Continuing our look back at the events of 80 years ago, in this week’s Peeps into the Past we explore the remarkable story of how a German prisoner of war came to find peace and a new home in Alton after his capture in France in 1944.

Willi Paul Gerlach was born during a snowstorm in March 1925 in the town of Schoneiche in eastern Germany, and looked to have a promising farming career ahead of him.

But like other young German boys of that generation, at the age of ten Willi would join the ‘Jungvolk’, the junior version of the Hitler Youth, and in January 1943, aged 17, his call-up papers came through to join the Volksservice Pioneer Corps.

After helping to build an airfield in Greece, in August 1943 Willi was assigned to a heavy gun unit in the 720 regiment of the Wehrmacht, the German army, as Private Gerlach.

Willi was fortunate to escape being posted to the eastern front, where the tide of the war in Russia had now turned decisively against the Germans. 

Instead, he was posted to France and a thousand soldiers, Willi among them, were showered with flowers as they marched to the train station - arriving in Marseille two days later.

Hitler was, at this time, terrified of further fronts opening in Europe after the invasion of Sicily in July 1943 and Willi and his unit found themselves manning fortifications on France’s Mediterranean coastline.

Aside from fishing with dynamite, to the annoyance of French fishermen, and a strafing attack by an RAF Spitfire, Willi saw very little action in the south of France.

But on July 15, 1944, the newly-promoted Corporal Gerlach’s unit was on the move again - this time to Normandy.

Hitler had ordered all available troops to help contain the Allied armies in northern France. But the reinforcements were harassed all the way by RAF fighter-bombers - and Willi’s train became stuck in the Orleans area after one of many bridges was destroyed.

It was then that Willi witnessed his first bombing up close, recalling: “The shock was awful - like being hit very hard around the head with a wet dishcloth!”

Unknown to Corporal Gerlach at the time, the Germans had already effectively lost the war in France and the US 3rd Army would soon drive south, capturing Le Mans on August 8 and then advancing to Chartres and Orleans.

Willi’s unit was soon faced by a hopeless defensive battle.

They moved forward into position and were suddenly engaged with the Americans. Hemmed in with no ditches for cover, they used mortar bombs and machine gun fire against two tanks and desperately dug in on a hillside.

“Our unit took a belting there,” Willi recalled. “The Yanks used artillery against us; they had the range. They had 24 guns and we had just one to reply. Then tanks came over towards us, but one of our mortar bombs blew off one tank’s turret and the second one surrendered. That tank crew were the first Yanks we had seen!”

The battle lasted three days, after which the Americans simply moved on and left Willi and his unit dug in on the hillside.

“We had no food or water and there was such a smell of blood and so many dead people,” Willi said. “Sniper fire picked off most of the defenders. At the end, out of 250, only seven of us were left.”

After their bloody resistance, the survivors surrendered to French partisans, the Maquis. Later asked how he survived, Willi responded: “I was good at making a hole!”

We will continue Willi’s remarkable story in next week’s Peeps into the Past, telling the story of how a young farm hand from eastern Germany came to be a prisoner of war in Alton.

Willi’s story is told in ‘From Schoneiche to Alton: A prisoner of war who stayed’, and re-told here by kind permission of its author Ian Fleming.