Regina woman documents father’s daring Second World War escape

A Regina woman has spent the better part of two years researching and documenting her father’s military service and daring escape from a German prisoner-of-war camp during the Second World War.

Speaking on The Evan Bray Show with guest host Brent Loucks, Edie Cartwright-Hilts described how her father, Cpl. Albert Cartwright, had roots in Grenfell, Sask., before enlisting in the military.

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“He went to Camp Borden (Ontario), where he trained. He was shipped out on the Queen Elizabeth (ship),” she said.

Her father served with the Hastings and Prince Edward Regiment and was sent to Italy as a replacement soldier, where he was immediately involved in combat. He even helped break through the German defensive operation called the “Hitler Line.”

Cartwright-Hilts said her father eventually became a corporal with several men under his command. However, they were all captured by German forces and taken to two different prisoner-of-war camps toward the end of the Second World War.

“About a week before the Americans actually liberated his camp, dad and four others escaped on a motorcycle,” she said.

Her father rarely spoke about the escape, other than to say that after they got the motorcycle and gathered what they thought they would need, they hoped they wouldn’t run into any Germans.

A photo of Corp. Albert Cartwright (second from left) with the four other men and the motorcycle and sidecar they escaped in, from a German prison camp. (Edie Cartwright-Hilts/Submitted)

In fact, they encountered U.S. soldiers serving under Gen. George Patton. Her father was later sent to the Netherlands to work as a machinist and help with the country’s liberation.

“He did talk about that, because I think that was a positive part of the war for him. Helping the Dutch people,” said Cartwright-Hilts.

She still has some of those photographs today.

In January 1945, however, many of the letters her father had sent home during the war were lost in a house fire, along with everything else in the home.

“We lost everything,” she recalled.

For the past 50 years, Cartwright-Hilts has served as the family’s “historian,” gathering her father’s military records and other information from family members.

She even wrote a book for her family detailing her father’s escape from the German prisoner-of-war camp and the rest of his military service. It is called Over There.

“I wrote this to honour my father’s 100th anniversary of his birth, and I have two younger brothers and I have eight grandchildren. I felt that these family members needed to know what their grandfather and their father did,” she said.

Writing the book was a full-time job for an entire year. She said every family member now has a copy, but the book is not available for wider publication.

“They were an awesome generation,” she added.