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Stalag IV B Muhlberg-on-Elbe

The following morning, we started our long journey to Stalag IV B at Muhlberg-on-Elbe. I was very disappointed to find that Bill was not on the same draft as myself - possibly the names were taken in alphabetical order. We were packed fairly tightly into cattle wagons which contained two large heavy-lidded lavatory buckets, one for urine, the other for excreta.

A loaf of black bread and a small portion of evil-smelling and strong-tasting cheese was our only food for the week鈥檚 journey ahead of us. We did our best to ration the food to a slice of bread and a tiny piece of cheese on a per day.

The journey was not the most comfortable or exciting of my life. We were continually shunted into sidings for hours on end. Then the guards would unlock and open the wagon doors to allow in air and light, for which we were very grateful. The train would eventually rumble on again and we would be lulled into a deep slumber by the melodic refrain from the tinkling of the lids of the lavatory buckets as the wagons swayed and rattled on.

We stayed for a long spell at the sidings in Cologne and the guards allowed us out of the wagons to stretch our legs a little. There was very little chance of anyone trying to make a break for it as we had been cooped up for three or four days by then. We were all very stiff and hardly able to walk let alone run.

I was greatly impressed by the small expression of humanity by the engine driver who, possibly having a son of his own in the army and hoping someone would behave in the same way to him, showed some pity for us and emptied about half a sack of potatoes on the side of the railway track. Being the nearest truck to the engine, we managed to snatch one each which we unashamedly devoured as if they were apples.

Cologne was razed to the ground by heavy bombing raids but the cathedral steeple had miraculously escaped and still pointed like the giant finger of an umpire giving Cologne a 鈥榖owled out鈥� or rather, 鈥榖ombed out鈥�

Our next stop of any length was at Dusseldorf, where we had to change from a wide- to a narrow-gauge line. Passing through the station early in the morning, shepherded by our guards, the place was alive with activity as sleepy-eyed girls and women, probably munitions workers, dashed for their trains. This was evident from the rough state of their clothing, many with scarves tied in turban fashion around their heads. A train had just pulled in amidst a lot of bell-ringing and hissing of steam. Many of the people waiting for the train moved forward on seeing us in menacing fashion but, fortunately for us, were held back by the rifles of the guards escorting us. Women spat and jeered at us as they were forced to move aside for us to pass along the platform. It was understandable that many people felt embittered having their homes bombed and razed to the ground, many suffering the loss of loved one, and with the parachute wings on our cap-badges and sleeves we could well be mistaken for bomber crews.

We continued towards Muhlberg, dozing off and half-waking to the sheer blackness of night. I sensed a strange dislocation of time, past and present. Here we were, rolling along on the railroads of Germany, completely at the mercy of our captors, with all the events of the past week or so racing through my mind. At the same time, I felt an odd sense of security, as if going home to the valleys of South Wales for a spot of leave, awakening for a few moments in the darkened railway compartment just a little concerned not to drop off to sleep again and miss my stop.

We finally arrived at Muhlberg in a much weakened condition. A few of the boys collapsed to the ground when alighting from the wagons and had to be assisted for the half-mile or so tramp from the little railway siding to the prisoner-of-war camp. At the camp, Stalag IV B, crowds of inmates had thronged at the entrance with the hope of recognising someone they knew.

A new intake of prisoners was always a great event at the camp, with hurried questions, charged with excitement, thrown from all sides.

We shuffled on slowly through the main gates of the camp. This was a very slow process as each batch of prisoners had to have their particulars taken, then had to be de-loused, bathed and inoculated as a precautionary measure against the possibility of any outbreak of disease.

I was approached by two pals of mine from my old platoon. They had been taken prisoner in a previous operation at the invasion of Sicily. Roy Harris, a chubby, well-built lad from Bristol, who had a perpetual grin on this cheery face, and 鈥楾itch鈥� Cartwright from Manchester, who always spoke in a secretive sort of way as his eyes darted this way and that, giving him a mischievous impish look. After breathlessly asking me the news regarding the fate of some of the lads, they discreetly asked me to hand over to them without being observed my A.B.64 which is the soldier鈥檚 pay book. Without further ado, I let them have it. They slipped away and were back again in a matter of minutes with the pay book, altered giving me a rapid promotion to the rank of sergeant. The idea was that Non-commissioned Officers had the privilege of remaining in the camp and could not be used for working parties or 鈥榗ommandos鈥� as they were called. This could be quite an arduous and often dangerous experience involving such work as clearing the debris from railway lines, marshalling yards, railway junctions, roadways, bridges and ammunition factories destroyed by the heavy bombing raids which created such devastation in the big towns and cities, as the Allied bombers rained destruction down on all strategic points disrupting the lines of communication. Others were sent out to work in factories engaged in the work of boosting the German war effort. There were of course advantages in going out to work. Firstly, the prisoner was given extra rations of food as the camp rations were just sufficient to keep one alive and were certainly not enough to enable one to cope with a day鈥檚 work. Secondly, the chances of making a bid for freedom were greatly enhanced.

