06/10/2026
𝐁𝐫𝐮𝐜𝐞 𝐑𝐨𝐬𝐬 – 𝐅𝐢𝐯𝐞 𝐘𝐞𝐚𝐫𝐬 𝐚 𝐏𝐫𝐢𝐬𝐨𝐧𝐞𝐫 𝐨𝐟 𝐖𝐚𝐫
Bruce Ross of Esther Place, Tain, volunteered in May 1939 and served with the 4th Battalion, Seaforth Highlanders. He was just 19 when he was wounded and captured at Saint-Valery in June 1940.
Sixty years later, Bruce returned to Saint-Valery and spoke about what had happened to him. His capture was the beginning of almost five years as a prisoner of war.
Transported east in a cattle truck with 75 men crammed inside, Bruce remembered that the doors remained shut for four days. During that journey his closest friend died:
“My best mate, we had worked together in civvy street, died on that trip. A very sad time.”
Contemporary newspaper reports from Tain identify Bruce's friend as Private Joseph “Decko” Birnie, another Tain man serving with the 4th Seaforths.
Bruce was held at Trier before being transferred in January 1941 to Stalag VIIIB at Hindenburg, where he was put to work in the coal mines. He recalled working 1,300 feet underground, in temperatures reaching 130°F, before emerging into the bitter Polish winter.
“The coal mines were bloody awful... I hated every lousy minute down there.”
In January 1945, with the Russian Army advancing, Bruce was among the POWs forced westwards on the Long March. Near Regensburg their column was accidentally bombed by American aircraft. Bruce recalled 26 men being killed and 90 wounded. In the confusion, he and five companions escaped into the woods.
The six eventually found refuge with a German family who risked their own lives by hiding them behind firewood in a shed.
Bruce survived the war and later emigrated to Western Australia. In 1985 he succeeded in tracing and visited the daughter of the German couple who had sheltered them.
Looking back sixty years after his capture, Bruce summed up his experience simply:
“There's no point in burying it, you can't, it happened, a waste of good blokes.”
