New records about a North East man who was Britain’s youngest prisoner of war have been opened for the first time at The National Archives - on what would have been his 98th birthday.
John Hipkin was born on April, 29, 1926, in Newcastle-on-Tyne and joined the Merchant Navy as a cabin boy when he was 14 because he was too young to join the Royal Navy.
His wartime POW records have been catalogued and are now available to the public for the first time.
They show that 21 days into his first wartime voyage, on February 22, 1941, John Hipkin was captured after the oil tanker SS Lustrous was sunk by German battleship Scharnhorst off the coast of Newfoundland.
Dominic Hipkin, John’s son, said: “The morning the ship was attacked dad said he saw the outline of a large battleship in the mist as he took the captain his breakfast, but mistook it for a British ship.
“When shooting started, the captain told dad to go back to his cabin and get his life jacket. They got into the lifeboats and when they were rowing towards Scharnhorst they could see people on deck holding what they thought were machine guns. When they got closer they realised the German crew were filming them.”
German POW records show that after being transported back to Europe, John Hipkin and the rest of the crew were taken to Stalag XB prisoner of war camp in Sandbostel, near Bremen. They also spent time in Marlag und Milag Nord, a camp primarily for Navy personnel.
Imprisoned before his 15th birthday, John Hipkin was one of 5000 merchant seamen taken into captivity by Germany during the Second World War.
He later described his time in Stalag XB camp as “horrific”.
Its commandant, Capt Prusch, was charged with war crimes for mistreating prisoners of war, in contravention of the Geneva Convention 1929.
A UN war crimes commission document available at The National Archives includes a statement by Welsh sea captain LH Lewis who says he saw Commandant Prusch acting “with great brutality to Merchant Navy boys, ages 16 to 18 years, by making them run up and down the parade ground until they dropped to the ground from exhaustion. For trivial offences he forced POWs to stand facing the barbed wire from 6am to 8pm without food or drink in all weathers”.
Prisoners from occupied countries suffered even worse treatment. Russian prisoners were particularly badly treated, with many dying. Many prisoners became infected with tuberculosisand typhus, which spread to the rest of the camp.
Dominic Hipkin said: “There was an unofficial arrangement with guards that British POWs could share food with the Slavs, who were given very bad mouldy bread. They were told they were allowed to dip it into the British prisoners’ soup, but one guard picked up his rifle while this was going on and shot a young Yugoslav boy right in front of my father. They were the same age.”
John Hipkin was eventually freed on his 19th birthday, April 29, 1945, when a British tank came crashing through the barbed wire fence of his camp. He arrived home on VE day.
His pouch containing his Seamen’s records also shows that he was given a disability pension on June 11, 1945, for “effects of detention (hysteria)”. All these documents are also available at The National Archives. He was discharged from the Merchant Navy on July 17, 1945, at his own request.
Dominic Hipkin said: “Years later records released in 1990 showed that some First World War soldiers who were court-martialled for desertion or cowardice were shellshocked boys who had signed up under age. This triggered my father’s memory of the Yugoslav boy. He started a campaign to have them pardoned.”
Sixteen years later John Hipkin’s Shot at Dawn campaign succeeded in winning posthumous pardons for 306 “deserters” granted in 2006 on the grounds that many were not given fair trials, not properly defended and some were minors.
Roger Kershaw, Head of Strategic Operations at The National Archives, said: "It's fascinating that we've been able to access John Hipkin’s records. It's a rich resource that gives us more detail about his story and seeing a picture of John at that young age makes it more powerful."
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War records for John Hipkin, who grew up in Headlam Street, Newcastle and died in 2016, are available to see at The National Archives, in Kew, west London.
- For more information, see: https://beta.nationalarchives.gov.uk/explore-the-collection/stories/britains-youngest-prisoner-of-war/
- More documents about other prisoners’ experiences in the war are on show in The National Archives’ free exhibition Great Escapes: Remarkable Second World War Captives, which runs until July 21. To book events relating to the exhibition, visit: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/cc/great-escapes-2847629
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