大象传媒

15/11/2004

In August 1939 my Father was called up for National Service and joined the Glouster Regt.
He was sent to France with BEF and was taken prisoner by the Germans on the outskirts of Dunkirk and was a prisoner until 1945.

When my son was at school he did a project on POW's and asked an Uncle for his memories This is the reply from New Zealand, where he then lived.

" It started when that Guy Hitler came in to power in Jan 1933 which led up to the start of the War in 1939, the Germans invaded POLAND on the 1st September 39 and England declated war on Germany on the 3rd Sept - two days after.
I was a regular soldier having joined at the age of 17 but telling them I was 18. I joined the Royal Horse Artillery has a driver (HORSES) We still had horses up to 3 months before the war was declared. We were D Battery of the 3rd Division. We arrived in France on the 10th Sept 39 - most of the time we were stationed near Arris in the North of France until the Germans invaded Holland and Belguim At the beginning of May we were seconded to the 51st Highland Divsion which was fighting the rear guard action to the approaches of Dunkirk - on the 27th May the evacuation of British troops started and was completed on about the 5th June 1940.
With the surrender on about the 12th June of the remenents of the 51st Division we were taken POW - we had been out of ammunition for about 2 days and had been using BOFOR anti aircraft guns as anti tank guns - not very effective I might say but it still kept a few heads down - after the surrender we were herded in to a field for 3 or 4 days until they started marching us towards Germany. It was on the first day of the march that I met your Granddad - he had been in the Infantry Regt known as the Glorious Glousters. We got talking and mated up-together with 2 Scottish lads from the Gordon Highlanders. Anyway by the 4th day the four of us had decided we where going to make a break for it - during a a stop on the march we ducked into the woods hoping like Hell we wouldn't be found and we weren't.
We had decided we would try and make for the coast - travelling at night. We managed to make it to the small port of Le Fraport (Traport?) hoping to get a boat to get into the English Channel - this took us 6 weeks - hiding during the day, scounging and stealing food on the way - hiding in bombed out houses and farms which were empty - we were holed up in a house which was empty and there was plenty of those as most ofthe people had been evacuated. We couldn't get a boat as they had all been removed or damaged that they were no longer seaworthy so we had decided we would move inland and try and get to the South of France, we had managed to find some rice in an empty house which we loaded up and put into cannisters to carry with us - the house we where in was all shuttered up so we were all in our vest and pants as it was so hot. When there was a loud banging and smahing of doors and windows - yes the Germans had arrived - they didn't have any problems ot taking us prisoners once again- the worst part was being marched down through the village in our pants and vests to the local lock up.- not very dignifided - we were questioned and taken as stragglers we didn't let on we had been taken before - we were kept for 2 days then shipped out on a truck on its way to Holland. Where we where handed over and joined another march until we were loaded into cattle trucks and freighted in to Germany. We finally got to Stalag 20B which held may thousands of POWs - we were held in prefabricated block 20 rooms with 20 to a room 400 to a block. Your Grand Day and I managed to stay together and were sent out on working parties - all hard labouring jobs, cleaning up damaged buildings, digging trenches, filling bomb craters We were eventually moved to Stalag 8a near Marienburg - from here we were sent to a working camp at Brombery in Poand it was and Industrial complex being built in the pine forest - we were building the railway to it when we had finished they were sending us to the coalmines this was late '43. We had heard enough about the mines that we refused to go, not knowing then that those that refused to go would finish up in Auschwitz - at the time such places were unknown - we were moved into a Camp very close to the Industrial complex being build to produce synthetic Petrol and rubber - we also very soon found it was an area of concertration camps all being used as labour - also forced volunter labour from France - it was there we came under the SS for guards, and food was becoming shorter and shorter mostly potato soup and black bread, and 10 hours a day work. not very pleasant. We were here for about 14 months until late December 1944 when the Russians had started breaking through and getting very close that orders came for allied POWs to be moved back to Germany - there was no transport so we were marched from Auschwitz across Poland - Czechoslavakia and into Southern Germany and finished up in Regensburg
A couple of months before beign moved from Auschwitz the place was bombed by allied bombers - it was our bad luck that the first flight also dropped bombs on our camp - a number of POWs were killed and some injured - your grand dad was one of the injured - not to badly but bad enough to need treatment at the hospital - he returned to camp after treatment but it wasn't easy on the march which took 12 weeks in mid winter.
In Regensburg we used to fill in the bomb craters which hundread of bombers used to make nearly every day as it was a main railway terninal for southern Germany - we were finally released by the Americans who fed us and gave us new clothes and we were finally flown out to Southern England. Your granddad and I were what was known
as flyweights, we were so skinny.
Your Grand dad got me into more trouble over those 5 years looking after him than I've been in the rest of my life - what with black marketering and blackmailing guards -
only kidding Greg, your grand dad was a great guy and a good mate and you can be proud of him for it wasn't easy.
We didn't see much of the War but we had our own action and gave lots of Germans lots of headaches in our own way - even AG FARBON industries in Auschwitz we manage to put back for 3 months with petty sabotarg."

My uncle name was John Glennon, who passed away a few years ago.

My Dad name was William George Hartland who passed away in 1988.

At the end of the war when they arrived back in the UK, John who was an orphan, came home with my Dad. He went on to marry my Aunt Elsie.
One thing he did not mention in the letter, was that my Dad's vision was effected by the bombing raid and it was Glennon who looked after him.

My father also told a few bits about the war. That they were in the same hut as Harry Nichols who won the VC and was presented with the London paper clipping by the Germans. I have a few photos of the camp musicals and men of the same hut as them.
That food was so short that they smuggled any thing they could get in the camp in their trousers.
That the Jews were in an awlful state. But he remembered working in the pine forest in Poland and hearing a wonderful voice singing opera, to discover an old straved jewish lady singing.
That the walk from Germany was a matter of walk or be shot. Of a soldier pinching a chicken ( for which he could have been shot) thinking he had killed it and plucking most of the feathers out, hidden in his jacket, to have the chicken suddenly start up and escape down the road, very nude.
Also begining locked in a barn by their German Guards one night to be woken the next morning with the Americans trying to shoot them- their guards having disappeared in the night.
My Father alway said it was Glennon who led him astray.

They were friends for the rest of their lives even though they lived on different sides of the world.
( Please forgive the spell of place names )

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