大象传媒

In 1945, I was at the RAC Depot in Catterick Camp. I had been "X" - listed after breaking my ankle in parachute training, and put in medical category B7. Thus I was unfit to be returned to my ofrmer Airborne Recce Squadron and was awaiting disposal to another posting.

Those like myself who were not allocated to training or Depot duties were often detailed for various tasks especially such things as potato-picking for farmers in the area. The weather was bleak and wet, so when a notice came round that someone was wanted for the Orderly Room to operate the duplicator, I applied, as I thought that an OR would be dry and warm and more interesting than what I was being called on to do.

I got the job, and found that I had to use a Gestetner rotary duplicator to print off stencils of PartI, PartII and Part III orders and various other circulars that were needed. In a large depot with a constant turnover PartII orders would run to as many as 12 to 24 foolscap pages published usually 5 days a week, with distribution list requiring up to about 80 Copies.

One day I was asked to run off an internal circular from the Commandant, which I found very moving, and as he had asked for wide publication, I decided to keep a few copies for myself.

One of these has now resurfaced in sorting out old family papers.

The report gave first hand account of a Nazi Concentration Camp, believed to be Bergen-Belsen, by Colonel G Phipps-Hornby, who was a Civil Affairs Staff Officer with a Corps Headquarters, B.L.A

The report read..... I have now had 3 days of initmate and eye witness experience of the horrors of a Nazi concentration camp. You may have read about it in the papers as we had all the reporters there but in case you may think their accounts are exaggerated those are facts and you can show this letter to as many people as you like so that every one may know what sort of people the Germans are.

There were tow camps and I will describe the main one. It was a large enclsure surrounded by barbed wire and the usual crows nests around the outside for observation and machine guns. This was sub-divided into 4 compounds, 2 for men and 2 for women, though there were rather more women than men. These had blocks of huts. Into these were crowded 40,000 wretched human beings dying of deliberate starvation and disease, typhus and typhoid being rampant. The poor wretches were do weak and listless they were lying about in all directions and it was impossible to say which were living ansd which were corpses of which there were 2,000 lying in the camp. Some of those were in heaps, just piles of naked bodies, some were just lying among the people who were about as thick as the crowd on the hill at Epsom on Derby day, and a large number were just dead in the huts.
There is no form of sanitation so these unfortunate people, some of whom were quite high class (I talked to a French Colonel who spoke English, but was quite unrecognisable as anything but an animal), had to do what they wanted to do all over the ground.
What I think may bring home the horror of the situation to you more than anything is that many of the corpses had had the heart and liver taken out and eaten by their starving comrades. I did not see this myself, but I was told it by an unfotunate Englishman whom we found in the camp and I took to hospital and it is vouched for by the doctors wh had seen it.
We arrived in the camp about midday and as they had had no food for 4 days and before that only a small bowl night and morning, of the most nausiating sort of soup made of turnips or potatoes. The immediate problem was to give these poor people a meal and water of which there was none.
The Brigadier A/G was there and mobilised all the resources of the Corps Services at once and by 5 o'clock we had got up 13 water carts, two days rations and coal. We then had the greatest difficulty in getting the people back into their compounds from the viddle aveneue as until we had done that we didn't dare bring in the food and water as they would have been rushed as they were like wild animals when they saw the prospect of water and food.
However, we eventually organised a meal but then the problem arose of the distribution as unless it is carefully done the strong get all the food and the weak none and I am afraid there were numbers in the huts too weak to get out to get anything at all. I struggled with 15,000 women in one camp by myself with one interpreter and can only hope most of these got something. I got back at 1.30.
Anyway, now we have organised two good meals a day, it is impossible to do more as the cooking equipment was only designed for the small rations of soup. We have got electric power on which brings with it light and water and the diference in the people is remarkable.
We arrested the S.S Guards and they are now collecting the corpses and will then I hope be shot. The only way to bury them is by bulldozers and there are already open pits around the camps with literally thousands of bodies in them, 17,000 died in the month of March.
We have taken over some large barracks which the Doctors are turning into hospitals and we must get these wretched people out as soon as we possibly can and then the whole camp must be burnt and burnt again.
It is inconceivable to me that any human beings could treat their fellow creatures in such a way, but the answer is that the S.S are not human beings.......

This was one of many reports sent to Catterick, but this was one of the ones that really stuck in my mind.

Stephen A Bates,
Merthyr Tydfil
22 March 2005

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