Dan Snow's History Hit - Birdwatching: How Four Prisoners of War Survived Captivity

Episode Date: January 3, 2023

This episode tells the incredible story of four Second World War British POWs who overcame the trials and tribulations of internment through a shared passion for birdwatching. Derek Niemann, a specialist in natural history and author of Birds in a Cage, joins Dan to discuss why this obsession helped them survive the POW camps, and how it drove them to become giants of post-war British wildlife conservation.Produced by Hannah Ward and edited by Dougal Patmore.If you'd like to learn more, we have hundreds of history documentaries, ad-free podcasts and audiobooks at History Hit - subscribe to History Hit today!Download History Hit app from the Google Play store.Download History Hit app from the Apple Store.

This is History's Heroes. People with purpose, brave ideas, and the courage to stand alone. Including a pioneering surgeon who rebuilt the shattered faces of soldiers in the First World War. You know, he would look at these men and he would say, don't worry, Sonny, you'll have as good a face as any of us when I'm done with you. Join me, Alex von Tunzelman, for History's Heroes. Subscribe to History's Heroes wherever you get your podcasts. Hi everyone, welcome to Dan Snow's History. We've done the history of everything on this podcast.

In fact, we have done the history of everything. The history of this planet, of the human journey on this planet. We've done the history of micro-history too. We've done the history of tobacco and coffee. We've done the history of the First World War, the Thirty Years' War, the great pandemics, the Black Death. We've told the story of the great vaccinologists who've probably saved more lives than anyone else on planet Earth. But one thing we've never done is the history of bird watching. And luckily, folks, today we are righting that historic wrong. This is your place for the history of ornithology. Twitchers, any Twitchers out there, get ready.

Because we're talking about not the whole history of birdwatching, but just one rather beautiful moment, one wartime moment of birdwatching that led to some important post-war conservation work. This is about four prisoners of war, four British prisoners of war. Edward John Morby Buxton, Peter John Conda, John Henry Barrett and George Watterson. They overcame terrible conditions, health challenges, lack of food, humiliations,

in prison of war camps, through the medium of birdwatching. They decided they would overcome all of the above, plus a good dose of boredom, by looking beyond the wire at these birds that roamed free across the landscape. They made detailed studies of these birds, they got published in ornithological journals, and three of them in particular went on to become key figures in Britain's 20th century budding conservation movement. It is rather a beautiful story, this. And coming back on the podcast to tell me all about it is Derek Neiman.

He worked at the RSPB, the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds. He worked there for many years. He taught creative writing at Cambridge, and he writes and edits natural history in particular. He talks a lot about the positive therapy offered by birds and the observation of birds in the midst of terrible physical and emotional trauma. My grandparents were both birdwatchers and they were much happier for it. It's a great failure of mine that I couldn't tell you a robin red breast from a blue tit but this podcast has

inspired me to change my ways I'm gonna go and start respecting the birds here's my conversation enjoy no black white unity till there is first and black unity. Never to go to war with one another again. And lift off, and the shuttle has cleared the tower. Derek, hello. Welcome back to the podcast. Thank you, Dan. Lovely to be here again. I love this story because my grandma always told me the importance of birdwatching, and little did I know it can actually help you survive the Second World War. Tell me about being taken

in the Second World War. What was it like in the camps? Because sometimes I think it would have been preferable to being on the battlefield for long periods of time. It brought its own costs and challenges. It did. I mean, some research showed that the young men who went to France and other parts of the world expected they would be killed, they would be wounded, or they would survive okay. Nobody expected to be taken prisoner. So they were captured, and this was a disorienting experience. And this was a disorienting experience. And for the men who went into the camps, and for the most part, they were just pretty rough, really.

You're surrounded by barbed wire, you've got communal toilets that tend to leak all over the camp. You know, the conditions are pretty rough, but you're not gonna be killed, except that if you're an officer, you believe that when things start to go wrong for the Germans, you will be shot. And if you're an officer, and all these birdwatchers that I wrote about were officers, you have no work to do. work to do. So you can spend all day, every day, feeling humiliated at being captured and not being able to do anything, at being divided from your friends and family, and feeling this sense of

pointlessness. And to what extent we lionize, we eulogize those who sort of tried to escape or did manage to escape was escaping a big part of most of their lives was it a very select few that ever engaged in those kind of activities or was it quite widespread no it was a select few i think a fair number of prisoners would help other prisoners and some of the bird watchers did. Here's an amazing thing. Some of the bird watchers acted as lookouts. So they would walk around the camp and the Germans would think, yeah, there's those lunatic Brits looking at birds. What a stupid thing to do. And they would watch for when the guards came on duty and when the gates opened and of course they would make notes and the Germans would just think no they're just recording their birds and not one of those bird watchers was ever

