Reporter KAREN DARLEY meets veteran Ron Scales to hear about his astonishing wartime story, now being retold in a book.

THE remarkable and moving story of one man’s experiences during the Second World War has been recalled in a new book.

Beyond Courage – Ron’s Story is part of a new project run by Beck Isle Museum in Pickering, which aims to record the memories and experiences of Ryedale residents during the war.

Volunteers and staff from the museum have spent hundreds of hours interviewing veterans and civilians who shared their memories – often for the first time since the war ended.

The material they produced far surpassed the amount they could realistically use, so the museum decided to pick one detailed story to produce the first publication with subsequent volumes planned for the future.

One of the first local people who agreed to talk about his wartime experiences was 88-year-old Ronald Scales, of Pickering, an RAF aircrew veteran.

Ron served as a rear-gunner with 138 Squadron which dropped agents, propaganda material, weapons and supplies to equip the resistance in enemy occupied territories across Europe and beyond.

On his 22nd birthday – September, 19, 1943 – his plane was shot down over the North Sea and Ron, along with three of his colleagues, was captured by the Germans and taken to the interrogation centre Dulag Luft.

Ron was kept in solitary confinement in a 10ft x 6ft room for the next two weeks and was subjected to daily interrogation by Luftwaffe officers before he was transferred to the POW camp Stalag Luft VI in East Prussia.

“During the next few weeks I gradually got rid of my lice, razors from some source were issued and I was able to remove my beard,” he said. “We scrounged some playing cards and slowly began to make a tolerably comfortable existence for ourselves.”

Ron recalls Christmas Eve 1943 as one of the events in his life that he will never forget. “We had requested that permission be given for us to be allowed out of barracks until midnight in order for us to sing carols.

“Led by our band, the choir of 800 male voices sang all the well loved carols, the guards stood outside the wire and watched us and listened to us and, when we sang that most beautiful of Christmas songs ‘Silent Night’ – which is of course of German origin – the guards joined in. It was a moving moment and one I shall never forget.”

By the following August the advance of the Russian armies led to the prisoners being moved – this time on foot in the middle of a European winter. The prisoners marched for up to 20 miles at day, sleeping at farms or deserted buildings and surviving on just two boiled potatoes a day.

Ron said: “Dysentery began to affect us and men began to drop out. What happened to those casualties I never knew, they just dropped by the roadside – many were never seen again.

“I was now heartily sick of tramping the roads of Germany and was determined to escape, hide away somewhere and await the advancing British armies driving in our direction.”

The next day, Ron took his chance and, with a fellow prisoner, indicated they needed the toilet. Once out of sight they rolled down a slope into nearby woodland and lay still among the undergrowth.

Ron was eventually picked up by a British armoured car and taken to company headquarters at Celle just a few miles from Belson. He returned to English soil on St George’s Day 1945.

He said: “England looked absolutely wonderful. The land I loved, the land I had fought for, was welcoming me back into its bosom. I was almost overwhelmed by the emotions that flowed through me.”

Ron was checked over by a doctor and found to weight just 5 stone 4 pounds.

“My first meal back in England was battered cod, chips and peas and nothing has ever tasted as good since,” he said.

“I bathed and bathed every few hours luxuriating in the warm soapy water, feeling clean for the first time for what seemed years.”

Ron was demobbed in August 1945, exactly five years after he joined up. He returned to Pickering where he married Margaret, who was evacuated to the town from Middlesbrough, and worked for the Ministry of Agriculture and later the Health and Safety Executive.

Beck Isle Museum’s Rodge Dowson, the project co-ordinator, said it was extremely important that Ron’s story and the experiences of other local people were recorded for future generations.

“This is the first in a series of books planned which will build up a picture of life during the Second World War,” he said.

“Ron’s story is a microcosm of one personal aircrew story, from what one interviewee called ‘a different generation’. This is perhaps so, one thing is certain their legacy of freedom and democracy remains to this day and it is indeed a very heavy debt that we owe them.”

Beyond Courage – Ron’s Story is available from Beck Isle Museum. A donation of £5 per copy is requested towards future reprints.