Projects
- Introduction
- The Museum of The Black Watch, Perth
- Clackmannanshire Council
- Aberdeenshire Council
- Argyll & Sutherland Highlanders Museum, Stirling
- The Gordon Highlanders Museum, Aberdeen
- Museum nan Eilean, Lewis
- Museum of the Isles, Skye
- West Lothian Council
- Kildonan Museum
- Highland Council
- Hunterian Museum & Art Gallery
- McLean Museum & Art Gallery, Inverclyde Council
- Orkney Islands Council
- West Dunbartonshire Council
- Argyll & Bute Council
- Dysart Primary School
- Erskine Hospital
Project Title: What's The War Got To Do With Us?
Exhibition: Prisoners of War
A German air-raid rained death and destruction on Duff House POW camp in July 1940. This exhibition looks at life in the camp, and the day the bomber came. At around 9.15am on Monday 20 July, 1940, the sleepy rural backwater of Banffshire was rudely awoken when a Heinkel 111 bomber pounded several targets in and around Banff and Macduff. Worst hit was the POW camp of Duff House. Many men were killed and many more injured. It made the people of Banff realise nobody was safe in a world at war. This exhibition tells the story of the POW camp and the bombing through eyewitness testimony from two vantage points. One is a German prisoner who narrowly escaped with his life. The other is a local boy who met German prisoners and then watched in awe as the bombs fell. The mystery of why the Luftwaffe bombed a camp holding men from their own side is explored in pictures, audio and video footage. This content of this exhibition was created by Allan Burnett, www.allanburnett.com.
Assets in this exhibition:
A prisoner's story
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Description
This is the story of a German U-Boat submariner who was taken prisoner of war in Duff House. It is an audio interview with Paul Mengelberg, who joined the crew of U-26 in the mid-1930s. Paul describes the dramatic capture of U-26 by a British destroyer in the summer of 1940. Then he talks about being a prisoner in Duff House, describing life there in detail. He also relives the morning of July 22, 1940, when Duff House bombed by the Luftwaffe and six of his crewmembers were killed by their own side.
Biography
Paul Mengelberg was born in Koln, or Cologne, in 1916. Paul joined the German Kriegsmarine when he was seventeen years old. After being taken prisoner into Duff House he was moved to England and then Canada. After the war Paul returned to Germany, but only briefly. He went back to Canada to work as an electrical and mechanical engineer. He settled down in Ontario.
Transcript
The capture of U-26
“ I was taken prisoner in 1940, July 1st. We were picked up by HMS Rochester. We were hunted for almost six hours, and we were [at a depth of] almost two hundred and thirty metres. We had water in the stern. The boat was lain in the water silent, completely silent. The lights were out, just emergency lights on. Tt was really eerie inside. We knew that the destroyer was waiting up there, and he was playing the same game. Absolute silent. You couldn’t hear a thing.”
After six hours the U-Boat was forced to the surface and boarded. Paul and the crew were interrogated in London
“ From the interrogation we were shipped up to Scotland, to Banff, into Duff House. [It] had a wire fence all around it. Everything was green, like grass pastures and so on. A wonderful location. There was one big wire fence. I would say it was eight feet high, ja. And it had guards patrolling outside. They were all Scots from the Scottish regiments. We had a sergeant major there and we called him the ‘neck shooter’. He was a real ram-rod in a way, with a strong neck like a wrestler has. And he looked after us.”
The prisoners enter Duff House
“We used the staircases, when [we] got in the building, on the left hand side. They were not direct but the spiral type, you know? You go up then there’s a little landing, you go up again then there’s a little landing, and you go up again, ja. On the left hand side, way up on top, there are two small windows. That was where we were. There were some fellows from Norway, and in the next room there was a lazarette, a sick bay.
Food and drink for the prisoners
“In the morning we had one slice of bread and jam, you know, in the typical army tin plates. [The] jam was watered down so what we had to – I mean, only pigs eat like this but we did – [was to put] a little bit of jam on the plate. And all we did was put a slice of bread down on one side and then turn it over to the other side, and then try to get everything out with a spoon. So that was our breakfast. And tea, tea galore.
