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Since Les Birch took part in the People's War Reminiscence session at Cheriton Library in Summer 2003 there has been great interest in his extraordinary story:
www.bbc.co.uk/dna/ww2/A1315711

The ´óÏó´«Ã½ have filmed and interviewed him and the Folkestone Herald printed a full page interview about his experiences as a POW in Europe.

This is a longer account of these experiences which was the result of an interview between Les and Susie Davies of the Keystone Publishing group.

Les was 86 yesterday: 20/05/04
Next weekend he hosts his own Steam Rally:
29th- 31st May Sellindge Steam Special
Swan Lane, off the A.20, Sellindge, Ashford, Kent

HAPPY BIRTHDAY LES!

Les understands the terms of this website
and has given his permission for this account to be added to the site by
Rob Illingworth of the Folkestone Heritage Team

Les Birch was from a farming family and because farming was a ‘reserved occupation’, he hadn’t expected to find himself at war. But he was called up and trained in France and then fought briefly before being captured. He spent the rest of the war in a series of POW camps. He made three escape attempts but was recaptured each time.

Coming from a farming family, I was always led to believe I was in a Reserve Occupation. My call up came and it said I must get to Ashford Drill Hall that night. My mother said ‘you will have to go and get the sticks – the faggots as they called them in those days – we’ll get the copper alight and fill it up with water, you must have a bath before you go – you don’t know who you are going to meet’. I had my bath, snatched a cup of coffee and a sandwich and I said ‘Well I hope I won’t be too long Mum, perhaps we’ll sort it out’. But that ‘too long’ became five and a half years.

My dear old dad tried to get me back – he went to great lengths – he wrote to the War Office and to our local MP. And then before we moved to the end of the Maginot Line and the Ardennes, I was called in front of the OC (Officer Commanding) and asked why he’d had a letter from my MP asking if I could go home if I wanted to as I was in a Reserved Occupation. The pressure was put on me by the OC with an officer sat next to him taking notes. ‘Well soldier’ he said ‘Surely you don’t want to go back to that dirty old job – threshing and steam ploughing? Aren’t you enjoying yourself here? And I said ’well I am enjoying myself, I can’t deny I’ – we were going out every night with girlfriends, going down to the local. We were young men together, in a strange country, but the girls waved and there was plenty of happy go lucky. ‘Right’ he said. And that was the end of that – they informed my people that I’d volunteered to stay on.

We were on the end of the Maginot line, our regiment, and I was then carrying up the ammunition and food to the front line and as soon as you got within a couple of miles everything was flaring, guns were blasting ahead and it was hell let loose. And then, when the Germans broke through at the Ardennes, I could not believe it – there was such armour about and we would run, walk, fight, get what we could, bring the guns back, set them up quick. We fought our way back, right the way back from the Maginot Line the 51st Division. We lost very many in Albertville and then we were mustered together by the Commanding Officer. We were told we had to get rid of everything we had, dismantle our guns, set fire to our vehicles, leave everything and it was every man for himself. The order came through – it’s up to you to get away, to get out, to go where you can. And I’ve since met people who were there who said ‘Les, you were a fool, you didn’t listen’. When the CO said ‘Every man for himself’, he also said there was an officer with us and a bundle of us – six of us, me included were to keep with him. And he had a map and knew good French and he led the others past that wood, past the Germans. And they found a boat and made it round to Cherbourg and home. But I was left at the top of the cliffs with another chappie and we said right, we’ll bolt and go inland and we did. Then, all of a sudden there was a roar and a rumble behind us and the next thing there was this German tank on me. And he said ‘You are English?’ And I said I was. And he said ‘Throw away your rifle and put your hands up. For you the war is over’

