Horace Greasley. RIP.

Discussion in 'Books, Films, TV, Radio' started by Peter Clare, Feb 12, 2010.

  1. Peter Clare

    Peter Clare Very Senior Member

    Horace Greasley - Telegraph

    Horace Greasley, who died on February 4 aged 91, claimed a record unique among Second World War PoWs – that of escaping from his camp more than 200 times only to creep back into captivity each time.


    Published: 4:51PM GMT 12 Feb 2010

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    [​IMG] Greasley confronting Heinrich Himmler (wearing the spectacles) in the PoW camp



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    The reason for the frequency with which Greasley put his life in danger, he admitted with engaging good humour and frankness, was simple: he had embarked on a romance with a local German girl. Rosa Rauchbach was, if anything, running even greater risks than Greasley.
    A translator at the camp where he was imprisoned, she had concealed her Jewish roots from the Nazis. Discovery of their affair would almost certainly have meant doom for them both.

    Greasley recounted the almost incredible details of his wartime romance in the book Do The Birds Still Sing In Hell? (2008), which he had been "thinking about and threatening to write" for almost 70 years. But while the book is described as an "autobiographical novel", the story was largely confirmed at his debriefing by MI9 intelligence officers shortly after the war.
    Horace Joseph Greasley, nicknamed Jim, was one of twin boys born on Christmas Day 1918 at Ibstock, Leicestershire. He was 20 and working as a young hairdresser when Hitler invaded Czechoslovakia, and the Military Training Act made all men between the ages of 18 and 40 legally liable for call-up. Horace and his twin brother Harold were conscripted in the first draft.
    A client whose hair he was cutting offered, when Horace mentioned that he was going into the Army, to get him a job as a fireman, a reserved occupation which would actually pay better than joining the services. Horace Greasley turned the offer down.
    But his war proved a short one. After seven weeks' training with the 2nd/5th Battalion Leicestershire Regiment, he landed in France at the end of the "Phoney War" as one of the British Expeditionary Force; on May 25 1940, during the retreat to Dunkirk, he was taken prisoner at Carvin, south of Lille.
    There followed a 10-week forced march across France and Belgium to Holland and a three-day train journey to prison camps in Polish Silesia, then annexed as part of Germany. Many died on the way, and Greasley reckoned himself lucky to have survived.
    In the second PoW camp to which he was assigned, near Lamsdorf, he encountered the 17-year-old daughter of the director of the marble quarry to which the camp was attached.
    She was working as an interpreter for the Germans, and, emaciated as he was, there was, Greasley said, an undeniable and instant mutual attraction.
    Within a few weeks Greasley and Rosa were conducting their affair in broad daylight and virtually under the noses of the German guards – snatching meetings for trysts in the camp workshops and wherever else they could find. But at the end of a year, just as he was realising how much he cared for Rosa, Greasley was transferred to Freiwaldau, an annex of Auschwitz, some 40 miles away.
    The only way to carry on the love affair was to break out of his camp. From Silesia, bordered by Germany and German-occupied countries, there was little hope of escaping back to Britain. The nearest neutral country was Sweden, 420 miles to the north. Perhaps for this reason the guards were lax, and the Germans seemed to consider that those trying to escape were effectively attempting suicide.
    Greasley reckoned that short absences could be disguised or go unnoticed. Messages between him and Rosa were exchanged via members of outside work parties, who then handed hers on to Greasley, the camp barber, when they came to have their hair cut. When, with the help of friends, he did make it under the wire for an assignation nearby, he would break back into the camp again under cover of darkness to await his next opportunity.
    Sometimes, Greasley reckoned, he made the return journey three or more times a week, depending on whether Rosa's duties among various camps brought her to his vicinity. His persistence in their love affair was not the only testimony to his daring. A wartime photograph shows Heinrich Himmler, head of the SS, inspecting a prison camp and a shirtless skinny PoW close to the fence confronting him.
    The prisoner has been identified as Horace Greasley, who said he did not know who Himmler was at the time, but realised that he was some superior officer. Greasley said that when the photo was taken he was demanding more food for the prisoners, having taken off his shirt to show how thin he was. Rations did not improve as a result.
    Rosa repaid his attentions, he said, by providing small food parcels and pieces of equipment for him to take back into the camp, eventually including radio parts which enabled 3,000 prisoners to keep up with the news by listening to the BBC.
    Greasley was held prisoner, working for the Germans in quarries and factories, for five years less one day, and was finally liberated on May 24 1945. He still received letters from Rosa after the war's end, and was able to vouch for her when she applied to work as an interpreter for the Americans.
    Not long after Greasley got back to Britain, however, he received news that Rosa had died in childbirth, with the infant perishing too. Horace Greasley said he never knew for certain whether or not the child was his.
    After demobilisation he returned to Leicestershire, swearing that he would never take orders from anyone again. He ran a hairdressers', a taxi firm and a haulage company in Coalville, where he met his wife, Brenda, at a fancy dress party in 1970. They married in 1975, retiring to the Costa Blanca in Spain in 1988.
    Greasley was delighted with the publication of his book and was to have undertaken a return visit to Silesia for a television company this spring, having, he said, been promised the company of "a very attractive 21-year-old female nurse for the entire journey". He died in his sleep before the offer could be made good.
    Horace Greasley is survived by his wife and by their son and daughter.
     