checked so they were the perfect spies a spy within a camp nobody suspected a thing yeah so tell me about these bird watchers that you've identified well i focused on four in particular and those were four bird watchers who three of them were lifelong birders they'd gone to school they joined their bird watching clubs two of them were doing it on a voluntary basis. And then there was another man who took up birdwatching relatively late in life, about 18. And they were passionate birdwatchers. So when they arrived in one camp together, Warburg, they discovered that they had fellow birdwatchers. They had people who had the same

interests as them. And they pretty well bonded together. The four of them bonded. They were only together for 11 months in that one camp, but they remained friends for the rest of their lives, the four of them. That was very much a bonding experience. And it gave them something to do. It gave them a sense of self-respect again, because they believed that they were recording birds for a purpose. This was the beginning of modern ornithology. This was the beginning of proper monitoring of birds. And after the war was over, they sent their reports to established ornithological journals. Now, those journals would have looked at those reports and thought they have no scientific credibility.

credibility. But there was a kind of compassion and honor in publishing those, because otherwise the men really would have wasted four or five years of their lives. And it was a great thing to have these scientifically spurious reports published. I mean, they were nonsense, really. If the Germans decided that you couldn't watch birds one day, then you were confined to barracks and that was it. You would rely on fellow inmates who, some of them weren't terribly good at spotting birds. So some of those records were a bit ropey, but you were doing something systematically in the belief that you were doing something worthwhile. And it didn't matter if you were standing on a piece of clay, sodden ground with urine washing through from the latrines. They felt like they were doing something together and something that had some kind of conclusion that was meaningful to them. And they were enjoying it. Sometimes it's a bit

tedious. If you're sitting in front of a goldfinch nest for 60 consecutive days, it gets a bit tedious. But they all said that it was the thing that kept them sane. And the people who joined them said, that was the thing that kept me going. And you point out that they survived extraordinary ill health, freezing cold, malnourishment. Didn't one of them have cholera and dysentery? They did in the Far East. And in conditions that were much, much worse, you had bird watchers who survived Japanese prisoner of war camps by watching birds, by watching butterflies. It was something that did sustain them. And yeah, you know, sometimes it was pretty horrible. In the first months of captivity in 1940,

in the first months of captivity in 1940, they were effectively being starved because in one camp, the German cook was selling rations in town instead of giving it to them. Some of the guards were old soldiers from the First World War, and some of them didn't think too highly of having to look after these men. So some of them didn't treat them well. Later on, they did. And some of the guards even took part, which is incredible. You know, can I help you? Yeah, of course you can. Just stand there and count this bird.

You listened to Dan Snow's History, talking about birdwatching in the war. More coming up. talking about birdwatching in the war. More coming up. On Gone Medieval from History Hit, we're here to spoil you with the biggest names. Chinggis Khan.

The thing that really galvanised his wars of conquest was his belief that he had been given a mandate to have dominion over the entire planet. We explore new archaeological finds. After the Viking Age, lots of medieval artefacts coming out of the site as well. And delve into the lives of those you might never have heard of. He's not a bad and evil king like King John. I'm Dr Kat Jarman. And I'm Matt Lewis.

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Subscribe to History's Heroes wherever you get your podcasts. it's a wonderful example of how as i get older i realize that living with passion is everything it doesn't really matter what you take an interest in and i try and get my kids to explain that why i'm dragging them around all these castles and historic sites it's not because i'm particularly obsessed with lots of old bits of rocks down to each other but it's because it gives your day purpose it gives you a spine you can travel from a spine. You can travel from A to B, not just aimlessly, but to go and look at these five castles

wherever it might be. Your story really resonates with me. It would have given them, you can see how that ripple effect would almost change the communities that they were part of. Exactly. And some of the people

who were helping them, they weren't remotely interested in boats. And after the war, they weren't remotely interested in birds. And after the war, they weren't remotely interested in birds. But as you say, they were buoyed up by passion. And the passion that the birdwatchers showed, it was infectious. And they thought, yeah, I'll give Peter and John a hand here because they really appreciate what I'm doing. Peter and John a hand here because they really appreciate what I'm doing. And I just love the excitement that they generate that feeds my dull, tedious life in this camp, looking at the same

barbed wire fence all day, every day. So yeah, passion is everything. Absolutely agree. everything. Absolutely agree. When they luckily weren't shot and they returned home, actually their wartime birdwatching sort of mattered. It changed the rest of their lives. I think in some respects, it was a question of motivation because having been motivated to take part in bird watching over a sustained length period of time under trying circumstances. They wanted to carry on doing this. They wanted to spend the rest of their lives watching wildlife and also teaching others about wildlife. I'll pick one individual, John Barrett, individual, John Barrett, who knew nothing about the seashore. And he went to a field studies centre in South Wales, knowing pretty well zilch about the seashore. And he taught himself everything he could possibly know, to the point where he was co-author of The Collins Guide to the Seashore. And the so-called expert who was the lead author did nothing. He just put his name to it. And it was Barrett who taught himself.

