大象传媒

This story was submitted to the People鈥檚 War site by Holly Booth of 大象传媒 Scotland on behalf of Alexander Gregor and has been added to the site with his permission. The author fully understands the site's terms and conditions.

I was a young lad when we went to the desert. I had been in the Army for a year before being posted to the desert. In August 1940 we sailed on a convoy from the Mersey to Cairo. We were the Garrison Battalion in Cairo before being sent up the desert through Egypt and Libya. I fought the Germans until 1942 when I was captured just outside Torbruk. We held our own for a while until we were overran by the 21st Panzer Division. I saw Rommel in his staff car on the day I was captured. Rommel was respected by the troops. There had even been a directive came through that told us to stop speaking about Rommel. I had a flesh wound to the face and I had it treated. The German frontline troops treated us well but they weren鈥檛 all like that once we were Prisoners of War. I was in a camp in Dresden when it was bombed. We saw the first wave of the bombing. We were billeted in a ballroom there and the guards took us down to the cellar when the bombing started. One of the jobs I had as a PoW was in a granite yard of all places. I was sent to Eisleben Camp in East Germany. I found out it was the birthplace of Martin Luther when I was there. We were billeted on top of a mine. Half the prisoners were British and the other half were Russian. We were separated by wire. It was terrible there but it was much worse for the Russians. They were treated abominably. The work parties left for the mine in the morning singing 鈥淗i Ho, Hi Ho, It鈥檚 Of To Work We Go鈥� but they wouldn鈥檛 be singing on the way home, they were exhausted then. I worked in the smelter there. The food was dreadful, just soup and some kind of German bread. We depended on Red Cross parcels but we didn鈥檛 get them regularly and even then it was maybe one parcel between four men. By VE Day on May 8th 1945 we were already out of the camp. A week before the surrender we were bombed and straffed by Russian planes when we were walking towards the American lines. After we were bombed we went into the forest where we came across a troop train full of German soldiers. They wanted to come with us so they could surrender to the Americans instead of the Russians but we said no way. The Germans were hanging white sheets out of their window to surrender. They were very scared of the Russians. When we reached the American lines we were flown to Reimms on a Dakota and from there we boarded a Lancaster which brought us to Oxford. I was hospitalised when I got home as I was suffering from malnutrition.

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