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This is a story that happened in Poland in 1940. It was so cold the only work the Germans could give was loading coal at the rail yards. Someone thought it would be a good idea if we could take some coal to the Polish women. There were one hundred prisoners and each one put lump of coal under his overcoat, when we marched off they dropped it in the snow. The Polish women and children ran out and picked it up.
The sequence to this story happened fourteen thousand miles away, here in New Zealand. My youngest daughter, who was going to teachers college here in Auckland, met a girl at the college and told her the story of the coal. She told it to mother, and unbelievably, her mother was one of the little girls who, over forty years ago, had picked up the coal!

Early in 1938, I was working for a builder as a joiners apprentice. I lived with my grandmother and worked there for nearly two years. I enjoyed working there until my grandmother told me my aunt wanted to see me. She wanted me to work for her on a big house which she owned and I thought it would be good working on my own. I left my job and went to work for her. I had to reconstruct the inside of the house and turn it into flats. She had a cottage built at the back of the house and she wanted me to finish the inside of that too. I worked there for a while but did not receive any wages and one day I got fed up I caught a tram into the city, were I met a recruiting sergeant and, after listening to him, I decided to join the Army, where we were fed, clothed and had a weekly wage, 100% more than I had been used to.

In 1939 at the age of 18 I joined the British Army in Birmingham. In May I reported to the guard’s depot in Caterham, Surrey. We were put into squads and given six months training. After that training, we went to Epping Forest and lived in tents in transit until we were posted to the Tower of London. Whilst we were posted there, our duties consisted of guard duties at Buckingham Palace and the Tower of London and St James's Palace. The First Battalion was in France and ours was being formed in the Tower. During our stay in the Tower of London the training was done in the moat below the road to Tower Bridge. Between training, we did parades and marching in the parade ground rehearsing the Presentation of the Colours to the 2nd Battalion by King George V. Some days we would have recruiting parades through London, which would take most of the day.

When the Germans invaded Norway, the British decided to send a force to Norway - the Welsh Guards - as a part of that force. The day we were due to leave I got German measles and was taken to hospital in London. When I came out of hospital I was sent to Camberley to join what was left of the company. I was then given 48 hours leave, before going to Holland. While on leave, my aunt persuaded me to stay a bit longer and she got a doctor to say I was sick and he gives me a medical certificate to cover me. The doctor made it appear that I was tired and needed a rest. I was immature in those days and believed in what my aunt told me. That morning there was a radio announcement for all troops serving in HM Forces to return to their units. When I presented the certificate to the Sgt. Major I got screamed at and was told that everybody was tired and was placed under open arrest. On that day the company was packing up to move out. The Germans had invaded Holland and a force of Irish and Welsh guards were sent to the Hook of Holland to rescue and bring back the Dutch Royal Family. We were taken across on channel boats and came back in destroyers of the Royal Navy.

The whole of this episode is told by Captain Dai Tilley of the Welsh Guards on the Internet. Eight days later we were in France.

For a little background: I am 83; I have a wife and two daughters and four grand daughters. I joined the Army before the war in the Welsh Guards before going to France in 1940. I was in a Force of Welsh and Irish Guards sent to the Hook of Holland to give safe passage to the Dutch Royal family and government, and slow the German advance in the area. The whole thing was kept a secret - it came to fore with an article on the Internet by Captain Dai Tilley who tells the whole story.

I was taken prisoner of war in France at the time of Dunkirk. We were marched across France to Luxemburg where we were loaded on rail cattle trucks - seventy men to a truck. The summer of 1940 was very hot and dysentery was very bad. We spent four days in those trucks until we got to Poland.

There is a propaganda photograph that was taken in 1943 at a place called Finkenstein. We were in a working camp for part of XXB. The Swedish delegate from the Swedish YMCA was visiting the camp and they asked the Germans if we could have a photo taken. The Germans agreed and we had to change all our clothes to look presentable. I am the 4th from the left in the front row.

24th May 1940 - The weather was very hot, the Germans had marched us behind their front line. On capture they searched us and warned that we would be searched again and if they found anything like weapons or knives they would put us up against the wall and shoot us. I just undid the buckle of my equipment and dropped it to the ground including my emergency rations, which I later regretted.

We found ourselves in a big field with thousands other PoWs of all races. The night before our company had been ambushed in suburbs of Bologna - some were killed and some badly wounded. They were carried to a French dressing station to be treated and looked after. The Germans wouldn’t give us water, we became desperate for drink. I spotted water coming out of a three storey building I drank some and straight away I realized it was drain water the result of which I became very ill with dysentery. I was taken to the French Red Cross who told me to take charcoal. Some potatoes were burnt black which helped the horrible pain.
The Germans ordered us on the road where we began to march for the next two weeks. The French women put buckets of water on the road side, the Germans came along on their motor bikes and knocked it over, they gave us no food and nothing to drink. We went on like this until we got to Luxemburg existing on only what we could find in the fields.

We were put into cattle wagons - seventy men to a wagon, with only a small window for air. The journey was hell. After two days they let us out for a wash down where the train engines filled up with water. After four days we found ourselves in Poland.