  2. Smudger Jnr

    Smudger Jnr Our Man in Berlin

    :poppy: Horace Greasley. RIP. :poppy:

    What an amazing story.

    Tom
     
  3. slaphead

    slaphead very occasional visitor

    What a brilliant bloke.
    Well, there is another book for the list!
     
  4. Recce_Mitch

    Recce_Mitch Very Senior Member

    :poppy: Horace Greasley RIP :poppy:

    Paul
     
  5. beeza

    beeza Senior Member

    What an amazing story. How come no ones ever heard of this tale before ?
    David
     
  6. Rich Payne

    Rich Payne Rivet Counter Patron 1940 Obsessive

    It seems that it wasn't just lack of food burning off those calories. No wonder he looked tired;)
     
  7. Drew5233

    Drew5233 #FuturePilot 1940 Obsessive

    I thought I recognised the name when someone posted a link to this thread. He gets a considerable amount of mentions in 'Tigers at Dunkirk'.

    Ps- I've just ordered a copy of his book.
     
  8. RemeDesertRat

    RemeDesertRat Very Senior Member

  9. At Home Dad (Returning)

    At Home Dad (Returning) Well-Known Member

    Great story, but -

    Firstly, is that really him in the (reversed) photo?
    Russian sidecap etc and I think several people
    elsewhere have noted that the photo is not of
    him, it's a Russian POW. When did Himmler ever
    visit Allied POW's?

    Secondly, is he really likely to be able to escape
    with such ease? Why did no others follow his route
    and make an escape? Would a woman who is in complete
    danger of discovery really be attracted to a man who
    wouldn't likely be able to wash much? Dont forget, this
    photo comes from the footage filmed when Himmler was
    noted to feel slightly sick by the smell of the inmates -
    at about 2:16min Stock Footage - Heinrich Himmler meets Soviet prisoners as he inspects a concentration camp in Minsk.

    Thirdly, you all KNOW his role will be played by an American,
    portraying those little known US men captured at Dunkirk

    I find the story a bit odd to be truthful! He even calls it a
    'novel' himself!

    I'm sure it will all be cleared up if the MI9 file is found at the NA
     
  10. RemeDesertRat

    RemeDesertRat Very Senior Member

    Interesting! Just done a google image search of the P.O.W. pic above and most come up as a Soviet P.O.W. camp.
     
  11. Owen

    Owen -- --- -.. MOD

    I've been sent a review copy of the book.
    Reading it now.
     
  12. Owen

    Owen -- --- -.. MOD

    When I was offered the chance to review this book by the publishers I said yes as it was about a chap who fought in the 1940 campaign & his time as a POW with an interesting tale to tell.
    http://www.johnblakepublishing.co.uk/e-store/Do-The-Birds-Still-Sing-In-Hell.html

    hell.jpg

    Horarce Greasley is named as the author on the cover but in fact it has been ghost written by Ken Scott who admits he didn't really want to do ''another war story'' at first.
    In the Forward on page XIII he says,
    ''I attempted to exaggerate at times with a little poetic licence. Horace wouldn't allow it; in reality it didn't need to.''

    Now this is where my problem with the book lies. It is not written as a straight forward memoir, it is written like a novel , a novel like I used to read as a teenager in the early 1980s, a war novel with some sex scenes added . (Some ? quite a few actually in this one)

    Horace Greasley may have told Ken Scott what went through his own mind throughout the war but I didnt like how we read of other characters thoughts , past history, sexual encouters when Horace would have had no way of knowing about these at all.

    Ken Scott shows little knowledge of military things which bugged a WW2-nerd like me.

    For instance to start with in the Prologue he has a conversation between two Soviet soldiers discussing what will happen when they get to Germany.
    Why would they need to mention a 'village in France'' destroyed by the Germans (alluding to Oradour sur Glane) when far more villages were destroyed in their own country?
    They also have a dig at the Americans for being late into the war. Didn't see a need for that.

    Other errors that bugged me were when he calls a Field Service cap a 'glengarry' he could have used 'side cap' , a lieutenant is not 'high ranking' , a 'section of 29 men' is in fact a platoon. WW2 soldiers wouldn't refer to 'combats' rather they'd have said 'battledress' .
    Supposedly 'friendly fire' is a term coined in WW1, thanks to ' grossly incompetent generals' , I don't think so.

