[SFDXA] Morse Code Stitched Up...

[Bill Marx]

This was posted on the CWops list:

Morse Code Stitched Up...



http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/world-war-2/9009651/The-British-POW-who-stitched-an-insult-to-Hitler.html 
<http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/world-war-2/9009651/The-British-POW-who-stitched-an-insult-to-Hitler.html>

The British POW who stitched an insult to Hitler
A POW wiling away the war in a German prison camp delivered a defiant 
message insulting Hitler through the apparently innocuous skill of 
embroidery.

Maj Alexis Casdagil sewed a Morse code message around his sampler, 
reading 'God saves the king'. Photo: David Fearn/newsteam
By Matthew Day
11:30AM GMT 12 Jan 2012
4 Comments
Major Alexis Casdagli, who was taken prisoner in 1941, had turned to 
embroidery as a way of protecting his sanity against the tedium of POW 
life but he also found it provided a means of covert resistance.

An innocent looking tapestry stitched by the officer in December 1941 
bears the rather bland text stating the name and location of its creator 
and the date. But in a border surrounding the text Major Casdagli also 
stitched a series of dots and dashes, which in Morse code spelt out "God 
Save the King" and "---- Hitler".

Unaware of the hidden message but impressed with the captive officer's 
needlework, the Germans even put it on display.

"It used to give him pleasure when the Germans were doing the rounds," 
Tony Casdagli, the major's 79-year-old son, told the Daily Mail.

"It also stopped him going mad. He would say after the war that the Red 
Cross saved his life but his embroidery saved his sanity."

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Despite the risk of a keen-eyed German guard deciphering the Morse 
message the piece of embroidery was hung on walls at all the camps Major 
Casdagli stayed in till his release in 1945.

Tony Casdagli also revealed that his father had stitched on a flap to a 
Union Jack, bearing the message "Do not open": a mocking reference to a 
Nazi law banning the British flag.

The major continued to embroider till his death in 1990 but his tapestry 
with its coded words of defiance is now on display at the Victoria and 
Albert Museum.