大象传媒

I walked up an embankment and found myself on the single-track railway line. Unfortunately the track was disused and was now a cart track. A man and a woman came from my right, to my left was the man who owned the chickens, on the other side of the track was another canal.
There was no direction to go other than the way I had come. I broke into a run and was pursued by the man on my left. He was able to catch me as my flying boots impeded me.
I was escorted by these three Germans down a road and after a while an armed policeman arrived to join the escort. We passed what appeared to be a pub where about six or so people gathered. I was given a light ale and some black bread and margarine. I enjoyed the ale but found the bread and margarine rather unpleasant.
The policeman took me to his house, which also served as an office and was about a mile along the road. His office contained a large desk and there was a picture of Adolph Hitler on the wall behind the chair.
I was briefly searched, my belongings, including my escape kit were then returned to me. He asked me details about aircraft etc, but I only gave him my name rank and number. This was all a bit futile, as he did not speak English, or me German.
He picked up the telephone, dialled a number and on receiving a reply, clicked his heels and said 鈥淗eill Hitler鈥�. After a brief conversation where I heard my name rank and number mentioned he then loudly clicked his heels again and with another 鈥淗eill Hitler鈥� hung up. I think he was trying to impress me.
We left his house and walked along the road for at least another mile, by now it was getting dark. I remembered that I had about 拢15 in foreign currency in my escape kit, quite a large sum in those days so as we walked along, I tore up the notes into small pieces behind my back. This gave me the satisfaction of them not being confiscated at our next stop.
We arrived at the village, which I believe was Diepholz, and I was taken to a place where the French farm labourers were housed, I was handed over to a soldier and, after having my boots taken away I was locked in a store room. The funny part about this was, the store walls were stacked with labourers` boots! I settled down on the palliasse with a blanket that had been provided. It was now after midnight.
The Frenchmen were in a room next to `my` store and they knocked on the partition wall to attract my attention. We tried to converse but without much success, I think they did understand that I was a British airman.
The next morning I was escorted by two guards to Diepholz Airfield, this was a walk of about 1.1/2 miles, and there I was handed over to the Luftwaffe, and immediately taken to their Commanding Officer.
While I was being interviewed, David Balchin, our rear gunner, was brought in. We pretended not to know each other.
The officer had six identity cards on his desk, including mine. He spoke in perfect English and told us it was no good pretending that we did not know each other as the identity cards had numbers that were in sequence.
David and I were taken down some stairs and joined four other members of our crew. Two of the crew were missing, John Anderson, our wireless operator, and our special German speaking wireless operator, the eighth member of our crew, whose job it was to pick up radio messages to German night fighter squadrons and jam them with one of three transmitters. He was a German Jew who had only received his British Nationalisation the previous day and was on his first operation. We learned later from an interrogation officer via John Lovatt that both wireless operators had been killed.
There were two of us to a cell. I was put in with John Lovatt. The cell was bare except for a slightly raised platform with a wooden block for a pillow, and two blankets. Fortunately I did not have to try sleeping in the cell as we were marched back to Diepholz in the afternoon. Here we and our escorts caught a train to Hanover; it was dark when we arrived. The air-raid sirens were sounding (a repeat raid on Brunswick) and we had to use the sub-way to another platform to catch the train to Frankfurt-on-Main. The sub-way was being used as an air-raid shelter and was packed with people bedding down for the night. On seeing us they became very hostile, shouting and making threatening gestures to us. We were very grateful that our Luftwaffe guards were actually protecting us from them.
The platform for the Frankfurt train was packed with travellers, so I felt it safer to keep as far away away from the platform as possible, just in case I was pushed in front of an on-coming train.
We arrived at Frankfurt-on-Main on 15 August (a Tuesday afternoon) and here we boarded a tram and sat down as we were the only passengers. Later one German civilian boarded the tram and we were made to stand for the rest of the journey.
On arrival at Dulagluft an air raid was in progress on the other side of the city. We were standing in the forecourt of the camp and bits of shrapnel were falling all around us. Office staff were leaning out of windows cheering as they could see American Fortresses falling out of the sky.
Clem Pearce showed his annoyance at these women and started shouting and shaking his fist at them. For this he was frog-marched off to a cell where he was manacled to a bed. Eventually we were all put in solitary confinement.
During the 48 hours that I was in Frankfurt I was interrogated twice. On the first day by the Chief Interrogator, and on the second day by one of his senior officers. The first officer was very gentle and persuasive but gained no success. The second officer on the following day was at first pleasant, offering cigarettes and telling me of his education at Oxford. He asked me how we could see in the dark, and told it was because we ate carrots! As you would! After being unsuccessful with questions, his attitude changed and he asked me about aircraft. He said he thought that I was a spy and that the penalty was death, unless I could prove that I was indeed a flight engineer by telling him details about my aircraft.
In the end after still being unsuccessful in getting any information other than my name, rank and number, he shouted that he did not no why I had been sent to him, It was just wasting his time. He said that he already knew about me and that I was from 101 Squadron, Ludford Magna and that we had taken off at 2100 hours (a bold guess) and taxied out of `C` dispersal (which was correct). He then told me my C.O.s name (which was wrong). This was because we had had a new C.O. some weeks before. He went on to say that our aircraft was a Lancaster SR-V and had a rude women painted on its side (Venus). He then produced a large envelope from which he took numerous photographs of the kind we kept in our escape kits. He said that these men were from 101 Squadron and that they were all dead. I was not surprised by what he knew or thought he knew, as most of the information was either old or inaccurate.
Later that day I joined other airmen who had completed their interrogation, and the other members of my crew.