The bombing of Duff House. Monday, July 22, 1940
“In the morning at nine o’clock the klaxon went. We were all lined up outside. We heard an aircraft and he came pretty low. He must have been coming out from Norway or somewhere [like that]. Before we witnessed that it was over, the bombs fell. Two went into the elevetor shaft as duds, they never blew up. But two guards outside, they were killed through the bombs.
“There was a fellow by the name of Hans Houk. He had his back to the window when the bombs blew up outside. And he got all the glass into his back. His whole back was just plastered with glass slivers, so they put him in the hospital and they took all the slivers out.
“Miraculously, I wasn’t hit by anything. I high-tailed it right into the building and, while I was going in there the door came down [upon me] and the window of this door fell right neatly over me, without the glass in it, ja. So all I had to do was step out of that hole and into the building. Why I did it I don’t know, but it was all over quick, ja.”
The bomber (a Heinkel 111) fled, only to be shot down by Spitfires from RAF Dyce. Casualties were treated on site initially, as the alarm was raised.
“There was one fellow by the name of Ackerman, and his torso was ripped into two. There was a captain, he was a Jewish person, a captain of the [British] Army. He tended to [Ackerman]. As long as [Ackerman] was living, he was completely sane and clear-thinking, even though he was only half a person, so to speak. And then all of a sudden, bingo: he died, ja. Six of my crew members perished. They got out of the submarine sound and safe and then a German bomber comes and kills them. That is hard to take.”
Why did the Luftwaffe bomb German POWs?
“I think it was a reconaissance aircraft. They are loaded with bombs too, ja. I think he was on a reconaissance mission to explore northern Scotland, and he saw this camp down there. He saw the tents of the guards up on the hill, and he saw this building there with people outside and thought, ‘let’s give them a lesson,’ so to speak.”
Paul was transferred to Canada until the war was over.
Source
Date: July 1940
Contributor: Burnett, A
Location: Banff
Original Source: Allan Burnett
Paul Mengelberg, Kriegsmariner
Description
This is a recent picture of Paul Mengelberg. Paul was a U-Boat Kriegsmariner and a POW in Duff House. Paul was born in Koln, or Cologne, in 1916. After the war he settled in Canada.
Source
Date: 2009
Contributor: Mengelberg, P
Location: Ontario, Canada
Original Source: Mengelberg, P
U-26
Description
U-Boats were German submarines. They played a vital role in the German war effort. The German navy was known as the Kriegsmarine. This picture shows U-26 at Bremen, Germany, before the war. It was captured on 1 July 1940 off the coast of Ireland by HMS Rochester. The crew of U-26 were interrogated and then taken Prisoners of War. Their POW camp was at Duff House, Banff.
Source
Date: 1937
Contributor: Imperial War Museum
Location: Bremen, Germany
Original Source: Imperial War Museum
HMS Rochester
Description
HMS Rochester was a Royal Navy destroyer. She captured the German crew of U-26 off the coast of Ireland on 1 July, 1940. The German sailers were taken prisoner of war and sent to Duff House, Banff.
Source
Date: 1940s
Contributor: Imperial War Museum
Location: UK
Original Source: Imperial War Museum
Luftwaffe reconnaissance
Description
This is an aerial reconnaissance photograph taken by the German Luftwaffe during the war. It shows Banff, Macduff and the surrounding area. Pictures like these helped the Germans to plan bombing runs like the one that badly damaged Duff House POW camp in July 1940. According to one former POW it is possible that the bomber itself was on a reconnaissance mission. If so, then it would have taken pictures like this when it attacked.
Source
Date: c.1940
Contributor: Banff Preservation & Heritage Society
Location: Banff and Macduff
Original Source: Banff Preservation & Heritage Society
A bomber's eye view
Description
A bomber's eye view of Banff town. The POW camp at Duff House, Banff, was bombed in July 1940. This picture illustrates what the pilot of the Heinkel 111 who carried out the raid would have seen. The grounds of Duff House are on the left of the image. The picture was taken before the war, but the layout of the town remained virtually unchanged.
Source
Date: c.1930
Contributor: Banff Preservation & Heritage Society
Location: Banff
Original Source: Banff Preservation & Heritage Society
Bomb damage
Description
The picture shows the blast marks left by the air raid on Duff House POW camp. The air-raid took place on 22 July, 1940.
Source
Date: 2009/1940
Contributor: Burnett, A / Duff House / thanks to Mike Newcomen
Location: Banff
Original Source: Burnett, A / Duff House.