Red Cross parcels, containing chocolate, cocoa, butter, sweets and many other goodies, which the prisoners of war had previously enjoyed, had ceased coming through from the International Red Cross centre as the Allied air forces concentrated on destroying everything that moved along the lines of communication. As the net slowly closed in on them, it was as much as the Germans could manage to feed themselves and we were considered as just an extra burden on their hands.

We moved desperately slowly through the camp reception buildings to a point where we were ordered to strip off every stitch of clothing and tie them into bundles. These bundles were collected by a guard who took them away for fumigation treatment in huge vat-like steam boilers.

We then went through the de-lousing treatment, standing there in all our naked glory. Some wag behind cracked, 鈥淩oll up! Roll up and see the greatest show on Earth!鈥� but I am afraid our masculinity was not presented at its best just then. Letting out a shivery giggle, we moved on, not too enthusiastically, for the next treat in store for us which was to be given by the bored-looking white-coated German doctor who was dispassionately loading his hypodermic syringe for the next injection into the pectoral muscle. Judging by the way he jabbed the needle into the flesh, it was obvious it was also getting a little tired of its work and needed a change. Apparently, some time previously there had been such terrible outbreaks of typhus at prisoner-of-war camps that the Germans were taking no chances of further flare-ups. The disease struck the victims with the effect of a heavy cold, leaving them trembling violently, the fever spreading through the body until death mercifully took over. We were told that the bodies of the Russian POWs were dragged and bundled into lime pits with no more feeling and respect than would be given to the carcasses of animals. They would be sprayed with lime, the white foam bubbling and hissing as it burned into the tangled mass of flesh and clothing.

The next move was across the yard to the bath houses, where, coming from the showers were a bunch of the most pitiful specimens of manhood it had been my misfortune to see. I later learned that they were Italian POWs. They were walking skeletons, their fleshless ribs protruded prominently like bird cages, their legs were ankle- thick to the top of the thighs and their eyes seemed to glow from the deeply-sunk sockets of their skull-like heads. The chalk whiteness of their faces gave them a ghoulish appearance; such was man鈥檚 inhumanity to man.

Clothed again and feeling somewhat fresher, I felt that I had regained my identity. The psychological effect of a uniform, giving one a sense of belonging is amazing. The hut to which I was billeted consisted mostly of R.A.F. personnel (flying crews) and a fine bunch of fellows they were. Each hut had its own 鈥楬ut Commander鈥� who had the responsibility for maintaining discipline and the allocation and issuing of food rations to the men in his charge. Food was issued once a day, around mid-day. It was invariably soup made from horse meat with great chunks of fat floating on the top. The lads had a standing joke regarding the number of horses that were being killed at the Russian front. The soup was brought to each hut in a large iron cauldron with handles on either side. Each man was ticked off the roll of names of the occupants of the hut as he received his ladleful so that there was no chance of anyone doing a 鈥榙ouble shuffle鈥� on the food. In addition to the soup, there was a loaf of black bread to every eight men. This was measured out and cut with meticulous care into what we hoped to be equal portions. We looked on anxiously as each man was apportioned his share fearing that one might be given a short measure and at the same time trying hard to assume an air of indifference, it being of the utmost importance not to lose one鈥檚 dignity. Sometimes there would be a variation in the soup issue, perhaps we would have millet (a sort of maize made into something resembling a weak porridge). Something quite special would be pea soup. This would be the subject of much speculation and excitement among the lads as this lack of decent food day after day gnawed at the mind as well as the body.

The beds were two-tiered little wooden bunks with flat strips of wood serving as a base. With a blanket wrapped tightly around one鈥檚 body, one could have a decent night鈥檚 sleep. There was no undressing and getting into bed wearing pyjamas or such like as the new intake, such as me, would not be in receipt of any such home comforts. So, apart from taking our boots off, we slept in our uniforms. It was just as well really for when winter came, with its bitterly cold and frosty nights, there seemed to be a constant stream of men running across to the ablution block, making for the toilets throughout the night, accompanied by the beam of the searchlight directed from the high guard towers, which stood well above the compound. The reason for continually wanting to urinate may have been the effect of lack of sufficient food.