We were later transported to Oberusal where we were given Red Cross parcels containing some items of clothing, a toothbrush, razor, brush, comb, and a pipe and packet of tobacco.
We were allowed to write one postcard home. This card arrived at my home in Durham City eight weeks later, and was the first indication to my parents that I was alive.
The next day we received a Red Cross food parcel each. John Lovatt, David Balchin, Clem Pearce and I were now to start on our four-day journey to Stalagluft 7 at Bankow in Silesia. Gene Atyoe and Blake Patterson being officers were destined for Stalagluft 11 (Sagan).
The railway carriage had a corridor and each compartment held eight passengers. There was not enough room for all of us to be seated so we would take turns standing in the corridors. Sitting down in cramped conditions on wooden slatted seats for a journey of four days was very uncomfortable. If that wasn鈥檛 bad enough, not travelling at night meant that our carriage was connected to a shunting engine and used as a buffer, shunting trucks around a marshalling yard all night. Consequently we were deprived of sleep for this period.
During the journey I met an Australian who had been tortured by the Gestapo. He did not believe that we were his comrades and thought we were just masquerading in R.A.F. uniforms to get more information from him. Several of us tried to convince him that we he was with friends. A bible was produced and read out aloud. I continued to talk to this poor fellow for longer than the others, and in the end I thought I had gained his confidence. He told me he had been hiding with a doctor and his family for several weeks, the doctor had got in touch with the underground movement, and he was passed into their escape channel.
Unfortunately a link in the chain had been broken and instead of escaping he found himself in the hands of the Gestapo.
The Gestapo tortured him by pumping water up his backside. He finally broke down and told them where he had been. They took him back to the doctor, s house and shot the doctor and his family right in front of him. This action had broken the Australian airman completely, and he seemed to be out of his mind.
On arrival at Stalagluft Seven we were searched, asked for our personal details, photographed, our fingerprints taken and then we were allowed to take a shower before being marched into camp where fellow prisoners welcomed us.
I had thought about asking to have him with me, but overheard one or two saying that they hoped that the guy was not put in their hut as he might stab someone in the night. Therefore I did not volunteer.
The following night the Australian ran up to the barbed wire fence shouting. He was not shot but was taken away the following day.
We were accommodated in what were probably chicken pens. These huts were about twelve feet wide and sixteen feet long and less than six feet high at the apex sloping down to about four feet at the eaves. Me being only 5鈥�5鈥� tall I was the only one of six in the hut who could stand erect in the centre below the ridge. There was a hole about 2鈥� square that served as a window. The floor was bare of any furniture. We were provided with a laminated brown paper sack that we filled with wood shavings to make a pallaisse. After sleeping for one night the wood shavings were compressed into your body form. You then had to sleep in these hollows each night to be reasonably comfortable.
The supply of Red Cross parcels was spasmodic; we probably averaged one parcel every three weeks although we were supposed to receive a parcel weekly. The Germans told us they could not get parcels through because the R.A.F. kept bombing their railways.
We never received money from the Germans and cigarettes were the currency of the camp. Airman of different trades would for instance cut your hair for two cigarettes, or perhaps sketch your portrait. I was a tin basher and would make plates, dishes. Etc for a few cigarettes.
Wood for cooking was not easy to come by and a 鈥榖lower鈥� (a hand operated fan) connected to tubing to the seat of the fire was the most economic way to use the wood we did get for cooking. I made my 鈥榖lower鈥� by using empty dried milk tins and bits of wire. My tools were a hairbrush and a broken knife. The broken off knife also served as a tin opener.
Socially we would play volleyball and other ball games. Football was frowned upon, as there were no facilities to treat any bad injuries.
There was a drama group, a choir for Sunday services. We had an English padre, Rev. J.B.Collins, who had been a Cambridge Blue in the 1930鈥檚. He was a very big man and he told us that the boat in which he rowed had had a bulge to take his form. Card games and chess were popular amongst the prisoners also as a means of passing time.
In the evenings we would stroll around the boundary, just inside the trip wire. If you stepped over this wire you would be shot. Even when playing ball games you would have to hold up a white cloth and make sure you had been seen with it, and then you were given permission to retrieve any ball that had crossed the wire.
When the nights drew in the guards in the watchtowers would pick us out in their searchlights in our small groups and follow us around the perimeter, another searchlight picking us up where the other one left off. This kept us under constant surveillance.
Sometimes we would play practical jokes on the 鈥榞oons鈥�. For example there was a latrine hut close to the boundary. We would walk into it with one leg held stiff as if we were carrying strips of wood. The watchtower guards observed this for a few days and thought we must be tunnelling. The 鈥榝errets鈥� (search party) eventually arrived with a ladder and sticks to poke around in the mire, to put it mildly. A good laugh was had by all, except for the guards of course.
On another occasion the hut that served as a library, with books provided by the Red Cross, was found to have a tunnel. When investigating the 鈥檉errets鈥� found that the tunnel came back up in the same hut. However the Germans did not seem to share the P.O.W.鈥檚 sense of humour. They closed the library as a punishment. We claimed that this mass punishment was not democratic and that they claimed to be a democratic nation. This hurt their pride and the library was reopened two or three days later.
In October 1944 a new camp had been built with the standard type of P.O.W. huts designed for R.A.F. prisoners of war. These huts were on stilts and were designed to deter tunnelling. They had a central passageway with rooms on each side. These were designed for twelve people. Each room had six double bunk beds and a table in the centre with two benches. There was a coke stove standing on a concrete plinth. It was only a short time before two more bunks was added making it a room for sixteen people. The accommodation, already overcrowded, was now becoming rather cramped, to say the least.

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