John Heape's account of the Long March
Title
John Heape's account of the Long March
Description
An account of the march from Stalag 357 (Fallingbostel). On 8 April 1945 the camp commander (Oberst Hermann Ostman) ordered 12,000 British troops to be evacuated, marching from the camp in columns of 2,000. After ten days they arrived at Gresse here they were mistaken for German troops and strafed by Typhoons.
Dixie Deans confronted Oberst Ostman and gave him a choice: either be captured by the Russians or the British. Ostman gave him a pass and a German guard, then he headed West to contact the approaching British.
On 1 May 1945 they heard of the death of Adolf Hitler. On May 2nd they were overrun by troops of the British 6th Airborne. Deans was taken to the commanding officer of British Army VIII Corps, explained the situation and was given a captured Mercedes. He then drove back to Gresse. Two days later the column marched back across the British lines.
On 16th April 1945 Fallingbostel was liberated. On Monday 7 May 1945 they received the news the war was officially over, German guards began surrendering.
Tuesday 8 May - VE Day - was spent waiting. Met an RAF flying officer named Aba Bayefsky, an official war artist attached to the the Royal Canadian Air Force. Later he visiteid Luneburg airfield, seeing Spitfires for the first time and other new aircraft.
On 9 May they were wheeled away and at 4:30 were airborne in a Dakota KG433 piloted by a Flt/Lt Moulder heading for an aerodrome near Aylesbury in England.
The first picture is a Wehrmacht command car [sic, a US Army Jeep] with John Heape on the left behind the wheel with Cyril Ainsley to his right.
The second is a group photo “Fraternising with German civilians” including Alfie Fripp; [?] Rauton, Cyril Ainsley, and Ronald Mogg.
Dixie Deans confronted Oberst Ostman and gave him a choice: either be captured by the Russians or the British. Ostman gave him a pass and a German guard, then he headed West to contact the approaching British.
On 1 May 1945 they heard of the death of Adolf Hitler. On May 2nd they were overrun by troops of the British 6th Airborne. Deans was taken to the commanding officer of British Army VIII Corps, explained the situation and was given a captured Mercedes. He then drove back to Gresse. Two days later the column marched back across the British lines.
On 16th April 1945 Fallingbostel was liberated. On Monday 7 May 1945 they received the news the war was officially over, German guards began surrendering.
Tuesday 8 May - VE Day - was spent waiting. Met an RAF flying officer named Aba Bayefsky, an official war artist attached to the the Royal Canadian Air Force. Later he visiteid Luneburg airfield, seeing Spitfires for the first time and other new aircraft.
On 9 May they were wheeled away and at 4:30 were airborne in a Dakota KG433 piloted by a Flt/Lt Moulder heading for an aerodrome near Aylesbury in England.
The first picture is a Wehrmacht command car [sic, a US Army Jeep] with John Heape on the left behind the wheel with Cyril Ainsley to his right.
The second is a group photo “Fraternising with German civilians” including Alfie Fripp; [?] Rauton, Cyril Ainsley, and Ronald Mogg.
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Temporal Coverage
Spatial Coverage
Language
Format
14 typewritten sheets
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Rights
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Contributor
Identifier
SDeansJAG-HeapeJv1
Collection
Citation
John Heape, “John Heape's account of the Long March,” IBCC Digital Archive, accessed May 8, 2026, https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/collections/document/60059.