton Road, Embsay, had been desperate for news of their 24-year-old son Sidney, who had gone missing in Crete. ^[[1]]  Before the war, Sidney had been a solicitor’s clerk for Knowles and Harrison, hoping to study law. He was a keen footballer, playing for Christ Church Club and for Sutton United.^[[2]]

The family were Quakers, so as a conscientious objector, while brother Arnold was conscripted to work on the land, Sidney agreed to take up a non-combatant role as an orderly in the Royal Army Medical Corps in February 1940. After two  months’ training in Leeds, Sidney was sent to 7^th General Hospital in Leeds as a clerk. In Januay 1941 his corps was sent abroad – after a long journey and a few brief stopvers they reached Crete in April. There Sidney worked in the 7^th General Hospital helping set up new buildings to accommodate the influx of wounded, and as a medical orderly tending to wounded British soldiers.

On 18^th May the Germans bombed the hospital. Another air bombing 2 days later was followed by a paratrooper attack. Staff scrambled to get as many patients as possible into a makeshift hospital in the caves on the coast, until they could be moved to a safer base. Several more moves were made, often at night, to avoid the German advance, with the hospital ending up in more caves at the evacuation point, where patients were being put onto boats, heading for Egypt. But many were still stranded when the Germans arrived at the beach on 31^st May.  Sidney was one of those captured and marched back inland to a transit POW camp and hospital.^[[3]]  He was retained as a prisoner, to continue working in the hospital for five months, before being sent by ship to a transit camp at Salonika (Dulag 183), where conditions were appalling. He described this 10-day journey as “uncomfortable owing to overcrowding, and the water shortage was also a difficulty.”

It was not until late July that Sidney’s parents received news from the War Office informing them of his capture.

In October, Sidney had been sent by train to the POW camp at Lamsdorf, in Silesia, Poland, designated as Stalag 8B (344). He was imprisoned here for two years, one of about 6,000 internees:^[[4]]  

“…. conditions at Lamsdorf were reasonable. It was a British camp, and the Germans did not concern themselves with its internal running. This was left to the prisoners, under the leadership of three British warrant officers who acted as trustees. Pte. Waterfall said there were quite a few escapes from Lamsdorf. He knew of two soldiers who eventually reached England after escaping from the camp.”^[[5]]

Typically, Sidney was understating the circumstances. Conditions at Lamsdorf became increasingly difficult and poor, deteriorating dramatically when there was an influx of 11,000 or so POWs captured in Italy, causing food shortages and overcrowded, unhygienic conditions, leading to  significantly increased mortality rates.^[[6]]  Nevertheless, he managed to enjoy a variety of sports, read books, work an allotment and take shorthand classes, and even a course in criminal law. Despite some disruptions, Sidney did receive quite a few parcels from relatives and organisations such as the Red Cross – and one from the Embsay-with-Eastby village institute. These parcels were vital to maintaining not only morale, but also nutritional health and personal hygiene of the prisoners, no doubt saving many lives. After a while, having worked in the gardening and grounds maintenance at the camp, Sidney was made an assistant in the hospital surgery.

 In late May 1944, Sidney was transferred (by a 3-hour train journey) to Tost (Oflag 6, Stalag 8B Teschen), a newly established POW hospital attached to Stalag 8B,where he was put to work treating some of the 3,500 patients. Conditions here were much better, as the POW medical staff were given free hand by the Germans for the day-to-day management of the hospital. Sidney recalled “he had a comfortable stay”.^[[7]]  He was even allowed to go out into the surrounding countryside for walks. In one of his letters home he passed on  his thanks for a parcel he received from the Embsay Ladies.

But as the Russians advanced upon Eastern Germany, most POWs were moved by the Germans westwards.^[[8]] Some were marched to Kassel, others to Nuremburg. Many had a brief stopover at Sagen. From here some were marched further on to other camps in western Germany.

So, on January 21^st, 1945, Sidney and other POWs at Tost were moved by train, arriving after 14 days at Stalag 8C, at Sagen, in Silesia, Poland. Sidney was only at Stalag 8C for four days before being sent on a forced march – including medics and patients from Tost – to Spremburg, 55 miles away.