Shrapnel from Duff House
Description
This is a fragment of shrapnel from Duff House. It was contained in one of the bombs that blew up in the grounds of the house during the air-raid of 22 July, 1940. Shrapnel is hard and jagged to cause maximum injury when it hits somebody. Many Duff House POWs and their guards were either killed or injured by shrapnel wounds. This piece may have been from a bomb that blew up outside, and was lodged in a tree.
Source
Date: 22 July 1940
Contributor: Burnett, A / Duff House
Location: Banff
Original Source: Duff House
Lift shaft
Description
The main stairwell of Duff House used to be the lift shaft. When Duff House POW camp was bombed in 1940, two bombs fell through the skylight window and down this shaft. Luckily, the bombs turned out to be duds. They didn't go off. Otherwise the damage to Duff House would have been much more severe.
Source
Date: 2009
Contributor: Burnett, A / Duff House
Location: Banff
Original Source: Burnett, A / Duff House
A local boy's story
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Description
This oral testimony describes Duff House Prisoner Of War Camp through the eyes of a local boy. David Clark was the son of the local Church of Scotland minister. When Duff House became a camp for prisoners of war, David's father was appointed Officiating Chaplain there. This meant he had to look after the religious needs of Allied soldiers and German prisoners in Duff House.
It also gave David's father an idea. The commandant of Duff House was persuaded to let young David in to the camp, so that he could meet the prisoners and learn the German language. David got to know the Germans quite well. He learned about the war and its effect on people.
David's family home was near Duff House. Because of this, he was also able to witness the bombing of Duff House on 22 July, 1940. David's father was required to bury the dead, while his mother was a Red Cross reserve nurse who had to treat the casualties. Again, David describes in detail how he was taken to meet the wounded prisoners and the scenes he witnessed.
Biography
Dr David Findlay Clark was born in 1930. His father was the Kirk Minister in Banff during the war. His mother was a Red Cross reserve nurse. After growing up during the war, David became an RAF flying officer. He was awarded an OBE for his work as a psychologist. He also became an author, and wrote about his experiences of growing up during the war in a book called One Boy's War. He retired and settled in Banff.
Transcript
How Duff House became a POW camp
“The Nissen huts went up in no time at all, all over the place. Then the posts went in for the barbed-wire fences. They were double-layer fence with a walkway between, with ashes or grit or something. And then there were one or two wires on insulators, which we knew to be electrified. And then there was a huge gate just where the present little kids’ playground is [...] and a wooden guard house. And then there were turrets with searchlights and, presumably, machine guns. The front area, which had been the tennis courts of Duff House [sanatorium], became the parade ground. There were no nets or anything like that, but the Germans played football there with the Brits.
“Duff House was always interesting to me because my father had got this officiating chaplain’s badge, which gave him the equivalent rank of captain in the services. And he was officially appointed – by, I don’t know whether it was the high command, or The Queen, or whatever – that he would be the Protestant minister for British forces in and around the parish of Banff, and for any enemy, or rather imprisoned enemy, in the same area. I don’t know whether he would have been their pastor if they had just dropped out of the sky and attacked us, or whether he would have said: ‘Just hang on with that machine gun for a moment while i do a communion’. I don’t think that would have happened!
“So long as the [Germans] were locked up in Duff House, he went and attended to their so-called pastoral needs. One of the things he did was supervise delivery of their Red Cross parcels in accordance with Geneva Convention. And that was one of his official tasks, which seemed to go quite well.”
Learning from the enemy
“[My father] saw a lot of Germans and he thought it would be a very good thing if David Clark, his elder boy, went and began to learn some German. So he persuaded the camp commandant to let me go with him on a Saturday morning, in through the barbed wire and electrified fence, while he my father saw the people who required to see him.
“I wasn’t allowed anywhere except in the corridors, although I had to go through the atrium, which is now the main vestibule at the top of the curved stair. You had to go through there to get anywhere. But, of course, there were always armed guards at all points, at the corners of the stairs and so forth. It was quite awkward because I didn’t know, at that age, how to go about initiating conversations even in English far less in German. But I eventually struggled along and I began to learn some German. And, of course, the British soldiers who were there, they were quite intrigued by the fact there was a small boy wandering about the corridors. They had their usual mutterings, and so on. But I got to know them, too.
