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This story was submitted to the People’s War Site by Three Counties Action, on behalf of Guardsman Harrison, and has been added to the site with permission. The author fully understands the site’s terms and conditions.

Harold ‘Bert’ Harrison was born in a village near Tetbury, Gloucestershire in 1920. In August 1939 he volunteered for the Guards but had no particular Regiment in mind.

At Caterham the first group to be squadded were Welsh Guardsmen so the man from Gloucestershire became Recruit Harrison, 2734945, 8 Company Welsh Guards.

“Believe me it was tough,” he recalls, “many times I felt like running away, but I stuck it out and afterwards was not sorry.”

He joined the Guards because he reckoned them to be the best, and after the Depot he went to Colchester where he remembers firing on ranges thick with snow.

Bert caught influenza and could not return from leave on time. His medical note did not reach the regiment, but with Memoranda looming the vital piece of paper turned up. “A close call,” he says.

In February 1940 after a train journey to Southampton and a short sea crossing on the ‘City of London’ Bert Harrison arrived in France. He was not to see Britain again for five years.

He thought the people ‘very pleasant, very broad minded’ and his talent for languages came to the fore. He picked up French easily and later spoke German, Polish and a little Russian.

The first billet, at Le Mans, was as bad as the food, but there was wine which he says, “Left my head clear but my legs would not work!”

Local cafes were often the scene of inter-Regimental rivalry, sometimes physical. Bert joined the 1st Battalion in Arras where he met his favourite Sergeant Major, Daddy Larcombe.

“He had a dark complexion, black hair, hatchet face and eyes that looked right through a man,” says Bert. His first comment to the new men was, “You look like a party of Girl Guides, I’ll sweat that wine out of you.”

The billets and the food were better, and the training was harder. Several trips were made into Arras where “there was plenty of everything that was no good!”

Little was seen of the enemy in the Phoney War, but the Guardsmen once chased some parachutists and captured five.

Everything changed on May 10th when the German Army attacked. Bert Harrison comments on the state of the BEF at the time, “People never knew the truth about the BEF in France and what little chance they stood of stopping a modern army. The only ones who knew the truth are those who were there.

The BEF lacked tanks and infantry had to fight armour with a rifle, a bandolier and some grenades. Bert recalls those hectic May days, “In my opinion it was just a sacrifice, the French never intended to fight, and I think the British shot more French soldiers than Jerry did.”

The defence of Arras began, road blocks were erected using railway trucks, and the first bombing raid was experienced. One sunny day, Bert Harrison was at a road block directing traffic and was leaning against a buffer of a truck when the first bomb fell.

It drove the trucks forward with such force he was sent flying. He lost his steel helmet and dived under a truck, “an unhealthy spot”.

A building had collapsed across the street and he saw a Welsh Guardsman buried to the waist in the debris. He got him out and carried him to a shelter. The injured man went home to Britain, but Bert “was in for further trouble”.

Supported by the Durham Light Infantry the Germans were driven back, but that only staved off the inevitable capture of the city. “The next time we met Jerry was at Hazelbrock, where the Belgians did some good work”, recalls Bert.

He had a narrow escape there. German aircraft had been busy all day, but when another warning went he decided to carry on washing in a shed. A sergeant ordered him to take cover and he grabbed his rifle and ran for it. When the all-clear was sounded the shed was no more, it was totally destroyed.

“For the first time in my life I thanked a sergeant from the bottom of my heart”, he says.

The Guardsmen took a position on a hill which was firmly held. Casualties mounted, heavy rain fell and the men were soaked to the skin and dead tired. The Blitzkrieg was in full force and shelling went on day and night.

The men got into trucks but were then delayed by a French army convoy of horse drawn vehicles. Progress was slow, the men slept where they could, the great retreat was on.

Bert Harrison was in the rear-guard action outside Dunkirk. He recalls PSM Bert Maisey, who was taken prisoner, and the chaos. The Battalion lost many men killed or wounded and there was little ammunition.

The defenders just waited, and Bert Harrison and a few others dug in. Their trench was over-run by a tank which half buried them. That horrifying moment is vividly recalled, “I looked up to see the great caterpillar going round and around, almost touching us.”

German infantry following the tanks captured the men who were put into a field under guard. In the morning with many others, they were moved back, hungry and tired. The long march into Germany had begun, one Bert will never forget.

But for him the war was not over. Greater adventures lay ahead, and his battle against his captors was not finished.

