As you might imagine the topic that floats my boat is to do with matters motoring so periodically off I go to see Richard, my local friendly bookseller in Muizenberg. He had, apparently, found something rather special and wanted me to see it first.
PROFUSELY ILLUSTRATED
Ross, the man behind the counter, knows well my taste in books: Observer Pocket Books and classic Penguins (not the kind found a few kilometres down the road at Boulders) along with anything to do with wheels.
I just have to have them.
What he had unearthed was a profusely illustrated book called Flywheel: Memories of the Open Road by one Tom Swallow and members of the Muhlberg Motor Club. Remarkable as it may seem, Flywheel is a compilation of reprinted motoring articles collated by founding editor Swallow and produced by prisoners-of-war in Stalag IVB in Germany from 1944-45.
In peacetime, Englishman Swallow was a keen car and motorcycle enthusiast and had teamed up at Stalag IVB with another PoW, a Durban journalist called Pat Harrington-Johnson. They decided, in an attempt to raise the prisoners’ morale, to publish a motoring magazine for them… the title of which you’ll have guessed.
MIND IMAGE: A pre-Second World War Norton International drawn from memory by one of the colonial inmates of the Muhlberg Motor Club in war-torn Germany.
“Stolen materials such as quinine from the medical room provided the dye, tinted to suit, of course.”
“Sticking articles on the pages difficult - excess fermented millet soup took care of that little problem.
“Just one copy per issue was produced and circulated among members of the Muhlberg Motor Club - the Jerries never had a clue what we were up to.”
Flywheel production was taken seriously. It had a diesel expert, a sports-car guru, a bike fundi, even a circulation manager. Amazing but more than one inmate could draw well - take a look at the quality of the illustrations and you’ll see what I mean.
PRISON PRINTERS: ‘Flywheel’, published by Fraser-Stewart, depicts harrowing times in a German prisoner-of-war camp where the inmates got together to produce nearly a dozen “motoring magazines”.
Flywheel produced 11 editions. The group went their separate ways after the end of the war, Swallow to become a well-known motorcycle dealer in the British Midlands in due course. For whatever reason he would only sell British motorcycles from his dealership.
He kept in touch with his old muckers from Australia, Canada, Rhodesia and South Africa. He died in 2007.
I don’t suppose any of our readers might have been in Stalag IVB during that time and are still alive and maybe living in Cape Town?
I’d love to show them this book…