Musical lifeline: Guitar owned by POW takes a place in history at Canadian war museum

During the endless hours as a prisoner of war in World War II, Alfred “Alf” Binnie’s guitar was an instrument of survival.

“The music kept the men from falling into despair,” Binnie’s widow Joan said as she looked over the historical papers that recently accompanied the guitar to the Canadian War Museum in Ottawa. “It sort of saved them really.”

When Alf died in July 2009, Joan, of Whitefish, pondered what to do with the guitar that accompanied her husband of 59 years through so much during the war. Alf spent four years in German POW camps, moving periodically to six different “Stalag” facilities.

In 1945, when prisoners were forced to leave their prison camps in the face of the Russian advance in what’s been deemed “The Long March,” Alf carried his prized guitar as they trudged hundred of miles to the west in brutal winter conditions.

Both Alf and his guitar survived the ordeal, though the guitar’s neck had to be rebuilt once he was back in his native Canada.

After the war, Alf played his guitar and sang to skiers gathered around the fireplace at the Canadian ski resort where he was an instructor. He serenaded Joan, too.

“He taught me a song called ‘When Shadows Fall’ and I made him sing it at the end of every evening,” Joan recalled, singing a verse of the beloved tune... “Evening ever brings to me, dreams of days that used to be, memories of those I love the best...”

With no children to inherit the guitar, Joan and her neighbor and friend, Leslie Collins, decided the war museum was the best option for preserving the instrument.

“It really is a treasure,” Joan said. “It’s a copy of a Gibson, and a fellow played it and said it was quite good. It’s priceless now.”

Alf’s war story began in September 1939 when he “crossed the pond” to sign up for a short service commission with the Canadian Air Force.

“He was 19 and he wanted to be a pilot,” Joan said.

The outbreak of war quickly solidified his future and he enlisted in London shortly after his arrival in England. Alf was shot down over Holland on March 12, 1941. Badly wounded with a leg torn up by shrapnel, he was taken by the Germans to a Dutch naval hospital where he spent more than three months enduring three operations on his thigh and battling infection.

The hospitalization saved his leg, but because the young Dutch doctor that treated him had no way of getting Alf to safety through the underground escape routes, he was sent to the German POW camps.

Nearly a year after he’d been shot down, Alf used his “camp money” to buy his guitar at a music shop in Weimar. Prisoners were given cigarettes to use as currency to buy goods, Joan explained. Since Alf didn’t smoke, he was able to save enough to purchase the guitar.

Prisoners from all walks of life ended up in the Stalags, and makeshift bands formed to break up the monotony of camp life.

“The Germans liked them to play,” Joan said. Among the original documents she turned over to the war museum is a concert poster for a “Strike Up The Band” performance with the Stalag choir and “Jimmy Culley and the Stalagians.” Alf, known as “Binnie,” is listed on the program.

It sounds like a jovial atmosphere, and music did soothe their souls. But the reality of the prison camps was never really escapable, Joan said.

“They had very little to eat. Soup was watered down; they were really starving,” she said.

When parcels arrived from the Red Cross, the Germans took what they wanted and prisoners got the leftovers.

“Alf’s upbringing was strict, so if he got a big chocolate bar he was able to ration it,” Joan said, explaining how he joined a group in prison for the purpose of stretching their meager food supply.

It’s still difficult for Joan to imagine how Alf carried his guitar all those miles in terrible conditions during The Long March. An account of the harrowing 83-day trek, read during a 2003 unveiling and dedication of a war memorial at the Royal Air Force Museum in England honoring the event, told how prisoners were subjected to snow and temperatures 20 degrees below zero. Blisters on their feet burst, leading to infections. Raw rat became a delicacy

“So near to starvation were they that one POW recalled looking at his arm, suddenly realizing it was a piece of meat and wondering, lightheadedly, whether he could bring himself to take a bite out of it,” the dedication narrative noted.

Thankfully, there were better days ahead for Alf, who returned to Canada and bought a small resort with 10 cabins. He spent several winters as the director of a ski school near Quebec. Joan and Alf met at the ski resort and immediately hit it off.

They moved to Long Beach, Calif., in 1959 where Alf went to work for California Federal Bank. After he retired, the couple moved to Whitefish where Alf continued to ski for many years.

“He was a splash of color on the hill,” she said with a laugh, showing a photo of Alf in a bright red ski suit. “Nothing drab for Alf. He was kind of special.”

Joan couldn’t bear the thought of selling the guitar or donating it to a second-hand store. She and Collins mulled the idea of taking it to the war museum in London, but finally decided it should return to Alf’s homeland.

Last week the two women packed up the beloved guitar and its accompanying documents, including Alf’s original receipt for the instrument, and headed north in what would be a treasured guitar’s last journey.

Features editor Lynnette Hintze may be reached at 758-4421 or by e-mail at lhintze@dailyinterlake.com.