The guard tower also contained a heavy machine-gun and anyone passing beyond the toilet block after lights out and going in the general direction of the high, double-thicketed barbed wire fence which surrounded the compounds would be welcomed by an angry burst of machine-gun fire from the ever watchful guards at the tower. Each compound had a similar guard tower on either side. There were compounds for Russians, Poles and Italians, and transit compounds for the working parties which were continually coming and going as required by the Germans to meet the emergencies as they arose.

The Russians in their drab clothes were a particularly pathetic sight. Big-framed men who seemed to bend forward as if they did not have the strength to stand upright, giving the appearance of large vultures as they clung on to the wire fence which separated the compounds. They were invariably rummaging around the refuse bins in an attempt to scrape tiny morsels of food from seemingly empty tins. They had existed for two or three years on the paltry camp rations and had not enjoyed the comparative luxury of the Red Cross parcels which the other nationals had received. They were hard-looking men with the world鈥檚 miseries written on their faces.

Roy Harris, our friend from Bristol, was on friendly terms with one of the more fortunate Russians who from time to time was detailed to go out to the nearby village on a working party. This usually put the Russians in a position where they could scrounge some extra food from sympathetic villagers or perhaps pick something up on their own initiative. As a result, Roy would, on occasions, slip around of an evening from his hut close-by with a tin full of some concoction he had made up resembling porridge. He would tell me that he had obtained a bag of chicken corn from his Russian friend Nik, ground it down to a fine powder and then put it in water which he boiled, stirring to make quite a dish.

I could usually tell when he had something to share by the expression of extreme pleasure on his face which he would try very hard, but not too successfully, to hide as he pushed his way past the lads who had congregated around the small stove at the centre of the hut. This we were allowed to light in the evening thanks to the generosity of the Germans who periodically also allowed us a small ration of coal.

Talks were organised at the various huts on different evenings of the week. These were given voluntarily by speakers who felt that they had something special to tell, many of them professional people in civilian life. One such speaker was a professional footballer, a former player with Wolverhampton Wanderers football club, famous, just prior to the outbreak of war, whilst under the management of Major Frank Buckley, for the issuing of pep pills to the players.

Another amusing talk was given by a member of the Home Guard who had been taken prisoner on the south coast of England in 1940, but I don鈥檛 imagine for one minute that there was anything funny in it at the time. What a relief it must have been for his family, who could not possibly have had any idea what had happened to him, to hear through the International Red Cross Association that he was alive and well as a prisoner of war somewhere in Germany. One could well envisage the scene of his capture and the circumstances which had brought it about. A remote and rugged spot on the coast, one of those nights when the moon comes out briefly for perhaps only a few seconds in a heavy, clouded sky, showing a lonely figure keeping vigil, wishing away the hours till he would be back home by the cosy fireside again, while, unknown to him, a landing party from a German U-boat lying surfaced in the murky waters of the Channel, was making a reconnaissance along the rocky cliffs. Troops from the U-boat descended upon him without warning; their mission - to take back a 鈥榮ample鈥� of the troops being used by the British for defending that particular stretch of coastline - accomplished which would assist them in forming a full picture of the opposition they would encounter should they decide to invade our shores.

However, at that time the British were also very busy in counter moves by constantly juggling the troops around with the deployment of mobile columns along the coastline giving the effect of having more troops stationed at these points than there really were.

We also had a nice little camp library which had built up over the years through the good work of the Red Cross and other sources by means of parcels from home. Many of the books were old and the worse for wear but nevertheless there was quite a lot of really good reading material to be found among them.

Weeks passed by as winter drew on, the night skies reverberating to the heavy ceaseless drone of flights of Allied bombers carrying their loads of death and destruction to the big cities of Berlin, Leipzig and Dresden, all of which formed a huge triangle miles beyond our camp at Muhlberg. The ground shook and windows rattled in their frames with the vibration as they passed overhead. Then, in the distance, the muffled reports of the bombs as they rained down on their targets, the searchlights sweeping the sky with rapier-like flashes in a frenzy of desperation, trying hard to hold the aircraft in their beams whilst the anti-aircraft batteries pounded away at them.

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