From here they were supposed to taken by train into Western Germany, but the Russians had already cut the lines, and the notorious “Long March” had to continue for another 400 miles. It was one of the coldest winters recorded of the 20^th Century. The journey took over five weeks, with just one day’s rest per week. The lack of sufficient food and medical supplies led to a number of deaths – probably on average one death per day, and was the subject of many contemporary newspaper reports. Conditions were so shocking that questions were later raised in Parliament about the forced journey. On March 15^th, the prisoners finally reached their destination, the POW camp of Stalag 9H at Bad Orb, in western Germany (Kassel military district). But having escaped the Russian advance, the Germans now found themselves at the mercy of the Allied advance. The camp was well-known for the appalling conditions, but thankfully Sidney was only there for 19 days.^[[9]]   

On Easter Monday, 2^nd April, the Americans arrived: the 2^nd Battalion, 114^th Regiment of the US 44^th Infantry Division, 7^th Army (under the command of General Patton). They broke down the gates with their tanks, and liberated the 6,500 POWs in Bad Orb camp. The Americans brought in food supplies and a mobile canteen, treating the POWs (half of whom were American) to doughnuts, coffee, cigarettes and chewing gum.^[[10]]    

By the 8^th April, Sidney and fellow British prisoners of war were flown back to England, and the ‘Craven Herald’ newspaper reported that on 10^th April, Sidney was one of three local men to arrive back home on 6 weeks leave (the other two were from Skipton) after being released from prisoner of war camps. ^[[11]]   

On Sidney’s release forms, there the following note was written, summing up his military conduct:

“Pte. Waterfall is a well educated soldier of good address and manners, courteous and thoroughly good living. He can confidently be recommended to work efficiently without supervision. I have pleasure in saying that he has served the Corps well an he takes my best wishes with him on his return to civil life where he will do well in any post top which his talents are best suited.” ^[[12]]

The Craven Herald newspaper reported that “Despite almost four years confinement in German prisoner-of-war camps. Pte. Waterfall is looking very well.” ^[[13]]

Sadly, Sidney returned home to a widowed mother, as his father had died in February 1944 (buried at the Quaker burial ground, Airton), and tragically, Sidney’s mother died at Airedale General Hospital, just a few months after she welcomed her son home. She was buried at Airton in October 1945.  

Sidney was soon sent to Crookham, and assigned as a clerk in a R.A.M.C. records office. While there, he met a young Czechoslovakian woman, Ilse (known by friends as ‘Frankie’), at a swimming pool.^[[14]] 

Ilse Franziska Felicitus Frankenbusch (1915-1994), the second daughter of Rudolf Frankenbusch (1877-1957) of Prague, and Hulda née Kohn (1890-1944). The couple were converts from Judaism to Protestantism, which led to Rudolf being disowned by his family. Rudolf and Hulda divorced sometime between 1915 and 1920, and Rudolf re-married to a German woman and had another daughter, Johanna (1921-2009), born in Czechoslovakia.^[[15]]

Ilse remained with her mother and they lived in Vienna (where Hulda had been born), until, to escape Nazi oppression, Ilse and Hulda both emigrated – Ilse to Scotland, and Hulde to the Netherlands to join her other daughter, Ilse’s sister, Anna Gisela (1910-1994). (Born in Brandenburg, Germany, Anna was in the Netherlands when she married in 1938. She too managed to escape the Germans, dying in Rotterdam, in 1994.) Hulda then went to Nice, in France, in the hope that her own mother, Gisela, would join her there. But Gisela had disappeared in Vienna in 1942, and it later transpired she had died at Nazi hands at Riga, Latvia.

In 1939 Rudolf escaped to England, and Ilse joined him in Birmingham, where he worked as a technical advisor for the glassworks at Edgbaston. On the outbreak of war, Ilse was immediately interned as a suspected German enemy alien, but was quickly released on 27^th October when a tribunal confirmed she was in fact Czechoslovakian Jewish, escaping persecution.

