大象传媒

[Read part 1 of this story.]

Ted's final posting

Ted's final posting was to 78 Squadron, Breighton. He was a Halifax navigator. Helen lodged near by. Some 823 bombers (Halifaxes and Lancasters) took off on the night of 19/20 February 1944 for an attack on Leipzig.

Goodbye and God speed

In an extract from Helen's diary for the night of 19 February, she wrote:

February 19. My birthday, said goodbye to you in the morning and goodbye again when you came back for your long pants. [Note: This was their code that indicated that an operation was coming up.] I watched you go after midnight, wished you God speed and went to bed. I heard them come back next morning before eight o'clock.

Missing in action

But Ted's plane wasn't among those that came back. It was one of 78 that did not return. No one had seen what had happened, and, for many weeks, no one in England knew what had happened to N for Nan and its crew.

The first entry in Helen's diary is dated 19 February. She wrote it in the form of a letter to Ted. The entries reflect her optimism that he had survived, but there are moments of despair and anguish for other people affected by the events.

We know now that Ted had managed to get out of the plane just before it crashed at Stendal. He had parachuted to safety and been taken prisoner. Within a few days, and after a tortuous train journey, he was incarcerated in Stalagluft III. His postcard, announcing that he was safe arrived in England on 22 April.

Desperate for word from home

Ted's letters reveal swinging emotions. He had ambitious plans for studying and making full use of the time, but he also spent a lot of time longing to be with his family. His letters included details of things he would like sent from home - food, clothing and books for studying, all featured in his lists of wants.

He was also desperate to hear from home. His birthday in June passed without the best present of all, a letter.

A letter at last

At last, at the beginning of August, one from home arrived, to which Ted replied:

I've read your letter about ten times now, and I shall continue to read it every day until another comes. Oh, darling, you must have had a rotten time for a couple of months. You didn't say how long it was before the Red Cross let you know I was safe. We'll have that second honeymoon next year, and it'll be a carefree one, not oppressed by the knowledge that our times together will be short and fleeting, but for ever and ever.

Life in Stalagluft III

(What follows is an extract from Ted's POW camp logbook, detailing the minutiae of camp life.)

The kitchen stove operates for about five hours daily, and in that time hot meals are prepared for over 100 men. Each room of six, seven or eight men shares the stove for about half an hour with another room. The average amount of cooking done by each room is as follows: potatoes are boiled or fried, meat is heated in the oven and a pudding or cake is baked.

Some days there is much more to do, peas or cabbage or other vegetable to cook, and always a great can of water for a brew and subsequent washing up.

Diary of Saturday, 27 January 1945

(This is an account, in Ted's own words, of his last day in Stalagluft III, where he had been a prisoner since February 1944.)

Bob Coulter and I were playing double patience across the table. The room was quiet for once. Then Jessop's voice came down the corridor, 'The Germans have given orders that everybody must be ready to move off inside an hour,' and the flap was on.

For a fortnight previously the Russian advance had caused nearly everybody to make preparations for a move, more especially when German sanction had been given for the making of rucksacks. Now at five past nine we had an hour to do everything we had not done before.

Packing and sledge making

Time was at first spent feverishly packing, then in making sledges. Beds and chairs were ripped to pieces. The sledges were colossal creations, with eight men pulling, and tiny one-man affairs made from chairs. There was a foot of snow over the country, and every hope that the roads would be in good conditions.

Luckily, with all we had to do, the departure time was put off, first for one hour then another. It was past two before we finally moved off in a long column southward. Rumours of lightning, ruthless advances by the Ruskies made us wonder how far off the end of the war could be. It seemed that the idea was to march 75km (47 miles) in three days.

That Sunday morning it seemed rather fun. It was a beautiful night with plenty of moon. The novelty of the thing, the hope that the end of the war was close, and natural kriegy [POW optimism made us think it wouldn't be too bad. v Anything goes We made Halbau [sic] in the middle of the morning. French workers gave us some news of the war. It sounded good. We made Friewaldau [sic] by three in the afternoon, and by then were feeling very tired. The whole of the compound was located in the village square.

Discipline went all to pot. Kriegies were fraternising with the civilians, despite the objections of the local Wehrmacht [German armed forces]. Old ladies and rosy-cheeked little children were wandering around with cans of hot water and coffee. Energetic trading was going on between the English and Germans with cigarettes and coffee for sledges and anything going.

For the first time the complete lack of organisation for this march became apparent. We were supposed to be billeted on the town, but there just wasn't room. About 300 bods out of 2,000 were left there, and this included chaps who had been able to make their own arrangements. It's surprising what can be got for a tin of American coffee.

Avoiding frostbite

The end of the day proved the worst. The bulk of the column moved on, trailing over some two miles of road. At every village we stopped, and a few bods were left in a barn or stable. Those who had collapsed or were sick were picked up by trucks.