And they were all driven. They believed in what they were doing. And they created organizations. Or in the case of Peter Conda, he took over the RSPB, a pretty small ramshackle organization when he took over. And his passion meant that people I spoke to who worked for him said he was the most inspiring person they ever met because he believed in it. He believed in ornithology. He believed in conservation and he transmitted that passion to other people and inspired them to outperform themselves. I mean, it was quite incredible. It's quite incredible. Do you think that the appalling things that they'd witnessed pushed them to understand that what truly mattered on this planet is trying to limit the damage us humans are doing to it and our fellow species and our environment? an element of that. They understood what was important. And yes, they had seen dreadful, dreadful things. I spoke to one man who was at an airport with one of them, Peter Konder,

and well, actually there were two old POWs there. And one of them had cut himself. And the other said, oh, you don't want that to go too deep. And he said, no, I don't. But I've seen that kind of injury before. You know, they'd seen somebody split open. And it must give a different perspective. And Waterston, millions of people have experienced his legacy. Tell me about what he did when he came back. Well, he was a great charmer he could persuade

anyone to do anything so he was a co-founder of the scottish wildlife trust he was the rspb's first employee he was part-time but he probably did about 60 hours a week and he set up a bird watching spot at Loch Garton on Speyside. Something like three million people have watched ospreys on that site. And it was all down to George Waterston. He created nature reserves in Scotland. He did all sorts. He was Mr Conservation in Scotland for decades. He did all sorts. He was Mr. Conservation in Scotland for decades. He set up an observatory on Fair Isle between Orkney and Shetland. He did everything. He was an absolute human dynamo. And so it was quite the network. Another one went on to become a university professor. Yeah. Although curiously enough, John Buxton was, he was a disappointed man.

He'd done a degree at Oxford. He had the qualifications to be an academic. He actually really regretted not going into conservation. He became a, not an average lecturer in English, but yet another lecturer in English. And his real passion was nature. And so he ended up quite a disappointed man. The others became professional, and he didn't. And he watched them rise and thought, it could have been me. We now think that in healing trauma, green spaces, animals are essential. They were working this out as they went along. They were. And Frank Gardner has commented on this, that people in conflict zones will look to birdwatching quite often.

Birdwatching is a distraction activity and it just calms people down. It just takes them away from where they are. Maybe in some respects it takes them back to their childhood or to home, to doing the things that gave them this calm, this pleasure. And what could be more wonderful than watching a beautiful, colourful dark flying and flitting out beyond the barbed wire? They can go where they want. They're not involved in trying to kill people. They're just living. Every veteran on the first day of the SOM in subsequent interviews always commented on the

guns falling silent and the sounds of the skylarks and the birds on the battlefield. And also I've read books about Verdun that said they couldn't believe soldiers could watch birds. How could birds survive in that storm of steel? And yet they're fascinating, aren't they, for the men curled up in trenches and shell holes below them. Oh, absolutely. And there's one famous story of where one of the commanders

stopped fire to allow a covey of partridges to walk through no man's land. And I also like the fact in Heligoland, the largest non-nuclear explosion in history or something, when the British blew up a portion of the island of Heligoland in the North Sea after the Second World War. And it was a small explosion, first to scare all the seabirds away. And then they fired the gigantic charge. And I've always thought that's very British. Of course, yes, yes. They're very polite. Very polite. How did you come across this remarkable story? I knew of it. I knew of a couple of these guys and I knew the story. And then Peter Condor's daughter asked me to write up her father's story because she'd been transcribing her father's diaries. And she thought, gosh, you know, dad never told me any of this. And it's not been written in full, little snippets in various books and publications.

So I drew together the four main characters and I spoke to their families, their former colleagues and friends. I spoke to about half a dozen POWs who are still alive and they were very, very keen to have their story told. And so when we had a book launch, I felt like an imposter because all the families were there. And this was their father or their grandfather's moments. This was the point where it was brought into the public domain, that their war wasn't wasted in the end. And it was being recognized.

Well, thank you so much for coming back on the podcast, Derek. That was great. How can people find out more about this? Well, you could so much for coming back on the podcast, Derek. That was great. How can people find out more about this? Well, you could try reading my book. It's called Birds in a Cage. It's available from all good and bad bookshops. Derek Newman, thank you very much indeed. Thank you, Dan.

This is History's Heroes. People with purpose, brave ideas, and the courage to stand alone. Including a pioneering surgeon who rebuilt the shattered faces of soldiers in the First World War. You know, he would look at these men and he would say, don't worry, Sonny, you'll have as good a face as any of us when I'm done with you. Join me, Alex von Tunzelman, for History's Heroes. Subscribe to History's Heroes wherever you get your podcasts.