大象传媒

With the number of prisoners now down to less than forty, which included a few remaining bedridden cases, our lives took on an even more peaceful character. We went to work in the morning and enjoyed our rest at night. We had good food and enough of it to eat, soft enough beds and warm enough blankets, even plenty of books to read. German books, of course. It is true that we all wanted to go home and couldn't, but neither could the Russians who kept us there. My work consisted of little more than allocating men to the various tasks in the morning and for the rest of the day I just had to 'stick-around' somewhere close where I could be contacted if needed.
One day, about three days after the departure of our fellow PoW's to Russia, around noon, I was sitting on a piece of grassy high ground outside our accommodation block, overlooking the road, the front fence and the nearest gate, when from the direction of the city, on my left, came at a fair clip a horse-drawn carriage carrying some five or six polish officers, all obviously drunk, waving bottles in the air, shouting and singing. As the horses approached the sentry at the gate they yelled: 'The war is over! Now you can all go home to Russia!' It was Tuesday, May 8th 1945. The Russian soldier calmly unslung his submachine gun and fired a burst at the Poles. The singing and shouting stopped and a few seconds later the wagon with the bleeding revellers turned into the second gate into the hospital grounds in search of first aid. And that was the first day of Peace in Schwiebus.
The remainder of our stay in that city, or rather on the outskirts of it, were rather mundane. We kept on performing our daily chores, and after work amused ourselves with board games and books. It was a major stroke of luck, that the period of our stay in Schwiebus coincided with the warmest part of the ('European') year. Winter in that place, without adequate heating, would have been a lot harder to take. At one stage we were ordered to build an open-air stage and seating for about 150. We have built it, including dressing rooms and when the entertainment troop arrived, the Commanding officer, near-7-foot tall Georgian colonel, a medical man, invited all of us PoW's to sit on the rear benches and enjoy the show. When a group of Georgian dancers took the stage, he walked onto the boards and joined them in a dance. And there we were, clapping in the audience as our CO, our 'jailer', entertained us.
There were amongst us a couple of quite gifted artists, who wanted to decorate the area which was serving as out dining room. I myself had dabbled a bit, mostly with watercolours; while still at school, so I managed to obtain from our Russian 'masters' some paints and brushes, varnish and oil, - not necessarily the best quality, bur quite serviceable - and each of us painted a large mural on one of the three walls. The fourth was just about all taken up by the high double entrance door to what was originally one of the rubber factorys' work halls. One of us produced an exotic seascape. The other an alpine scene, snow-covered mountain peaks with a few cows grazing in the foreground and I have chosen an italian garden, complete with a domed white marble music pavilion. I had painted that picture as a watercolour a few years earlier at school.
As the months passed, our uniforms began to look rather shabby, so we got stuck into another project. During our bitter house-to-house fighting in Forst I had 'rescued' a thin but very helpful zippered windcheater, which I wore since then under my uniform tunic for extra warmth. Now, after six months, it too was reaching the end of its' usefulness. It was decided that we shall use it as a pattern for British-style battledress-like blouse. There was practically limitless supply of white coarse linen-type material in the storehouse of the factory. It was used in the manufacture of the sausage-shaped main body of the rubber dinghies this factory was producing during the war. Old Major Lugovskyj fixed us up with a quantity of needles, the necessary thread we obtained by unravelling some of the linen, the only things we couldn't get were zippers. But there was no shortage of buttons everywhere. One of our fellow-PoW's was a tailor in civilian life, He took my windcheater apart and using it as a pattern, cut the linen to measure for all the fifteen or so men who wanted to replace their uniform jackets with their own 'creation'. The tailor himself was sewing together my new blouse as a step-by-step demonstration to the keen students of his 'class of '45'. And he managed to re-cycle my one and only zipper. Our new garments still left us looking somewhat 'uniformed', but we did look a little less German, which was at least psychologically good all 'round.
In August I had, what has turned out to be my last bout with malaria and I was admitted to the Russian ward in the hospital. I can not speak too highly of the care I have received. Perhaps to some people it may seem odd , but I speak the truth and if my story tends to balance out - to some degree - stories told by other captives of the Russians, then so be it.
One day Major Lugovskyj called me to his office and told me that the long awaited orders finally came for the hospital to be repatriated back to Russia. He thanked me for the trouble-free time we have spent together in that place and announced that we shall all be released to go to our homes, because - as he put it - if the hospital needs the help of PoW's in its' new location, there are plenty of our fellows in Russia already. But then he also said something else: 'There are amongst you two or three SS-men, what do you think, shall we send them home too?.' The old fox knew very well that I was one of them, but it was never in all that time discussed. So I said to him: 'Why not, they have families too.' That's when he owned-up and said: 'I know that you were in the Waffen-SS, and I don't want to make anything of it, but just to satisfy my personal curiosity, would you mind showing me the tattoo that you all are supposed to have somewhere on your arm?' I showed him my blood-group tattoo and that was the end of the meeting. We called our men together, the Major announced the good news and asked us to be patient for just a few more days. We had to help dismantle the hospital, move the remaining wounded, load everything on the train, and only then did we receive our discharge certificates. I still have mine. It is dated - 13th October 1945. The following day on a nice sunny Sunday afternoon we have arrived in Frankfurt (Oder). At the halfway point across the bridge over the river Oder our two Russian sentries said Good-bye, handed us our eating utensils (they included knives, you see!) and we were free men again.

The next (probably last), Part 6 of my story will be posted in the Post-War section of this forum (site?)

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