“At that point I was acutely aware that the Germans fell into two categories. The rather arrogant Nazis amongst the prisoners ... they were obvious. They almost clicked their jackboots as they walked past one another. They were very disparaging about the place and quite adamant that the war would be over by Christmas, and this kind of thing.
“But the majority were, to me, just like our soldiers. They had old uniforms and jerseys and stuff, and they played football. They would speak to me, and they would usually say: ‘Do you want to see a picture of my kids?’ That was one of the opening moves. Or I would say: ‘Sie haben Kinder vielleicht?’ [‘Do you have children, by any chance?’] and so forth. And they would say: ‘Ja, hier ist mein Sohn’. And I would see a bonnie, 19-year-old German girl, and perhaps two kids. And I thought: this can’t be good, the war.”
The bombing of Duff House, 22 July 1940
“At the time, my father was shaving in the bathroom; my mother was making breakfast in the kitchen. And Tom, my wee brother, who had been up early, says: ‘Hey, there’s a Gerry out there’. So there was great excitement.
“I ran to my parents’ bedroom window, which looks over Duff House and, lo and behold, here’s a Heinkel 111 with the black crosses on the wings and the Swastika on the tail coming towards us from Macduff. And we could see smoke rising from Macduff. The plane came over quite low. Now I would recognise it as about 900ft or 1000ft, or thereabout. And, as we watched, we were all absolutely certain about this because we all knew every German, Japanese, Italian aircraft, because we bought little books from Penguin called Aircraft Identification [Aircraft Recognition].
“And as we watched, we saw the bomb doors opening, as it came straight towards us. And we thought, ‘Jeez! He’s going to drop a bomb on us!’ And then five or six bombs fell out. To us, it appeared they fell quite slowly and then speeded up. And just before they hit the ground, the door burst open and my old man came rushing in. ‘Get down you boys!’ And he grabbed us by the necks and shoved us on the floor. He was half shaved. One side was all neatly shaved and the other side was all foam. And I remember the bizarre business of us lying on the floor with this foamy face on my side, and on Tommy’s face a nice smooth face, as the bombs went bang, bang, bang and all the pictures and ornaments fell on the floor.”
Tending the wounded, burying the dead
“The morning, however was busy for us because, having seen this happen, my old man eventually got the other side of his face shaved and got his good suit on, and went down to Duff House where he was needed because he spoke German reasonably well. He was needed as an interpreter down there, because it was chaos.
“And they had the problem of dealing with the dead. There were eight dead and over thirty wounded, some very seriously indeed. And there was a bit of a problem there, because nobody was allowed in because the police and military shut it off. Nobody was allowed in, except the old man of course, because he was needed. So he shot off down there for the rest of the day.
“Then my mother suddenly appeared, resplendent in her nurses uniform, because she had been a theatre sister at Dundee Royal Infirmary before she married, and she was on the Red Cross reserve [list]. So she had had a phone call to go down to Chalmers Hospital to receive casualties. And at that time it wasn’t known whether the casualties were Brits or enemies. Anyway, she turned up and I had never seen her before in her uniform in my life. Off she went, and she nursed these guys for several weeks [...]
“The dead were buried by my father in the cemetery [...] There were six German and two Brits dead. Later, of course, after the war the Germans were exhumed and taken back to Germany. I don’t know what happened to the British dead. But [my father] had this formal ceremony up there.
“And then I was taken down there again to improve my German by visiting the German prisoners in hospital and, as a result, I got to know some of them quite well. The most severely wounded of all the German prisoners was a chap called Herbert Büschel. And he had been blown into the boilers of the laundry and heating systems when the bomb blast occurred. [They] took 365 pieces of shrapnel and glass from his body, because I remember my mum saying to my dad: ‘That was one piece of material for every day of the year.
“They were hours in theatre extracting these [pieces] from his innards and superficial tissues – head, face – and, when I saw him in hospital, he was like one of these cartoon-like figures; utterly swathed in bandages from head to toe except for two round eyes and space for his mouth and nose. He was badly burned, of course, with multiple burns, apart from the wounding. Now, he was not thought to survive, and he did eventually. And he wrote here: ‘Meiner fürsorglichen Pflegermutter, meiner herzlichsten dank för die aufopfernde Pflige, die ich nie vergessen werde.’”
