For the British 1st Airborne Division, Operation Market Garden in September 1944 was a disaster. The Division was eliminated as a fighting force with around a half of its men captured.

The Germans were faced with dealing with 6,000 prisoners in a fortnight; many of them seriously wounded. The POWs were processed and despatched to camps around Germany and German occupied eastern Europe, here the men experienced the reality of the collapsing regime with little food and shrinking frontiers.

Operation Endor was put in place after the liberation in 1945 which required returning POW’s to complete liberation questionnaires on their release and repatriation to Britain. Unfortunately this was put in place after some had already returned however around a third of those captured, some 2,357, did complete the questionnaires giving a picture of everyday life of these elite troops time in captivity from capture to release.

These questionnaires show that men were often treated inhumanely particularly when moved to camps by closed box cars and when camps were evacuated. Although the German interrogators were predominately interested in Allied aircraft and airfields, they were also concerned with politics and how Germany would be treated after an Allied victory.

Despite the terrible conditions and interrogations the airborne men’s morale remained high; carrying out sabotage at artificial oil plants, railway repairs, factories and mines. Some overcame their guards when being evacuated at the end of the war, in some cases joining the Resistance and they recorded help received from Dutch, French and German civilians.