I marched in a column of prisoners all the way through France and Belgium to Holland. There were Germans with machine guns both sides every 50 yards. Anyway, I saw a young lady in a field milking cows and coming from a farming family I thought I’m going to go there. I went down in the ditch and wheedled my way along to the young lady. I said ‘I am English, I fight for your country, you must help me’. She said ‘You stay there’. So I stayed until dusk and she took me to the little farmstead and her mother told me I could stay in the pig pound. I was there for nearly 2 weeks and they fed me and looked after me. Then I was sick with dysentery and eventually the lady said I must come into the bungalow. I stayed there another 6 weeks until one morning we heard these German voices. I bolted through the room as the German soldier bashed the door down with his rifle. He was shrieking ‘You will be shot Englander’. I bolted into the chicken pen under the chicken wire and through the stinging nettles. ‘Bang’ he went – I saw the bullet hit the bank, but he missed me. By the time he ran round I was in the ditch and I must have been bold because I joined another column of prisoners and marched with them until I got to the Rhine.

So then we were all put on this barge and they bunged us down in the coal cellar. We were on the barge 3 days and all we had was one cup of coffee. I passed out and when I came round I found myself in the top of this German hospital.[at Emmerich-near Nijmegen] I was taken in on a stretcher me and this other chappie.
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The doctor there was brilliant – he taught me my first German. I asked him how is it you can speak such good English and he told me that he had been studying at Oxford University. He said he loved England but he was told if he didn’t come back his wife and daughters would be put into a prisoner of war camp. He said ‘I’d like to take a picture of you and the chap you’ve made friends with just sitting outside.’ So he got a very loyal nurse who was ‘anti’, that’s all he said ‘an anti – we must talk in riddles’. It was early in the morning before the rounds started. And she took a photograph of the three of us. And when he came back with the photograph he had it in a special tiny little tube. And he said ‘you can put that under your arm or in your mouth or up your bottom, that’s up to you, but if you get caught with it, don’t let me down’ and I said ‘I won’t’.

As I got better I got the self same food that they had and we’d go out – my mate and I – on the verandah and hear the German girls below with their accordions and they’d look up and sing the old English songs like ‘the Seigfried Line’. It was brilliant to hear them and I’d think, ‘Well, why are we fighting and what’s the war for.’

But then the day came and the Nazi doctor took my pulse and said get out of bed, you’re fit. So I got out of bed and put on my socks with holes in and my clogs because they’d given us clogs half way across Holland. And when I went downstairs there were 2 guards and on went the handcuffs and one [guard] hit me across my bottom with his bayonet. I had the marks for several days afterwards. I was put into an armoured car and off we went, me in the back with these two. After about 2 hours we ended up in a town –Bocholt
And in Bocholt was the first Nazi concentration camp. As I walked through the gates I looked up and saw the typical sign of every Nazi concentration camp ‘Arbeit Macht Frei’-. ‘Work makes life free’. And in I went. There were rows of missen huts and Nazi guards walking around with revolvers. There were Czechs, there were Poles, there were Germans – every nationality you could imagine. And every morning at 6 o’clock you had to be out in the square like that for roll call. Everyone was shuffling to get in the middle to avoid that little piece of rubber hose 18 inches long that they’d use to keep us in line. I was 7 or 8 weeks there and I made friends with this German jew. And he said ‘you’ve got one chance to get out. Stand in front of me in the front line and when the ‘Obus’ comes up he’ll be walking about 2 yards from all the inmates. He’ll have the revolver, he’ll have the death squad, there’ll be the horse with the sleigh and everything follows in behind. That’s what happens and when he says ‘get rid of him’ that’s what happens. When they drop in fear, there’s no hospital – they go to the ‘delouser’ which is the incinerator plant in the corner.’ So I stood there. Up comes the Obus. He got within a yard of me and my friend said to me to take a step forward and say ‘Sir I’m a British prisoner of war. I’m not a political prisoner’. And that’s what I did. He said ‘Step forward, legs apart, hands on hips’. ‘Yes’. He said, you’re a fine looking Englishman. Blond hair, blue eyes. Stand over there’.. Up comes a guard, on went the handcuffs and they said ‘march!’

