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This story was submitted to the Peopleā€™s War Site by Three Counties Action, on behalf of Guardsman Harrison, and has been added to the site with permission. The author fully understands the siteā€™s terms and conditions.

During the winter of 1943-44, Bert was loading wood for the pit when he broke two fingers on his left hand which put him off work for ten weeks. The Germans didnā€™t treat him properly. (ā€œThey were too busy with their wounded from the Russian Frontā€), and he still cannot bend them.

The camp had strict rules which forbade the prisoners from talking to or meeting with the girls working there. But secret meetings did take place despite the threat of severe punishment.

Schneider was always around and Bert recalls, ā€œI was not going to get into trouble through a girl.ā€

1941 and 1942 passed in this way. Hard work, poor conditions, harsh treatment and the one thing that affected Bert Harrison most of all ā€” captivity.

Near Christmas 1942 he was working when a young girl arrived and was set to work in the same place. Rules were forgotten by the British prisoner-of-war and the Ukrainian girl called Maria who was to feature in Bertā€™s life for some time.

After his accident, Bert could have gone back to his previous camp at Lansdorf, but he decided to stay at the dreaded Beuthen and be with Maria.

He shared his chocolate from the Red Cross parcels with her and she planned their meetings carefully, warning him on some occasions not to leave the huts when the guards were on prowl.

Trading with civilians was also forbidden, but with conditions in Germany worsening it was rife. Chocolate for eggs or Schnapps.

The girl workers had a hard time. ā€œWe always felt sorry for them,ā€ says Bert, ā€œI always pictured my own sister in the same state, so we always did what we could for them.ā€

Escape remained his main objective ever since Dunkirk. He tried several times and was punished when caught, and after years in the mines he had no papers. But he had a restless spirit which kept him going.

The German army guards ā€œwere not badā€ and letters and parcels from home, plus the sight of Allied bombers pounding the Reich helped morale. Despite harsh winters, lack of sustenance, no stoves or hot water the men kept their military bearing.

After yet another escape that went wrong Bert was put in a sweat box, a corrugated iron structure with just enough room to lie down in. He spent two days and two nights in it, on two occasions!

At times he thought he would never survive the war and he still canā€™t bring himself to tell all his story, particularly the details of his second successful escape, ā€œItā€™s impossible for me to write about itā€, his comment was after the war.

Then in 1944 freedom of a sort was won. He walked into Poland where he was helped by local people and eventually picked up by partisans. They had very little food but were fighting Germans effectively despite their limited weapons.

Guardsman Harrison wanted to be free and fight Germans too. He joined them and his war began again.

Maria had no papers and she decided to go home to Poland. Then she and Bert would meet when everything settled down. That was the plan and as Bertā€™s linguistic ability had made him into a reasonable Polish speaker the plan had every chance of success.

Poland was in a state of confusion with the partisans harassing the Germans in the forests and the Red Army relentlessly advancing.

Bert and the Polish partisans soon became comrades-in-arms and twenty years after the war ended he still heard from them. He was welcomed to their ranks, probably the first, and only, Welsh Guardsmen to fight with them.

The forests were their home. They slept in the snow, and they did not like the Russians who had, after all, partitioned their country in 1939 in a pact with the Germans. There was also a deep rooted dislike going back many centuries.

The partisans blew up bridges and the only Allied personnel with them were British. Bert wore his old battledress and had no winter clothing. His feet suffered, but it was a cruel experience for everyone, helped by supply drops from Allied aircraft.

Bert soldiered on, he was a survivor after all, despite the handicap of his broken fingers from the coal mining days. The Russians were advancing and Bert Harrison found himself in Poland and in areas the world would soon know a lot about.

At one time he was passing through Auschwitz village and he wondered what the tall chimneys on buildings in a camp were for. Smoke drifted across the village carrying the smell of burning and Bert also saw cattle trucks full of people.

Then he got to Warsaw where the Polish Home Army rose against the Germans, expecting support from the advancing Russians. The Warsaw uprising was not supported and the Poles surrendered. Bert recalls ā€œbodies piled up everywhere, it was a terrible sight.ā€

He later saw German prisoners in Russian hands. ā€œI knew how they felt,ā€ he says, ā€œThey were hungry and had nothing to smoke. I often spoke to them and told them what they did to me for five years. They said it wasnā€™t their fault, but thatā€™s what everyone said at the time.ā€

He found the Russians coarse and did not trust the ā€˜treacherousā€™ Ukrainians. ā€œYou knew where you were with Germansā€ he recalls.