Ilse’s mother, Hulda, who had fled to France, worked as secretary and housekeeper to Princess Margaret Draper Boncompagni, in Nice. Despite Ilse’s efforts to help, while trying to escape German-occupied Nice, Hulda was arrested by the Germans at the train station, and died at Auschwitz in 1944.  In 1945, Rudolf married a third time to a British woman, Pauline Hewitt, in Epping, Essex. ^[[16]] He died in Wales, in 1957

Ilse, now known as Frankie, had been working for a Seafarers’ charity in Scotland, before joining the Auxiliary Territorial Service (A.T.S.) in April 1945. After training she was sent to Fleet, which was very near Crookham. Although she was soon transferred to Colchester as an officer’s driver in the Royal Army Service Corps (R.A.S.C.), Ilse and Sidney continued their romance with frequent visits and letters. On the death of his mother, Sidney inherited the house in Embsay, and his brother Arnold inherited the bookshop in Skipton.

Ilse and Sidney married in January 1946 at Skipton Register Office, with a brief honeymoon in the Dales and the Lake District, before returning to their duties in the army. Sidney was finally discharged from the army in August 1946. They settled in his parents’ former home, ‘Lyndhurst’, in Embsay, where they raised their three children. Sidney joined Arnold as booksellers and stationers in Skipton. ^[[17]] Sidney retired in 1979.[18] Lovers of the outdoors, Sidney and Arnold were well-known pot-holers, rock-climbers and fell-walkers. Sidney was a member of the Craven Naturalists, Yorkshire Ramblers Club, Craven Pothole Club, and the RSPB, and Chairman of the South Craven District Scouts Association from 1962 until 1979. He also sat on the Embsay-with-Eastby Parish Council from 1963 to 1982, and was a regular Wednesday night customer at the Elm Tree Inn in Embsay. ^[[19]] 

The couple moved to Overdale Park, just outside Skipton, in 1991. Ilse died in 1994, her ashes scattered on the moor at Crookrise Crag above Embsay. Sidney died in May 2004.After a memorial service at Embsay Methodist Chapel, his ashes joined those of his wife on Crookrise Crag.

In our next history post, we shall be looking at another POW, Frank Hill, who returned home to Embsay in May 1945.

Grateful thanks to Nicola Waterfall for permission to use photographs, and for information on Sidney and Ilse Waterfall. The books by Sidney’s daughter, Sonia, are highly recommended for those wanting to know more about this family, and the life of POWs in WWII (available for loan from Skipton Library).

Sources

Sonia Waterfall – “A Pacifist’s War: Sid’s Story” (2021).

Sonia Waterfall –  “Escape to Auschwitz: Hulda’s Story” (2014).

British Newspaper Archive

Geni-com – Ann Fuller [Ann Fuller – Genealogy]

Census returns

Electoral registers

National Archives – “War Office POW records, World War Two”  

Craven Herald and Pioneer newspaper archives

YouTube: Harry Kidd – “Liberation of Bad Orb camp, April 5 1945”, at (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PsDT5wsaO0I )

YouTube: Rememberww2.org – “What Life Was Like In Nazi Prison Camp Stalag IX-B – interview with Ken Axelson” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EusIcyPxSC8  )

^[1] Joseph John Waterfall (1874-1944), born in Scosthrop, Airton, son of a gardener; his father died in 1891 and his mother in 1877, so he was brought up by his maternal grandparents who had a farm in Airton, apart from when he attended the Quaker school at Ackworth; previously a book-keeper for a clothing wholesale retailer, Joseph took over the running of Hargreaves Stationers in 1907, and married Hargreaves’s niece, Edith Cartwright Whincup (1887-1945), in 1912, at Belmont Baptist Church, Skipton. She was born in Saltaire, Bradford, the daughter of a confectioner, and had previously been a shop assistant for a bootmaker. Buying Hargreaves’s Skipton business in 1910, Joseph moved the shop from 12 to 10 Sheep Street, and the family lived behind and over the shop from 1914 to 1937. His son, Arnold and Sidney both ran the shop for many years after Joseph died (at Lyndhurst, 27^th Feb. 1944). Both of Sidney’s parents were interred at the Friends’ Burial Ground, Airton. The Waterfall’s bookshop is currently W H Smith’s; The family had moved to Embsay in 1939.

