“A prisoner of war can legitimately try to escape from his captors. It is even considered by some that prisoners of war have a moral obligation to try to escape, and in most cases such attempts are of course motivated by patriotism.” (International Humanitarian Law Databases)
You can imagine the fury of the maze prison offers (screws) after the 1983 escape and the retaliation they perpetrated on the remaining prisoners. This letter/comm to Fr Des, written on cigarette papers and smuggled out, form Gerard Mochara Kelly give us a glimpse into what the aftermath was like for the POW’s. It describes the treatment of the prisoners at the hands of the screws and the boost to moral when Fr Des publically supported the POW’s right to escape their captors.
This is just one of many comm’s Fr Des received from POW’s which are stored in the Peoples archive. They are a fascinating insight into prison life, the POW’s desire to be kept informed and educated about what was happening on the outside, their thoughts and ideas about building a “New Ireland” and the admiration Des was held in by the POW’s for his pastoral care and support. We hope to publish more of these comm’s in the near future.
Letter published with the kind permission of Gerard Kelly.
Hello, Father, this will be a surprise to you. Firstly, I’ll introduce myself. My name is Gerard Kelly and my mother’s name is Harriet Kelly, you knew her Father.
I’m in A Wing H7 Long Kesh and I’m writing on behalf of the boys in H7.
This note is to thank you for your honest statement and for your bravery in making it at this time when many condemned us instead.
Father I refer to the statement you made about the escape on RTE.
Father it was a great morale boost for us.
After listening to the media and the hypocritical unionist politicians and Protestant clergy and some of our own condemning us, for what as POWs is our right and duty.
Father, we were locked up in our cells and all our so called privileges were taken away from us, even the tables in our cells were taken.
They took education and handicrafts etc and made us eat our food in our cells. They stopped us from using the toilet, so we had to go to the toilet and our cells, you can guess what it was like. And to add to that they stopped exercise, needless to say, the screws were in their glory with us locked up 24 hours, seven days.
We expected this and took it in our stride. Then I think it was Sunday when one of the boys shouted out his door Fr Dessy Wilson is on RTE. (That’s what we call you and here.)
We shouted to the other wings to listen to you as well.
Then we heard you sticking up for us by supporting our right to escape.
The whole block was in an uproar. We banged our doors and lockers with anything we could find. The noise was deafening.
We were in great form and we give the screws some stick, after being condemned by everybody and harassed by the screws, to hear your comments on the escape, lifted morale to a thousand.
So Father I was asked by the boys to write you this note and to tell you that we thank you and are very proud of you.
Also Father you are held in high ESTEEM with us all and would like to see you coming in to visit us if you can get in to say mass we would like to have you or if you like I could send a visit out for you, just let me know which suits Father.
I would like to ask a favour of you, If you can get any political books for us would you send us them in as we have no political books and need them to educate ourselves.
You could leave them with my mother and she can send them in. Well, Father all the best and thanks.
The letter was signed by
22 POW’s.
