It’s unclear exactly when and where these grainy old photographs were taken, but they depict something rather remarkable.  The top photograph is a radio receiver used by Allied prisoners of war from 1940 until the end of the war in 1945.

This set belonged to the crew of a Canadian merchant ship which was captured early in 1940. They managed to conceal the set in their belongings and smuggle it in to the POW camp near Bremen. The set’s hiding place is the hollowed out butcher’s block shown in the bottom photo.

The photos appear on page 14 of the January, 1946, issue of Manitoba Calling, the monthly magazine and program guide put out by CKY in Winnipeg. The article contains other tales of Allied POW’s managing to listen to the radio during their confinement. The article contains other such stories of how prisoners managed to keep clandestine radio receivers concealed.

In one case, prisoners at a camp in occupied Poland managed to steal a transmitter from a German armored car. When the camp was threatened with an exhaustive search for the stolen set, it was returned, since the men didn’t want to risk losing the twenty clandestine receivers in their possession.

Unfortunately, the article is lacking details on the receivers in use, their power supplies, and other details. Nonetheless, it’s an interesting read, and confirms that Allied prisoners were often able to keep in touch with news from home.

The author of the article was Calvin Peppler, who was employed by CKY before and after the war. During the war, he was a Spitfire pilot in various squadrons for several years. In the last few months of the war, he was shot down and served for several months as a prisoner of war himself, attempting several unsuccessful escapes. Peppler died in Toronto in 2015 at the age of 96.

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