大象传媒

Blacksmiths

I moved on to a small village in the mountain range but it was situated 32km from Danzig and renamed by Germans as 鈥淥ver Hell鈥�. Here I was working in the village blacksmiths and as well as learning how to make horses shoes and fit them, I learnt tyre welding, making iron tyres for cart wheels. How to repair cracks and holes in cast iron pots with nuts and bolts, pieces of tin, flour water and the iron dust swept from under the smith鈥檚 anvil. It was during my time spent at the blacksmiths that I fell out of the loft onto the anvil, which was directly below the trap door to the loft, which was the iron store. In the process of falling on to the anvil, I fractured two ribs on my right hand side and to get any attention, the blacksmith took me to the next village to a doctor who was a vet. A nightmare journey of about 5 miles by horse drawn sledge over snow covered roads and a field. I was strapped up for two days, no work. That incident was the positive side to the blacksmiths.

There was also a negative such as the time he threw a sledge hammer at me with the intention of hurting me, I promptly returned the compliment but purposely to miss him. This situation arose because the rear of the blacksmiths forge was a wall which backed on to the village cemetery and one time he upset me and I told him to look out the window and he would see the only good German, a dead one. No wonder he threw the hammer!

Despite the setback, when his son, who was in the German Navy, came on leave, I had to cut down trees allocated to the family for fuel. Before saying any more I must tell you that this was in one of the loveliest spots I can ever remember seeing. It was a fertile valley in the mountains and nearby was a massive lake, the only end of which I could see was the one I was standing at. The forest came down to the edge of the lake, wild boar roamed the forest, the son suggested swimming in the lake and I said that if anybody saw us two enemies swimming together he would be in serious trouble. His answer was to put my clothes, such as they were, under his and if anyone did see two nude bathers, they would see on the bank German Marines clothes and so I enjoyed my swim. He did not think that his sister, a horrible Nazi, would take notice of his and my wet hair when we returned to the smiths. She threatened to report him for fratenising. It was only by him telling a blatant lie that I dived in to save him in what was called a 鈥榯urf coal鈥� and pulling him up to the surface after he had got stuck in the mud. Call this man an enemy?

Compare his action to the French reactions to us when we were doing our 900 mile walk home, the French PoWs, some of whom had been getting British Red Cross parcels, American Red Cross parcels, and others whilst we were getting zero. They would not even give us a bit of their coffee when we were pushed into their working camps. We had to ensure that we helped ourselves to some of their goods!

Porridge

One time Jockie was off to the forest to load up a cart with two horses with logs. On the way back from the forest, one of the horses slipped and went down. Jockie loosened the head collar to help but the horse rolled right over and ended up stuck in a six foot ditch. The guard took Jockie to a nearby house and the camp was called. I was brought to the phone to see if I could help by taking the tractor there. I went with another guard and we got the half frozen horse out of the ditch. It was decided that the cart should be hitched to the tractor and Jockie walk the two horses back to camp. We both cleaned the horses and decided to take advantage of the situation so we loaded our pockets up with as many of the horses oats as we could. We had no method to get rid of all the dust on them. We took the oats back to the billet and using a can with holes in, made a porridge which all our pals enjoyed. It was rather black and you could taste the dust but it was still a tremendous meal for us all. Many of the men from our billet used to then visit the stables 鈥� I wonder why鈥�

Military Prison

In [name not clear] which was a German military prison, and they said if you went in there, you never came out. Well, I鈥檓 here so that proved that wrong! It鈥檚 pretty tough but nevertheless that was 2 months confined in there because I struck a German civilian. I鈥檒l tell you how that happened.

We were working on this big farm and there was a barn which they were using as a sheep pen and the sheep were driven in there every night and each day there was fresh straw laid on the floor. The sheep were driven in through one door of the barn and the straw emptied onto the floor for the sheep to lie in, sleep in, browse in and occasionally it came that this place had to be, what we called 鈥渄unged out鈥�, cleaned out, because you had the sheep in and out of there and just doing their business and lying there and just layer after layer of straw goes down but when you come to try and lift that straw, it鈥檚 pretty hard work and we had no knives like you see on haystacks and that, where you cut it with a knife which makes it easier to lift out but we just had to pull our guts out lifting this straw up and putting it on the wagon.

So this day, I was working in there and this same civilian (whose chicken we pinched) who was one of the bosses there and also a full health (cannot understand the word here), anyway he had a revolver and an armband and his (another word here I cannot make out) and he also had a walking stick, and we were dunging this place out and loading it into the cart and he kept on and on 鈥済ehen Sie schneller鈥�, which means 鈥榟urry up, go faster鈥� and he kept on and on so much that eventually it gets under your skin and you鈥檙e short of food and you haven鈥檛 got the energy to work any faster or any harder even if you wanted to, and he kept on and on and on, well, this was in the Polish section of Germany, and the worst thing you could do was call a German a Pole, which the way you called them it was a 鈥淧olack鈥�.