    One error that also grates is Greasley thinks about escaping in the summer of 1941 , he thinks it'd be suicidial ,
    '' they'd heard stories about the Japanese kamikaze pilots'' , really ? What in the summer of 1941 ??

    The errors continue when Greasley is repatriated in 1945 in a Dakota whose ''bomb-bay doors open'' to show them the White Cliffs of Dover, then they get driven in Land Rovers !

    I could continue like that but I won't .

    I did enjoy reading of his pre-war life, though I'm not fussed about how he lost his Virginity,
    His Sergeant-Major comes across as a hateful cowardly bully who surrenders the platoon to the Germans.
    All the Germans in the book are all come across as evil , nasty bits of work.
    Greasley hates them as much as his Sgt-Major.
    All people in authority come across that way.

    Horace Greasley's story is a remarkable one , his girlfriend Rosa has no love for the Germans and puts herself at risk to supply Horace with extra food & radio parts.

    If you like your stories with action & drama and don't mind the odd inaccuracies then this is a ripping yarn just for you.

    If you are like me & want to read a more accurate story then give it a miss.

    You can read more about Horace Greasley here
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horace_Greasley
     
    Roxy and Drew5233 like this.
  13. Drew5233

    Drew5233 #FuturePilot 1940 Obsessive

    This book has been sitting on my shelf for around 12 months....I think it may be there for sometime yet. I guess the book is a good argument for not taking veteran accounts as verbatim ;)
     
    Roxy likes this.
  14. jonheyworth

    jonheyworth Senior Member

    Well my wife bought me "finding the foe" and "finding the few" last xmas, this year she bought me " the man who broke into Auschwitz" and " Do the birds still sing in hell"

    Is she trying to tell me something, is it over ?

    All joking aside "Do the birds still sing in hell " is unadulterated crap !
     
    Owen likes this.
  15. maureenmoss

    maureenmoss New Member

    I met Horace Greasley and what a delightful old man he was: fun, audacious and great company. His story reflects his personality. He was not the typical 'up an' at 'em' type of hero; he was an ordinary guy who just loved stirring things up for his captors, and who survived captivity by never losing his defiant spirit. He and Rosa fell in love, and like many young lovers spent as much time together as they could, but unlike other lovers they used much of their time together to devise a plan to keep up the spirits of hundreds of other POWs. Reading about their passion for each other and for survival will surely inspire many readers; it certainly inspired me.
     
  16. Wills

    Wills Very Senior Member

    Commenting on the delights or otherwise of hell is something I would not wish to do -see little point in falling out with my future landlord.
     
  17. Carol Cole

    Carol Cole New Member

    I was privileged to meet Horace Greasley, and what a real gentleman he was. Listening to him talk about what happened to him in WW2, I could see that those events still affected him deeply. The ghostwriter of Do the Birds Still Sing In Hell? made have used some artistic licence in writing down Horace's story, but that doesn't diminish the sense of determination and ingenuity of Horace, and also that love can survive all manner of horrors. No doubt when the movie is made of Horace's story, it will say 'based on a true story' - after all, isn't that what film makers do?
     
  18. Drew5233

    Drew5233 #FuturePilot 1940 Obsessive

    Don't get them started on War Films on here...They hate them all for never being factual ;)
     
  19. Keleonie

    Keleonie New Member

    Not being a child of the war, I really can't comment on any inaccuracies this book may contain. I do however know that it is 'based on fact' and I daresay, as for many novels, a certain amount of information may have been embellished. I have to say, I enjoyed the story immensely and it doesn't concern me if some facts aren't spot on; it's the story that counts for me. It fascinates me to read about people's experiences of the war and it has always made me wonder how I would have coped in their situation. I hope people never stop reading about, and learning from, the terrible things that happened in WW2. There are so few survivors now that these inspirational characters and their stories need to be kept alive.
     
  20. Drew5233

    Drew5233 #FuturePilot 1940 Obsessive

    You see th

    But that's the problem I think you and your friends or multiple user names are all failing to see....Most of us here are self confessed WW2 Geeks and we like facts, poetic licence clouds facts, and what actually happened in WW2. People who are not as obsessed with WW2 like us will then believe that is what actually happened.

    Imagine if 'experts' wrote books about concentration camps not being that bad or the Jews were treated well in WW2 or lets say millions didn't die in the camps....Oh hang some already have....

    I've not read the book so can't comment on it personally but if it's got 'made up stuff' in my opinion he's doing himself an injustice and a dis service along with the thousands of PoWs that spent 6 years in captivity. I'd rather him write a boring truthful book rather than a exciting not so truthful book. If I wanted exciting rubbish I'd read a Chris Ryan book ;)
     
    Owen likes this.

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