^[2] They were based on Skipton High Street, in the offices now occupied by Savage Crangle Solicitors.

^[3] According to the Craven Herald (13^th April, 1945), Sidney (army number 7380174) was captured on May 3^rd, although the German land attack took place on the 20^th; However, in War Office Records of POWs [WO 416/380/448] Sidney’s date of capture is cited as 1^st June; In his Craven Herald newspaper obituary it is stated that Sidney helped set up a makeshift hospital in caves as some staff and patients hid from the Germans to evade capture – according to “Private Papers of W L Lamb” (IWM Documents.12070), a doctor at the hospital, this evacuation of the field hospital into the caves took place on the 20th of May. See also: 7th General Hospital Archives – Kyle Glover History. For an accurate and detailed account, including conditions under which he was held, see Sonia Waterfall’s book on her father’s wartime experiences.

^[4] POW no. 2431. In his obituary, the camp is incorrectly named as Gorlitz (Stalag 8A) but several other records state that Sidney was at Lamsdorf (Stalag 8B)

^[5] ‘Craven Herald and Pioneer’ newspaper – 20^th April 1945

^[6] Lamsdorf held approximately 100,000 prisoners from all the Allied nations. In 1941 the Russian POWs were sent to a separate camp, Stalag VIII-F, set up nearby. In 1943, the overcrowded Lamsdorf camp was split up, and many of the prisoners were transferred to two new base camps, Stalag VIII-C Sagan and Stalag VIII-D Teschen. The base camp at Lamsdorf was renumbered Stalag 344. The Russian Soviet Army reached Lamsdorf on 17^th March 1945.

^[7] The hospital facilities of Tost, Stalag VIII-B, were apparently the best of all the Stalags. It was set up on a separate site with concrete buildings, including self-contained wards, operating theatres, X-ray and laboratory facilities, as well as kitchens, a morgue, and accommodation for the medical staff. A German officer was in overall charge, but the staff were entirely POWs, and included general physicians and surgeons, even a neurosurgeon, psychiatrist, anaesthesiologist and radiologist.

^[8] The reasons for this have been the subject of much debate. Perhaps it was to abide by the Geneva convention, to keep POWs out of active war zones; or to use them as bargaining chips in the event of peace deals.

^[9] See attached newspaper accounts of the Long March, and the liberation of Stalag 9H.

^[10] A video taken at the time can be viewed on YouTube: Liberation of Bad Orb camp, April 5^th 1945, at (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PsDT5wsaO0I ) – as it was taken by an American cameraman it only shows the American POWs but this gives a feel for how it must have been for Sidney to be liberated that day.

^[11] ‘Craven Herald and Pioneer’ newspaper – 13^th April 1945

^[12] Sonia Waterfall (2021,      p. 242)

^[13] ‘Craven Herald and Pioneer’ – 20^th April 1945 ; ‘Hull Daily Mail’ (27^th February 1945); War Office records WO 411/380/448 – RAMC Private 7380174 – POW No. 24321

^[14] With thanks to Nicola Waterfall for photographs and information on Sidney and Ilse.

^[15] Johanna Ernestine Valerie Frankenbusch (1921-2008) – married in 1954 and emigrated to Canada

^[16] Rudolf must have divorced again, as his 2nd wife, Johanna née Tietze, was still living – she died in 1977.

^[17] An obituary of Arnold Waterfall, in Kevin Petrie – “The Friend” (June 8, 1990 p.741)

^[18] The bookshop was taken over by Arnold’s son, Roger Waterfall, until he retired in 2001.

^[19] Sidney’s brother Arnold Cartwright Waterfall (1914-1990); Ran the bookshop with Sidney from 1930 to 1979; He married Phyliis Keegan in 1939; lived in Airton, next to the Quaker Meeting House, helping to run the hostel for Liverpool evacuees. He was prominent member of the Society of Friends at a national level; He was also an expert philatelist (stamp collector) and founder of the Cave Rescue Organisation.  Arnold died in Draughton.

Jane Lunnon, Embsay-with-Eastby Historical Research Group.