Well any civilian in our country who knows our bad swearwords and not so bad swearwords will know that we have a word in our language which you sometimes say to somebody which sounds very much like Polack. Well, he kept on and on and I said that word to him and he thought I鈥檇 called him a Polack so he hit me across the shoulders with his walking stick. Once with the walking stick wasn鈥檛 too bad but he hit me again with the walking stick and that was a little bit beyond intolerable and he was about to hit me the third time and I just snapped, took the walking stick away from him, and by this time he was trying to pull the revolver, and I knocked that out of his hand with the walking stick and stood between him and the revolver and give him a whack with the walking stick.

Well, the commotion it caused, the (cannot make out this word) or whatever he was comes in and I鈥檓 in trouble of course. Went back to the main camp and answered the charge, so I got two months solid which I accomplished. And the only reason you get through things like that is that you are thinking of what you have to come home to.

鈥淒ear John鈥�

One of the worst things that can happen to a person in that situation is to get a 鈥淒ear John鈥� letter, and you don鈥檛 know what 鈥淒ear John鈥� letters are, that is where you are tied up, chained up and you can鈥檛 do anything about it and you get a letter to say that your wife is carrying on with someone else or they have gone away with a Frenchman, American or Canadian or they are carrying on with them and you don鈥檛 know quite what you can do. Well someone with a strong enough character to overcome it and say 鈥榳ell, we鈥檒l sort that out when we get home鈥� which is what I think is the best thing to do but nevertheless some of them couldn鈥檛 stand it and they committed suicide. We had men who drowned themselves in water ponds, men who slashed their wrists and lay in a corner somewhere and let themselves bleed to death.

There were quite a few where that happened and it is a sad affair and I think that people who sent those 鈥淒ear John鈥� letters should be ashamed of themselves and at least could have waited until the person came home to let them ask the questions to see if they are telling the truth or something. Some did, some were strong enough to overcome it. That is a sad thing.

Window Bars

When we were working on the sawmill, actually that was the second place where I had gone in and was working with these blacksmiths in the sawmill and the engineer and we were keeping the steam engines going but when we arrived there, I had the job to help this blacksmith put the bars up over the window where we were being confined, so you can imagine that I thought, well, we might want to get out of here so we鈥檇 better make these bars so we can collapse them or take them to pieces, which is what we duly did. Any rate, of course, the big nuts that were put onto these bars that went down to the solid part of these windows were not cleaned over, not a spot of weld put on the top or anything like that. They were not locked, just tightened up and I had access to the spanners in the workshop there.

So, it was a little while and Fred and I were going to go out scavenging. So, the idea was that we were on the second floor there so we had to get out of this window and drop into the garden that was at the back there. Well, the bars at the window didn鈥檛 have any wire, barbed wire, beyond the back there, they thought the bars and the brick wall was safe enough. Any rate, we were going out bartering actually, at that time we had some Red Cross parcels and cigarettes, and neither of us smoked and at that time, cigarettes which we preferred to barter for some white bread. Well, we fixed up these Poles to meet them down outside the guesthouse (German) in this tiny village which the local pub (we called it the guesthouse). So, we are going out. So, I lift the bar, or I attempt to lift the bar up and, of course, in that mill we were generating our own electricity and the cables for the electric ran across the top of this window. Being so clever, I made it so we could lift the bars up but never gave it a thought about the non-insulated wire, power line, going across the top of this window. So we take the nuts off, lift the bars up and there is such a flash and every light in the mill went out because we blew all the fuses and the houses too. We had to get the bar back in as quickly as we could and that put us off for that night. Any rate, the fuses were repaired and they never knew what blew the fuses so we thought, well, we鈥檒l have another go the next night.

The same arrangements were made with these Polish people, so that night, instead of lifting the bars up they went downwards. To get back in, I must tell you this as you鈥檒l be wondering, we would have to get the attention of the lads that were still in the billet and they got a couple of knotted blankets and we climbed back up into the window. Any rate, this second night everything went well until I got out of the window. I got out of the window and dropped down and I landed on somebody鈥檚 back. Oh dear I thought. I got myself together and thought what do I do, run? This bloke who鈥檚 back I dropped on was in the Luffwafe, the German airforce, and he put his fingers up to his lips and went 鈥渟hhhhh鈥�. He looked at me and said 鈥榃hat are you doing?鈥�. I said 鈥榃hat are you doing?鈥� so it turns out he shouldn鈥檛 have been there either because he was creeping along under this wall to go along to the house of some women who was further down there and her husband was on the Russian front and he was making his way down there so he was just as much out of bounds as I was going out the window. Anyway, I duly dropped down and off we went. It didn鈥檛 stop either of us doing our business and I came back and that was that, nothing more said about it. He couldn鈥檛 say anything could he as he shouldn鈥檛 have been there. Just one of the laughing times now.

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