Lieutenant John W. G. Payne writes to his wife, my grandmother Peggy (née Burton), while he was a prisoner of war in Italy following the sinking of HMS Sikh during Operation Agreement, the ill-fated mission to liberate Tobruk on 13th / 14th September 1942.
John’s diary arrived to me 80 years after it was written via my Aunt Bridget’s eldest son David.
My mother, Anne, identifies the entry on Monday 21st December 1942, where he responds to the news of his first child Elizabeth’s birth and christening, as an outstanding entry. It is 3 months after her birth on October 21st that he received the news. In the interim between Tobruk and her birth Peggy had heard nothing from John.
The diary John wrote is, by his own account, the second of two. The first was confiscated at the POW camp. This second book’s last entry, ‘21st Thursday. January 1943. 130th day’ is the day before he was to be moved from the POW camp to the Senior Officers Campo P.G. 17, ‘…of which no one knows anything’.
Eight months later, after the liberation of Italy, John escaped from a train bound for central Europe. Crossing the Alps on foot with one other Canadian soldier, he made his way into Switzerland, survived the war, as did the diary. I believe he left the book behind and it made it’s way home via another route.
‘Operation – Vineyard’, the transcript of the escape journey, came to me soon after the diary. The typed text and John’s ‘Escape Relics ! 12.9.43 to 18.9.43’ have all been gifted to the Royal Naval Museum in Portsmouth.
John was born 4th December 1915, he died 10th December 1960.
Peggy was born 19th April, 1919, she died aged 102 in 2021.
He is survived by three daughters, Elizabeth who died in 2012, Anne and Bridget by his first marriage and a son, William and daughter, Alison by his second.
William was born 18 years before me to the day. That we share the same name and birthday is a great coincidence. We met for the first time to organise the transfer of the documents.