Bert was interrogated by the Russians and one thought he was a German and threatened him at knife point. But his partisan comrades vouched for him and Bert Harrison survived again.

Maria was now with him and as the war drew to a close he drank and mixed with the Russians freely. Maria spoke several languages and she was treated well, although some of her girl friends were not.

Allied prisoners were drifting into Poland, and the trek began again for Bert Harrison. With Maria he loaded their meagre belongings on a cart and they walked 30 kilometres a day, heading for Krakow.

There was no transport there so they moved on hitch-hiking when possible. One lorry they rode was clearly over-loaded so they jumped off, just in time as it happened because a few miles up the road the drunken driver crashed it, killing everyone on board.

Life was a series of narrow escapes for the Gloucestershire man, but soon repatriation became reality, although it meant losing Maria and it took a long time before he saw England again.

With many other Allied prisoners he went to Odessa where conditions were only marginally better. ā€œThere were 3000 French thereā€, recalls Bert, ā€œand lots of British and Americans. Conditions were rough, food was scarce but at least the war was over.ā€

The homeward journey on the ā€˜Empire Prideā€™ was slow and the ship stopped off in the South of France. But the men remained aboard and eventually were disembarked in Italy where they stayed for three months.

Bert couldnā€™t sleep on a bed, he used the floor, and as he signed for seven years with the Colours he still had some service to complete.

Eventually he reached Britain and finished his time in a demobilisation centre in Northampton where he met and married his wife Elizabeth. Bert was released in 1947.

When he got to Britain he had lost a stone of his normal weight, a remarkable testimony to his fitness and resilience after five years of harsh living.

His released documents starkly record enlistment on August 2nd 1939 and demobilisation on July 4th 1947. But between those dates he lived and survived like few Guardsmen have.

He retains bitter memories and still claims he is owed Ā£200 for working compulsorily in German coalmines. His claim has been disallowed for some bureaucratic reason, but if anyone deserves that it is Bert Harrison.

He hardly served with the Regiment, but upheld its traditions wherever he went, ā€œI would have been better off if I had stayed in the prison camp,ā€ he now says, ā€œbut I wanted freedom, and I wanted to hit back.ā€

Of his years as a prisoner he says, ā€œWe had some good and bad times, but always bore it together. They were all good men and never, as a prisoner, did I make an enemy.ā€

The Red Cross parcels were not only welcome for the food they contained but they were wonderful propaganda material too. Bert remembers that the Germans thought Britain was ā€œkaputā€ and London was finished, ā€œbut we told them we got letters and parcels from London, and they just walked away.ā€

The Germans tried to form a Corps from prisoners to fight the Russians but there was no response. A German officer then asked the married men to raise their hands. Half the men did and a photographer captured the scene which was later depicted as a group of POWs saying ā€œHeil Hitler.ā€

Bert recalls the times when the SS were brought into camps to deal with disobedience. He saw one British prisoner, who refused to work for the Germans, kicked to death by a member of the SS.

Defiance by prisoners was swiftly dealt with and Bert remembers. ā€œMany good boys who refused to do their childish tricks and never saw England again.ā€ At one camp the Germans built a magazine full of ammunition and out about a hundred prisoners in it. It was a prime target and in one raid was blown up.

ā€œThe Germans laughed,ā€ recalls Bert, ā€œand said the British had killed their own men.ā€

He also reflects on the plight of civilians from occupied countries and says there was mass murders every day in Germany, ā€œfirst of all Jews, then Poles, Russians and many othersā€.

After the war Bert Harrison wrote, ā€œIn many parts of Poland and Germany that I have seen myself, the Germans took a party of Jews, men, women and children, and made them dig a hole. They lined them up along the trench and shot them down with machine guns. They also put them in buses and took them for a ride through woods, all the time releasing gas into the bus. In Warsaw young children threw hand grenades into restaurants used by the Germans and disappeared into the crowd.ā€

Bert Harrison was an eye-witness to events that are still too horrific for some to even read about. And he also remembers his comrades who were killed in France in 1940, Corporal Winslade, mortally wounded in the stomach and Sergeant Topham who died after being hit in the chest.

For this man the war was particularly hard. But the villager from Gloucestershire was tough enough to survive it, and he still has more to tell. Some of it is personal and also too painful to recall, but at least some of Bert Harrisonā€™s story is now on record.

He was interviewed at his home in Tetbury just before Christmas 1988, and he generously agreed to loan his diaries when he completed just after the war ended.

It was a privilege to meet him and his wife and to record some of Guardsman Harrisonā€™s war story.

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