Hugh August Francois

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hugh_Francois

Hugh Francois (14 November 1904 – 17 July 1982) was a South African cricketer. He played in sixteen first-class matches for Border from 1923/24 to 1927/28.[1]

The Wartime Log of Sgt Hugh Francois Paperback – 12 April 2021
by C Steyl (Author)

He refers to himself as “the poor mutt”. The poor mutt who had a hankering to travel and got his wish. His name is Gunner No. 142780, Hugh August Francois, who at age 35 enlisted in the 2nd Battery of the South African Artillery. This is June 1940 and over the next five years his desire to travel would be fulfilled. He would serve in the Abyssinian Campaign and travel through Kenya, Ethiopia (Abyssinia), Somaliland and Eritrea. He would travel through the Suez Canal and join the hostilities in North Africa, in Egypt and Libya. During these activities he would be promoted to the rank of Sergeant. He would be captured at Tobruk and taken through Benghazi to Italy as a POW. In Italy he would be interned in four camps before he was sent to work on a farm in the Foggia district. When Italy capitulated the Germans would take him through Europe to the town of Sagan in modern-day Poland. To Stalag VIII C. He would stay in this camp for 18 months before he and many other prisoners were taken on a forced march across Germany to Stalag IX B, near the city of Frankfurt. They marched almost 600 km in 37 days. On the 2nd April 1945 Hugh Francois was set free. With other South African soldiers he was taken to a demobilisation camp in Bristol, England, and at the same time he was granted a visit to London. On the 3rd May 1945 Sergeant Hugh Francois returned to South Africa on a SAAF Dakota. The journey was completed over five days with stop-overs in Rome, Cairo and along the eastern coast of Africa. The poor mutt had returned home. In the comfort culture of the 2020’s it is difficult to imagine the trauma and hardships people experienced during World War II. In a current society where “it is all about me” (people will even refuse to wear masks for the safety of others during a pandemic), how can one imagine a time when people would be prepared to pay the ultimate sacrifice for their country and compatriots? This is what Hugh Francois did, along with 70 million soldiers at the time. We know today that more than 15 million soldiers were killed on the battlefields. Civilian casualties were three times more. Hugh Francois lived to tell his story. He recorded it in a diary the American YMCA issued to prisoners of war in German camps. But Hugh was also a gifted artist, a talent he must have inherited from his father, and he could capture the essence of a moment in a drawing to supplement his narrative. “With watercolours extracted from food can labels and paint brushes made from their own hair, downed WWII American airmen illustrated their experiences as prisoners of war in blank books provided by the YMCA”. This is Hugh Francois’ “Wartime Log”, let him speak for himself …