大象传媒

This story was presented by Rosalie to Mary Seers, who is one of our Clockhouse volunteers. Rosalie gave permission to Mary to type up and edit her words ready for submitting to the 大象传媒. This story is a memory from her late husband, Harry Pollitt. Rosalie has another story in the People鈥檚 War about her own work: 鈥淲orking at Minns鈥� Factory, Oxford鈥�. She also remembers her husband coming home just before D-Day and how it influenced their lives afterwards. This story is called 鈥淗arry Pollitt and D-Day鈥�.

THE DISPLACEMENT CAMPS

After the war Harry was pretty silent and took time to get over the awfulness of soldiering. Later, he did tell me a few stories. One was about the displacement camps. Harry and another soldier were put into a camp, and had to mingle with people of all kinds. They could not say a word, and had to just nod and mumble if anyone spoke to them.

In this way they could listen and watch and suss out Germans who may be traitors amongst the people in the camp. Harry and his colleague were only in a camp for a week at a time in case they were found out to be soldiers who were 鈥渦ndercover鈥�. Harry found this work very hard because he could not speak and had to grovel all the time like other displaced persons. He was filthy and hungry all the time he was in these camps.

The signal to identify a traitor was to line up for your ration, and wriggle your fingers as to where the person was. So you had to make sure you lined up near and behind him. Harry did not find any traitors.

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