Bert Harrison’s long trek into Germany, during the hot Spring of 1940, left him with painful memories and bitterness.

“It bore hatred in me for Germans which I will never live down,” he declares, “They gave us nothing to eat or drink and anyone leaving the column for water was shot.”

French people put buckets of water alongside the roads, but the Germans kicked them over. The prisoners ate potatoes taken from fields and drank water from stagnant ponds. Some of the ponds had dead horses and even Germans in them.

Dysentery was rife, many died and the column marched 50 miles a day. The men slept in fields, but for Bert Harrison there was one bright moment. He met up with one of his friends again, Jack Jones from North Wales.

Despite the situation, both men were determined to survive. They once stole two chickens, gathered wood, made a fire and boiled water. The birds were promptly eaten long before they were properly cooked.

The column went through France, Belgium, Holland and then into Germany. Many had died, others were near death and Bert Harrison was too weak to walk.

At a place called Lamsdorf dysentery really hit him. He crawled on his hands and knees to be registered and remembers very little after that. In mid-June 1940 he was admitted to hospital in Langenbalau where the prisoners were treated very well by Polish Sisters of Mercy.

Bert still believes the Polish Sisters saved his life and says, “They treated everyone alike”.

He was discharged from hospital in August 1940, still in a weak state. Jack Jones had gone on a working party so Bert Harrison found a new friend, a sergeant in the Glosters. They were among a party of fifty sent to a pleasant place on the Czech border.

The food got better and the men received a small wage with which they bought bread and cigarettes. There was little food for the prisoners but plenty for German civilians.

Bert volunteered for a working party to get out of the camp and expressed a preference for farming. Instead he became a road builder which involved hard physical work even though no extra rations were issued.

The working party built a new road for the local Council and treatment was fair. At one time they were billeted over a café and the men were given new clothes.

The prisoners were surviving and settling down to their new life. But not Bert Harrison, he wanted to escape now he was fitter and stronger. He sought a companion and found one in a Grenadier Guardsman who joined in the collection of eggs, meat and other food which they found in a cellar.

They got away from the camp quite easily and walked by night and slept by day. After two weeks they thought they were near the border with Russia, then a neutral country, because people were speaking a different language.

Both men got on well together but one day differed over which road to take. The Grenadier had his way, but after a while they checked their rough map and discovered they were retracing their steps.

While crossing a field they heard shots and were chased by Germans who forced them to surrender, just one hour from the border. Their captors were, in fact, frontier guards.

Bert Harrison was a prisoner of war from the age of 19 to 24, and he can be considered something of an authority on captivity. When he and the Grenadier were caught escaping, they were sent to Beuthen near the Polish border, Camp E72.

This was a notorious place governed by directors of a coal mine whose staff controlled and influenced the German army guards. Bert remembers one officer saying that he could not sleep unless he shot at least one Englishman a day.

Bert spent most of his captivity in Beuthen and recalls, “It was very hard work and we had horrible people to deal with, especially the Upper Silesians. The prisoners called the people who lived there Border Rats!

The camp came to life at 4am and the face workers went down the pit two hours later. Each section had a manager and Bert’s was very harsh — “a proper salve driver, he treated some terribly, especially the Poles who he hated.”

The prisoners did heavy work of every sort and as the civilians grew fewer girls came to work there from Poland, the Ukraine and Russia.

Food was poor and the men worked until 5pm every day including Sundays. Occasionally there was a concert and sport but mainly it was work with the 600 prisoners divided into three shifts.

The Germans issued Red Cross parcels twice a week but pierced the tins of food so the prisoners would have to eat them at once. The men paired off, one drawing his parcel on a Tuesday and the other on a Saturday, the days of issue.

Bert began to learn local languages and conversed as much as possible with the inhabitants to gain knowledge for another escape. His German was good and he was occasionally mistaken for one, something that almost cost him his life later on.

He hated working underground after spending a fine summer in the open air, and it was physically demanding. There was little height at the coal-face and men worked on their knees with picks and shovels. They needed extra food, but gone none.

Bert developed knee trouble and was so ill he spent two months in hospital. He could not work on his knees again and was employed on top of the pit as a labourer. His personal enemy was a civilian called Schneider who watched him closely and reported him for the slightest offence.

Every two months the Gestapo searched the camp and the conditions worsened. In the summer the men slept on tables near open windows because their beds were alive with bugs.

For the next instalment go to Guardsman Harrison’s War Story — Part Two

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