page_title: Raid at Ožbalt
section_title: Raid
hierarchical_section_title: Raid at Ožbalt / Raid
caption_attribution_description: English: group photograph of six Commonwealth POWs at German POW Work Camp 1046 GW in 1944
context_page_description: The Raid at Ožbalt was an operation on 31 August 1944 in which 105 Allied prisoners of war were rescued by Slovene Partisans. The majority were liberated from a work site at the village of Ožbalt about 25 kilometres west of Maribor on the railway line to Dravograd in the German Reichsgau Steiermark, now part of modern-day northern Slovenia. Six of the liberated POWs were separated from the group during an engagement with the Germans a few days after their liberation, but following a 14-day trek across 250 kilometres they were flown out of a Partisan airfield at Semič to Bari, Italy. The successful escapees consisted of eight Frenchmen, nine New Zealanders, 12 Australians, and 70 British POWs.
context_section_description: Churches managed to convince the commander of the brigade to conduct an operation to free the rest of the work party the following day, by giving him crucial information regarding the work site and the guards. Next morning Churches and Laws returned with some hundred Partisans to await the arrival of the work party by the usual train. As soon as work had begun the Partisans disarmed the eight guards and captured the four civilian overseers. In a short time the POWs, guards, and civilian overseers were being escorted south along a different route than that used by the first seven escapees the previous afternoon.
  Altogether, 79 more POWs from the working camp were freed. On the same morning ten French and nine additional British POWs were freed by the Partisan brigade from two smaller working camps closer to  Maribor. Churches had provided the details of one of the working camps, at a farm with a single guard, and the Partisans had freed the French POWs when they raided a different camp in error. They then corrected their error and released the British POWs from the camp Churches had mentioned. All the groups of POWs, along with their Partisan liberators, assembled in the hills of Pohorje. Altogether, including Churches and Laws and their original group of escapees, a total of 105 POWs were liberated by the Partisans during the escape and subsequent raids.
caption: Ralph Churches (left rear) with five other Commonwealth POWs prior to the escape. The other two men at the rear and the man at the right front ("Kit" Carson, 6th Australian Division) were all part of the successful escape party
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