‘My caring nursemother, my heartfelt thanks for the selfless care you have given me, which I will never forget.’ – Herbert Büschel
“And I suppose, you see, we were propagandised very heavily during the war. Germans were displayed as crushing children with their jackboots, bayoneting young girls, and things like this, with bombs and machine guns flying around them killing everybody in their path. And it was grotesque, but it was all mind-bending so far as the propagandists were concerned. And then when I discovered that these people were like us, it was a bit shaking at the time.
“Of course, subsequently, I came to know about the Holocaust and some [other] awful things that had happened. Of course, I knew about awful things that happened on the other side, too. But at that time it was quite strange for me, because the other kids hadn’t had my experience. I was very privileged that I got access to Duff House and to the hospital ward. No other kid in the town, i think, experienced that at all.”
Source
Date: 1940
Contributor: Burnett, A
Location: Banff
Original Source: Allan Burnett
Banff parish Manse
Description
This is the Church of Scotland Manse in Banff, on the left of the street. A manse is a Kirk minister's house. From an upstairs window, young David Clark and his brother Tom had a clear view of the bombing of Duff House POW camp. The photograph was taken before the war but it gives a good impression of what the house looked like in 1940.
Source
Date: c.1920
Contributor: Banff Heritage & Preservation Society
Location: Banff
Original Source: Banff Heritage & Preservation Society
Aeromodeller
Description
The cover of Aeromodeller, a guide to making model aeroplanes. This is the sort of book that boys such as David Clark and his younger brother would have owned during the war. It helped boys to recognise enemy aircraft in the event of an air raid. As a result, David and his brother could recognise the German Heinkel 111 that bombed Banff, Macduff and Duff House in July 1940.
Source
Date: 1943
Contributor: Kevin Morrison Collection, Glasgow Caledonian University
Location: UK
Original Source: Kevin Morrison Collection, Glasgow Caledonian University
Wounded messages
Description
This notebook contains personal messages of thanks from wounded German POWs. They were treated in Chalmers Hospital, Banff, for injuries sustained after an air raid. The POWs had been held in Duff House, which was bombed by the Luftwaffe on 22 July, 1940. The notebook belongs to Dr David Findlay Clark. The messages were written to his mother. She was a Red Cross reserve nurse called in to treat the prisoners at the hospital.
Transcript
Left-hand page:
"Many thanks for the good treatment. Never I will forget all the good, what I have get here [sic]. GOTT save your house all days [sic]. All the best for you, your husband and your children. Walter Anders, Bremen."
Right-hand page:
"Vielen dank for die aufpfernde Pflege, die ich nie vergessen werde. Ernst Goethling, Neustadt."
Source
Date: July-August 1940
Contributor: Clark, DF
Location: Banff
Original Source: Clark, DF
Translation
Right-hand page:
"Many thanks for the good treatment, which I will never forget. Ernst Goethling, Neustadt."
Propaganda about Germans
Description
This propaganda image shows how Hitler was thought of by many in Britain during the war. It shows the leader of Nazi Germany feasting on the bones of people from nations he has recently conquered. Scottish children were encouraged to think of German soldiers as being like Hitler. Banff boy David Clark got to know some German prisoners of war in Duff House. He discovered that the truth about people could be very different from the propaganda.
Source
Contributor: Imperial War Museum
Location: UK
Original Source: Imperial War Museum
Duff House after the bombing
Description
This is a recent picture of Duff House. It tells us a lot about the legacy of the house's time as a POW camp. The house used to have an east wing, which can be seen in the Enemy Aliens exhibition. After the air-raid of 1940, the east wing was damaged. As this picture shows, the wing was later completely torn down. High up on the left-hand side of the house frontage are two windows side by side. These are the windows of the room where German submariner Paul Mengelberg was held prisoner of war.
Source
Date: 2009
Contributor: Burnett, A / Duff House
Location: Banff
Original Source: Burnett, A / Duff House
Images from an Allied POW
Description
This is a page from the journal of an Allied POW. It belonged to Thomas Ainsworth, a British soldier from Peterhead. He was imprisoned in Germany during the war. Peterhead is on the Aberdeenshire coast, about thirty-five miles east of Banff.
Source
Date: 1940s
Contributor: Ainsworth, Thomas
Location: Germany
Original Source: Aberdeenshire Heritage, Mintlaw