We were taken to Stalag XXIB in a town called Schubin. We slept in the open and were lucky the weather was good and the nights warm. Here we discovered lice had moved into our clothing. The Germans registered us as prisoners of war and we were given identity tags. Now through the Swiss Red Cross our families would know we were alive.
During this time food was still non existent, the only thing we had to eat was potatoes boiled in their dirty jackets, these were given out between 9am — 10am each morning. One morning we got our daily ration of potatoes and a man put his down for a second and it was gone - luckily the thief was spotted and caught. In the camp the toilets were a series of pits - the thief was taken and thrown into the pit half full of foul smelling human waste. A big crowd stood watching the whole thing - everyone learned a lesson that day - there never was any more stealing after that.
After the Germans registered us as PoWs they put us into working parties. They asked for carpenters, as I had served as joiner before the war I put my hand up. There was one hundred men in the party and were sent to a place called Znin in Poland when we got there they put us to work on a canal digging the clay banks and moving it in skips. After a few days we protested to the Germans which was a big mistake. We were charged with inciting mutiny and got three months in the lock up that was an area fenced off with barbwire and a tent to sleep in. It was a very confined space.
It was the autumn of 1940 was very cold at night sleeping in that tent. Here I witnessed the first escape attempt, a few men got together and decided to tunnel there way out, every thing went well, the tunnel had gone under the barbwire but they miscalculated and dug to the surface too soon one of the guards stamping his feet to keep warm the ground gave way thus exposing the tunnel.

After three months they sent us back to the main stalag where they put us to work digging up graves in a Jewish cemetery taking the gold from the corpses, we refused and quoted the Geneva convention to them but they wouldn’t listen, it was only after some of us took a beating that the Germans took us back to the main camp. We were then locked up in a building. We slept on wooded bunks with straw, the place was infested with rats, and they would run along the overhead beams sometimes fall on you while you slept.

One of the men was a musician he carried a penny whistle in his pocket it was an easy way for him to play his music, and every night he would entertain us. He played all the modern music of those years. He took no notice of the rats running across the floor. We made darts out of nails, and see how many rats we could get. We made it into a competition.

I found myself on another working party at place called Leslau in Poland it was from this camp we gave coal to the Polish women, the building was three stories it only had one toilet on the ground, floor there were one hundred prisoners, each floor had an old empty oil drum for a night time toilet the men took it in turns to empty them if they got over full it would go through to the floor below, there would be screaming swearing from below for the person responsible to empty it.

On this particular day, instead of carrying it down stairs, they opened the window on the top floor and tipped it out. Unfortunately a unit of German troops was passing at that very moment and were doused in urine. Everyone braced themselves for what was to come. With fixed bayonets they charged into the building and up to the top floor knocking men over as they went. The German officer in charge of the troops was in a violent rage he said if he found the persons responsible he take them outside and shoot them. With that he took his troops out and we just could not believe how lucky we had been. As he was about to go down the stairs he turned his head, and still in a rage he said "I will be bringing my troops past here for the next two weeks and if only a match stick comes out of those windows I will shoot the lot of you."

It was from this camp that eighteen men escaped. Sixteen got caught and two managed to get to Greece and back to England. I now recall how that escape was planned! The PoWs put on a concert. They had a couple of professional musicians and lucky for us they remained in the camp until we were moved, and it happened to be real a good concert. The men decided to use the concert to cover the escape. They invited the guards and they all came - except one man who was guarding the perimeter of the camp. The men worked out how much time it took the guard to walk round the outside of the camp, they cut a hole in the wire and eighteen men were able to get out while the guards were watching the concert! The Germans realised they been had, and so when the escaped prisoners were brought back to camp they had been badly beaten and the rough the treatment went on for sometime.

The German in charge of the camp was a huge man built like a bull and the men nick-named him "The Bull". He had been a PoW in the First World War with the British and someone had taken his watch. That person walked past the camp with a girl on his arm and said, "..look Fritz what I got for your watch..". He never forgot that, and now he was in charge of British prisoners he took out his revenge on us every morning and night. He would line us up into three’s to count, the temperature was below zero, and we stood in deep snow - he would keep us there as long as he felt like it and if one of us did something to annoy him he would take a rifle from one of the guards and would charge into the PoW’s swinging the rifle in front of him knocking down the unlucky ones.

Our daily trips to the rail yards were working loading coal. We would pass a barbed wire compound filled with Jews. When we walked past them they wore the yellow star of David and they would stand close to the wire and stare at us with a helpless look in their eyes. Whatever we had in our pockets we would throw over the wire to them - it was not very much. The Germans stopped us from doing it again. It was a pitiful sight to see those poor people and children behind that wire. Every one breathed a sigh of relief when we were moved back to the stalag XX1B, but this was short lived.

I found myself once again in working party of two hundred men loaded on train heading for a new destination which turned out to be Marienburg, East Prussia, Stalag XXB. Our final destination was a place called Finkenstein. It was a farming village, obviously most of the men had gone into the German army and they needed us to do the work. It was a state farm - thousands of acres of farm forest and lakes and run by a Nazi who they called "The Inspector". The locals were scared of him. He wore very fine clothes and was always in riding britches and boots. We called him "Yaya" because every sentence he spoke always ended in 'ya'. He rode a beautiful grey horse and this was the way he kept his eye on the work and workers. Our camp was a very old building it had two wings separated by a smaller area which housed the guards. Each wing had a hundred men in it and this was to be our abode for the next four years.

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