A London-area man is delighted that a detailed diary from his father’s time in a Second World War prisoner of war camp will be presented through music this weekend. Ken Irwin spent nearly 10 months in captivity detailing every struggle he encountered. The pages written over 80 years ago reveal a Canadian flyer doing everything he can to survive. On many pages, Ken wrote how he and other soldiers were just hanging on. “And you can see the difference in the boys now. The lack of food, damp clothes, it is drafty. It is taking a toll on the size of our sick friends,” he wrote in late 1944. Ken’s son, Barry, now holds the diary. The London-area resident and his brothers knew little of their father’s war record until he called upon them just weeks before dying from cancer in 1976. He told them to cherish it, Barry recalled. “He wanted to see to it that we would honour him, and see the experiences that he went through, which were just horrendous.” Ken was a bombing aimer on a Lancaster in the late spring of 1944, when the aircraft was hit by flak returning from Frankfurt. Seven crew members were onboard. “Only two, my dad and another chap, got out which was sad because the rest of the crew were lost,” said Barry. Parachuting into Germany uninjured, Ken writes that he moved through the night hoping to make it back to allied lines. On the fourth night, he was caught and sent to a prisoner of war camp in what is today southern Poland. There he logged each day in captivity through a diary entry or a hand-drawn cartoon. As the Soviet Army advanced in early 1945, Ken and other soldiers were forced to march nearly 1,000 kilometres towards another camp near Berlin. Along the way, he managed to hide his diary from guards. On the trip, he wrote about seeing friends falling beside him, only to be left to die. He also wrote about his own illness towards the end of the march. “He thought this would be his last day because he felt so bad,” said Barry. Ken wrote he stayed alive by dreaming of roast beef dinners at home in Canada, something he couldn’t even fathom by the time freedom came in late April 1945. Starved and malnourished, he walked out of the camp into the arms of American soldiers. He soon returned home and shelved his diary until that day in 1976. Later, in the hands of his granddaughter, the diary became a family project. In this decade, it has attracted the Amabile Choir. They put Ken’s words of survival and sacrifice to music in a presentation that warms his son’s heart. “It is absolutely phenomenal!” The performance of ‘A London PoW’s Story’ takes place this Sunday at St. Peter’s Cathedral Basilica at 3 p.m.
