大象传媒

This story is submitted to the People's War site by Jane Songi on behalf of Eric Marchant and has been added to the site with his permission. Eric Marchant fully understands the site's terms and conditions.

I was a private in the Royal Sussex Regiment when I was captured in Belgium in May 1940. I had been part of the rear guard action for Dunkirk when my unit were surrounded by German tanks and infantry, near Poperinge in Belgium. The officer with us, Lieutenant Fuller, negotiated the surrender and then told the men to ditch their weapons and we lined up on the road. We were marched with many other British and French prisoners from Poperinge through Belgium to Maastricht. Even before we were captured the soldiers had been hungry and as we marched through Belgium we would dive into gardens we passed to grab any fruit or vegetables, even raw potatoes. As prisoners we were allowed to stop at Ghent where the Red Cross representative went round to all the men and asked them if they wanted to write home. I wrote a note to my parents to let them know I was alright, but it did not get back to Sussex for 6 months, during which time I was posted as 鈥渕issing.鈥�

The march continued to Maastricht where as captured men we were told that we must walk three abreast and not to walk out of our positions, otherwise we would be shot. Dutch people watched from the side of the road. One man took pity on us and threw us some food. The Germans arrested him and made him march with the captured soldiers. The soldiers were made to march on to near Aachen where they were put on a train to the Polish border, and a place called Lamsdorf. 鈥楾ill we got on the train exhausted, we had had to march almost 300km from Poperinge to Aachen. We arrived in Lamsdorf at the end of June 1940. Lamsdorf was a big prisoner of war camp, with around 10, 000鈥� 15, 000 inmates housed in many concrete huts. It was the central prison camp for a large area and men were sent out from here to work on the various labour camps in that region. The first thing the new prisoners had to do when they arrived was take a shower to get rid of their lice. There was warm water but no soap. Then all the prisoners were finger printed and photographed with a Stalag label around their neck. My label read: STALAG VIIIB N14049, and prisoners had to wear their ID all the time.

There were more than 200 prisoners in a hut with bunks arranged three tiers high. Each bunk had straw sacking for a mattress and one blanket. The huts also had a big concrete basin like a trough. You could turn the water on for a while each morning and then everyone washed in the same water. There was a large toilet block for every 7 or 8 huts. In the toilet block there were 4 rows of seats in the open over a very deep pit. There were rats running around everywhere. Local Poles would come in to empty the cess pit, and they would pump out the sewage into a barrel on their horse-drawn cart. Food was limited but the routine was always the same. The men would line up and get one loaf of bread between 10 prisoners each morning. Then someone would cut the loaf into the 10 pieces needed. My friends and I had a system for making sure no one could always get the biggest piece 鈥� we would draw cards and picked our pieces of bread in order, the man with the highest value card choosing first. Lunch was a bowl of soup鈥� really just cabbage water, with some boiled potatoes in their skins. There was no dinner. However, Lamsdorf was just a holding camp and from here we were sent out in working parties to wherever we could be put to work. It was only the ordinary soldiers, without rank, that had to work in the labour camps. Sergeants were sent with the privates, but the sergeants only had to make sure everything was in order and keep the billet clean and tidy 鈥� all the heavy labouring was done by the private soldiers.

At the beginning of August 1940 I was sent to Raciborz on the Polish border, and billeted in an old brewery. The brewery housed about 50 men who were sent out everyday to work as diggers, clearing a silted up overflow from a sewerage works. The men worked up to their knees in water, but this was alright as it was summertime. Germans guarded the men all the time and they would shove their rifle butts into the back of any man who did not shovel hard enough, otherwise the billet was not too bad. One of the guards, a German or Pole, whittled birds out of wood while he was supposed to be looking after the prisoners. At the brewery the men slept upstairs on the straw covered floor, where they became infested with lice. At night time they picked the lice off their skin by hand, and ended up with fingers dripping with blood from squashing the lice between their thumbs. We were given old Polish clothes and for shoes we were issued with Dutch style clogs. We were also given a piece of cloth called 鈥渇ootslappen鈥� to cover our bare feet so that the clogs were a little more comfortable. Each morning we started the day with a breakfast of bread and ersatz coffee, which was made of acorns. At night, when we came home from work we had a meal in the damp kitchen. The meal was cooked by a Polish or German man, and it was a soup with a mixture of onions, potatoes, cabbage, and every now and again lungs or other cow offal.

In October I was sent with the other prisoners on to another job. This time we were sent to the river Nysa in Poland, near the Czech border. Here we stayed in a pub or dance hall in which the Germans had installed two tiers of bunk beds, enough for up to 50 prisoners. I had noticed that at the last camp some men had been given carpentry jobs, mostly this involved mending the shovels and sharpening tools. These men were able to work inside and the job seemed easier. So when some German guards came into the hall asking for carpenters, both myself and a friend volunteered. This turned out to be a very wise choice. Whilst the rest of the men were digging soil from one place along the river bank, and then loading the soil into railway trucks which had to be pushed to the place where the river had been flooding, we helped to construct a wooden framework that would support the new soil. The work was hard, and in the winter very cold. Both of us working on carpentry duties were working in an unheated shed, but outside it was freezing and men quickly became ill.

By January 1941 there was so much snow and the river was frozen so hard, that the men could not work there anymore, and so the German army lent the men out to contractors. Our new job was clearing snow in the streets of the local village. However food rations were cut in half, and so the bowl of soup we鈥檇 once got for supper became half a bowl of soup. The men felt that they needed more food than this and so we refused to go out and work. There were only six or seven guards looking after us, not enough soldiers to make us go out. However, then a lorry pulled up outside their billet and more soldiers jumped out. I was in the hall, standing near the doorway talking to an Irish man. German soldiers came in and grabbed me and the Irish man and took us outside and put us up against the wall. We were told that we would be shot two at a time, starting with myself and my comrade, until we all went back to work. The men immediately agreed to go back to snow clearing. The German soldiers demanded to know why we had gone on strike, but our rations were not increased. Our rations only finally went back to normal when the weather improved and we went back to work on the river.

I received my first Red Cross Parcel while I was living on the river Nysa. The parcel came with a prisoners鈥� newsletter and inside the newsletter was a sheet of poetry. The poem I found I learnt off by heart, and it kept me going through the many years as a prisoner:

It鈥檚 easy to be nice boys when everything is OK
It鈥檚 easy to be cheerful when you're having things your way
But can you hold your head up and take it on the chin
When your heart is nearly broken and you feel like giving in
It was easy back in England amongst your friends and folk
But now you miss the friendly hand, the joys, the songs, the jokes
The road ahead is stony and unless you're strong in mind
You will find it isn鈥檛 long before you're lagging far behind
You have got to climb the hill boys it鈥檚 no use turning back
There is only one way home and that鈥檚 off the beaten track
You know there is a saying that sunshine follows rain
And sure enough you鈥檒l realise that joy must follow pain
Let patience be your password, make fortitude your guide
Then instead of grousing remember those who died
They died to earn your freedom it was not too great a price
If only you are worthy of such a sacrifice
They bore their cross in silence they sort not wealth or fame
And you must try to emulate and glorify their name.

The men were also issued with a sheet of paper once a month, and we were allowed to write home. I still have the postcard I sent home from Stalag VIIIB.

In October 1941 orders came from Lamsdorf to move some of the prisoners to new labour camps, I was moved to a cement factory in the town of Opoleonoora, Poland- camp number E196.

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