The country was very open, and the wind howled across the fields laden with snow. We were halted for most of the time and only made about a kilometre an hour (0.75 mph). I didn't have any frostbite, but, God, it was cold enough.

Billeted in barns and stables

The tail end of the column, me included, turned into a big farm courtyard. Hundreds of exhausted kriegies pushed around trying to find any protection at all against the cold and snow. A large party could only get a roof over them and straw, piled in a heap, under them. We tugged and shoved a jumble of farm machinery out into the snow and bunked on straw. We were warm but little else.

I remember that the boy owner of the farm looked as though he had stepped straight out of the Middle Ages. He was beautifully handsome in classic Greek style and extremely well dressed in a dark-green top coat with fur collar and leather jackboots. The column had made a sorry mess of his farm in their desperate effort to get warm in the night.

My impression of all the villages we passed through during these first two days was one of extreme cleanliness and neatness. The attractive-looking and variously designed cottages stood up boldly by themselves, not snugly retreating behind their own garden trees as in England.

'On to Moskau'

The next day the cry was 'On to Moskau' 16 miles) away. According to the signposts the first five miles marching took us some half mile further from Sagan, so roundabout was our route.

The roads were not in very good condition for pulling sledges, being deeply ridged by horses and carts. There were quite a number of carts on the road, loaded with refugees and their furniture.

Uphill all the way

There is very little to record for the main part of this day. Priebus was the only town of any size en route. No German rations had found their way to us, and we went easy on the Red Cross food we were carrying. We were occasionally able to get hot water from civilians. Most of the way seemed to be uphill.

Moskau, far from being the end of the day's journey, proved to be the beginning of the worst three miles of the day. We were split into parties of 300 and lodged at a French commando lager (camp), other parties being in barns, the local cinema etc. We were able to recuperate during the stay there. Small supplies of food began to get through.

It seems that the plan is to filter the whole of Stalagluft III, which is now spread across a large area all over the countryside, gradually through the junction at Spremberg 24km (15 miles) away and take them to lagers prepared elsewhere. Where, we don't know.

Thaw sets in

When we left Moskau the thaw had set in, and pulling sledges had become increasingly difficult. The route was littered with the remains of sledges, ditched after the owners had inadequately packed the loads.

The whole route from Sagan to Spremberg was marked by ditched kit. Equipment and food that must have been great value to the local inhabitants was just thrown away. Those at the rear of the column (incidentally some two miles from the front) were able to remedy any deficiencies in their kit by keeping their eyes open and pillaging the discarded loads. Tobacco, uniforms, blankets, tins of food could be picked up at will.

'Forty hommes, eight chevaux'

The remainder of the trip was completed in two stages. We were then packed into trucks of the '40 hommes, eight chevaux' variety and endured two extremely uncomfortable days driving. We were only allowed out of the trucks to perform natural functions and not always then.

As a result of the water drunk during the last spell and the hardships of the march nearly everybody had dysentery in some more or less mild form and had lost a deal of weight. The International Red Cross (IRC) investigated conditions on the march.

Footnote

Ted remembered a two-day journey in cattle trucks as one of the most unpleasant things he had to endure. He had dysentery and recalled later the kindness of his companions. Service women were deputed to welcome the released prisoners.

Ted recalled his response to the sight of the first female for many months: 'I don't think I reacted as intended - all I could think of was to get my beard shaved off and then to get home just as fast as possible.'

On VE day, 8 May 1945, Ted arrived home.

Postscript by daughter Mary

I'm told that one May morning in 1945 I stood up in my cot, looked at the man in bed with my mother and said, 'Who's that?' In fact it was my father, who had returned home on VE day, having been a prisoner of war for the previous 15 months.

My brothers and I grew up with the awareness that he had been a POW. I remember being quite disconcerted that he had accepted his fate so submissively. He parachuted to safety when his plane was shot down, and he had actually given himself up to the first Germans he saw. Then, once he was incarcerated, he made no attempt to escape.

Glad to be out of it

One comment he made has stuck in my mind: 'I was just so glad to be out of it. I just sat tight and waited for the war to be over.'

With maturity I know exactly what he meant - but that attitude wasn't glamorous enough for a teenager brought up on a diet of daring deeds and films that glamorised every aspect of war.

We did talk about the war, and the family has a fund of stories from that time, but now it's too late to learn any more directly from my parents, and I have a host of questions I wish I could ask them.

Our parents both died in their 70s, our father in 1993, after suffering from Parkinson's disease for many years, and our mother in 1996 from cancer that tragically manifested itself within nine months of our father's death.

We only discovered some of the material used here after my mother's death. Working with it proved very therapeutic and reminded us of the years of promise, of happier days, when our parents were young and healthy, very much in love, never doubting that they would survive the war and looking forward with eager anticipation to many years together.

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