I was then outside of the camp in the wood in missen huts locked in under armed guard. For a long time we did nothing, it was so boring, we used to sit with a stick, whatever you could find. We were there a month, and then we were taken to a POW camp. In that camp we were stripped of everything. For 2 years we didn’t know anything and we got no news. We had one little cup of coffee made from burnt barley and then in the middle of the afternoon we had potato soup. The German civvies tipped the potatoes into a big copper over a fire and cooked them up into a froth. All I had was what was left of my old tin hat with the middle taken out of it. I found a bit of wood to plug down through the hat and that was my soup bowl right up to the last year of the war’

At one point there were 16 of us in German barracks in Strasbourg. We each had one blanket and we laid on the floor. At that particular time, Hitler came to talk from the steps of Strasbourg Cathedral. We were all barricaded in and re-inforcing was put up at the windows, doors were double locked and a bucket of water was put in. We were told if we got near the windows the SS were down below with their rifles and they’d shoot. Hitler came and I saw him in the raw. And the crowds were shouting – you wouldn’t think there was an anti-Nazi among them, which there probably wasn’t at that time. He spoke with his hand up and the noise of the crowd was terrific. But I lost one of my mates – it could have been me. He got too close and ‘bang’ they got him in the neck. And God’s honour he was in our room 3 days before they took him out. We were so sad, we couldn’t touch him, we couldn’t do anything.

Then at Hemmer [A small place, Les gives the spelling from memory]
we had all our hair cut, underarms, the lot. When we came in and saw the barbers, we thought we were going to have our throats cut. But we didn’t feel any fear – believe me fear goes – you just have to press on. But when you came out with your hair all cut you didn’t know your mates, everyone looked different.

We worked on the line just down from Auschwitz. 6 months we were on that job and we knew what was happening. It’s a load of old rubbish that the people didn’t know – they did know. But they daren’t open up because it was immediate death, bullet in the back of the head. The whole nation was absolutely scared stiff.

My last camp was in Czechoslovakia. And we were so far into Europe they thought escape was impossible. And they had these leaflets where it said if you escape it was death if they caught you. But I had a friend who was in the Black Watch and we said ‘we’re off’. We had 2 guys in the camp working at the railway station and they got us the times of the trains. We got on a coal train. We saved the contents of our red cross parcels – a tin of condensed milk, a tin of bully beef. It was always better to muck in because a tin of corned beef that would last two of you for 3 days. And then you’d go a while and then you’d open up the next person’s. We got on the train and we could see through the sides and we went past station after station and we got right down to the border between Czech and Slovak. A few more miles and we’d have been in Yugoslavia. But then the train stopped and our carriage was unhooked and backed up into a siding. So we thought we’d stop there and have a piece of chocolate each. Then we got out and walked down the street and turned up into the woods but who should be coming down the path but a gang of German Youth. ‘Oh hello’ they said ‘Are you English’ ‘Non’, we said ‘parlez vous francais’. And they ran down to the station and told them. So we were hauled in front of this court. And the judge said ‘You know the penalty’s death’ And I said ‘I’m sorry about that, but I was just obeying the laws of our country and trying to escape’.

Finally, at the very end of the war, Les marched with the retreating German army and Czech and Polish refugees to West Germany.

We had to march 20-30 miles a day to keep ahead because the Russians were coming like a steam roller. We still had guards with us – but the hardened SS guards had to stay behind in Poland to help fight. Then we were given old civvy guards with a yellow armband with a swastika on it and they couldn’t care less some of them. They told us anyone who was left behind would have a bullet in the back of the neck. They had this division that followed up and they killed everything – cattle and people unless they had a good excuse or were sick. Which is why so many Poles and Czechs came into Germany and we came with them. By then even the Germans wanted the English to win the war; the Americans to win the war. No one wanted to be captured by the Russians.

‘But I do feel I was lucky because I had blond hair and blue eyes and the Germans did love blue eyes and blond hair. When I made eyes at a girl all sorts of things happened!’

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