Private Norman James Edwin Gibbs’ Diary

From John Mills. 02/04/2025

Norman Gibbs was born in 1917 and died in 2010 at the age of 93 years from complications after open heart surgery.  Just before his death he had dictated his war memories, which his wife Elizabeth typed up. At around this time he had made contact with George Hawkins, with whom he had spent his captivity at the E72 camp. Both Gibbs and Hawkins were both interviewed for the 2011 BBC Documentary series ‘The Long March to Freedom‘ and an extended version of both interviews are available on the Imperial War museum website.

The diary manuscript was in his family’s hands until after his death, when it was donated to the Upper Silesian Museum at Bytom, Poland.  The Museum is near to the site of the E72 Arbeitskommando and other mining work camps affiliated to Stalag VIIIB.  One of the museum’s historians, Dr Joanna Lusek, has published a book based on the diary entitled ‘Norman Gibbs, Prisoner of War 16349, A Retrospective Diary’ as part of her research into the wartime history of  British POW’s in the Bytom area.

Gibbs and Hawkins were both interviewed for the 2011 BBC Documentary series ‘The Long March to Freedom‘ and an extended version of both interviews are available on the Imperial War museum website.

After his death the Gibbs family donated the manuscript to the Upper Silesian Museum, Bytom, Poland, near to the site of his captivity in what was then German Upper Silesia. Christine Parry was able to obtain a copy of the original manuscript.

Gibbs’ account is relevant to my father Eric West’s story, as my father shared his captivity at Stalag VIIIB/344 and the E72 Arbeitskommando throughout the war, and took over from him as camp translator in October 1944.  The diary is probably the most powerful insight into conditions at these coal mining work camps and Long March. I have edited and illustrated the diary on the 140 Regiment website that is dedicated to Eric West and his Royal Artillery Regiment.

Norman Gibbs gained a scholarship to St Dunstan’s College, Catford, where he studied until 1938. He became proficient in German, a skill that he would later be able to put to use during his five year captivity. In January 1940, at the age of 22 years, he enlisted into the Queen’s Own Royal West Kent Regiment.  In April 1940, the Regiment joined the BEF in France, and on May 20th Norman Gibbs was injured and captured, with most of his battalion, by the advancing German Panzer army near the town of Doullens, France.

Gibbs was marched as a POW to Stalag 8B at Lamsdorf, from where he transferred to the E72 Arbeitskommando at Beuthen, Silesia.  In June 1944 Gibbs was ordered to return to the main camp at Lamsdorf and then transferred to the E51 Arbeitskommando, Abhwer Coal Mine, near Klausberg, Germany (now Zabrze, Poland).

At the mine complex at E72 Beuthen Gibbs volunteered for the role of camp interpreter, and he was able to maintain this difficult role, which involved daily liaison with the notorious Unter-Feldwebel Arthur Engelkircher (‘John the Bastard‘)  for four years. In June 1944, and without being given an explanation, he was relieved of his post and transferred to E51, another mining camp. My father, Eric West, who by this time had acquired self-taught fluency in German, took over Norman Gibbs’ role as the E72 interpreter until the camp was evacuated in January 1945.

On January 22nd 1945, Norman Gibbs set out on the Long March from E51 Klausberg and for the next three months was force-marched through Czechoslovakia and into Germany, occasionally intersecting the route taken by  his old comrades from the E72 camp.  On May 1st 1945 he was liberated by the American army in Buchbach in Bavaria.

Based on his diary entries, his route has been plotted on the https://www.lamsdorflongmarch.com/

Read his diary.