大象传媒

World War 11. Memories of 1939-1945 in and around Bootle, Liverpool.
Author Copyright-Joan M. Dyer.
Chapter Six
It was some years before I found out anything from my Dad about his war. Apart from occasionally telling us that ordinary German people were just like us and he did not like us calling them 鈥榖addies鈥� or 鈥楴azis鈥�, we learnt nothing. Then occasionally he would say a German word such as 鈥榙anke schon鈥�. We knew he had been captured in a tank battle, but little else. One day I decided to ask him about it all. He clearly was very reluctant. However, he told me that he had been chosen to work, by the camp officinados, on a railway in Germany, that conditions were very bad in terms of their clothing, food rations and conditions in the camp. He said that they had as a main meal thin cabbage soup and small amounts of black bread. It was bitterly cold and they had few facilities to keep clean or proper toilets. They had bunks in three or four layers of minimum size for a man to lie down. When he was captured in the tank battle they were totally overwhelmed by the Germans. The battle had been fierce and a total war scenario and my Father said he had had to drive the tank forward in terrible circumstances, driving over the bodies of his dead or worse still, his injured comrades. This was a very sad and unhappy memory for him. As prisoners they were taken by train in a cattle truck to Germany, over many days, with no knowledge as to their whereabouts or what was going to happen to them once they arrived, or where they there to stay. Would they be shot or sent to extermination camps? They did not know. In the railway truck little food or even water was available and of course there were no toilet facilities. They had to do their best to manage their situation. He met up with a Canadian soldier in the cattle truck, who told him he was a Doctor. My Dad said he quickly became a very good friend and that he was a good man who for a short time helped everyone in the cattle truck to manage their situation as well as they could. Unfortunately the train was strafed, he thought, by the R.A.F. or Americans and a bullet narrowly missed my Dad but killed the new friend he had not long met. The Doctor鈥檚 body remained in the cattle truck with them on their journey to the prison camp. On one occasion my Father told me he often thought of this friend and felt guilty that he, an ordinary soldier and person should have survived the war, whereas his friend the Doctor, a clever, educated and trained man had died. He said that this man would have been more useful in society than he could possibly be.
He was a prisoner for about twelve months. As I have mentioned we are not sure of the Stalag Camp, having slightly different information from sources. One was that it was Stalag X11a and another that it was Stalag X11b. My Father told me he had no idea where they were in Germany, maybe near Frankfurt and then later he thought it may have been Limburg. The best advice I ever received from anyone was from my Dad, namely, to make the best of whatever situation in which you find yourself. He told this me this is what he did whilst a prisoner and there will be many of his army comrades who did likewise. They had inadequate clothing while forced to work on the railway and he said they would snatch at frozen clumps of grass to protect their hands when dealing with steel rails in bitterly cold weather. He tried to keep what kit he had in good order, he tried to keep clean although this was very difficult. He ate the extremely poor and inedible food, no matter what. They looked for opportunities to improve any aspect of their existence and the men he was associating with at the camp tried to help each other.
I wanted to know how he had got home and what happened at the end of the war. He said they woke up one day and soon realised that the prison guards had gone, just vanished overnight and then somebody said the main gate of the camp was open. They had some outside contact, ? a radio?, as they knew that the Allies were getting nearer and that it looked as if the Germans were defeated. Presumably there was a British or Allied officer and it was decided to eat as well as they could, collect what ever kit they needed and the idea was to walk towards the Allied lines. However these were not as close as they thought and this 鈥榳alk鈥� became very difficult with little food and varying weather. I understood they walked a very long way. Also he said I would not like to hear some of the events he experienced which I read as 鈥榟e was not prepared to tell me, a young girl, a lot about the unpleasant and hazardous events along the way.鈥� My Father always claimed that the ordinary German citizens and their families were exactly the same as ordinary people in England. He said that as they went along on this march German housewives would offer them food in the villages and small towns. Presumably at that time food would have been short for the Germans too but what the situation would have been from place to place, especially villages and agricultural areas, perhaps was variable. He would never let us as children denegrate the German people and said that they too i.e. the ordinary families had been caught in a trap that most would not have freely chosen. The emphasis was on the word 鈥榝reely鈥�. Whether this is true historically or not I do not know but it was my Father鈥檚 teaching to us that we were not to hate the ordinary German families.
They eventually met up with the Americans and from there on were able to get cleaned up, they all had infestations of lice, and they were allowed to have a little food. This puzzled me to have been given after all that time only a little food but my Dad said it was quite dangerous to eat too much too soon and the Americans knew about this problem.
I have no idea how he returned to England, by sea or air but I think they all had to go to de-mob centres for quite a while. They all received a demob suit, and a travel permit home. Even then it was not plain sailing as the men had to adjust to life at home, to find work, to re-build their homes where they had lost everything and start to take on the family responsibilities. I believe my Dad did this, with the help of my Mum, very well indeed with perhaps the one exception which was not his fault. As I said earlier I think he suffered from quite severe depression in the following years. Sometimes he would sit very silently and grimly for several days, occasionally weeks, on end. It certainly affected me as I thought it just had to be that I had done something terrible that had upset him. He once asked me why he should have survived when a clever Doctor had been killed and said he felt that it would have been better if the Doctor had survived as he was able to help people better than he could. I had no answer. It was this question that made me realise that maybe there was more to the situation than I knew and that he was, thinking of his lost friends and comrades a great deal. There is no doubt that these episodes affected my Mother and us children as there was no way to break the mood he was experiencing, but after a week or two he would be back to his quiet, wry, witty sense of humour.
A Yorkshire comrade, an officer and others all met up with the Veterans Association and they went several times to Caen, France to near where they had been fighting. He said they always had the most fantastic welcome, the food was amazing and he stayed at a farmhouse as a guest of the farmer, Monsieur Legorgeu (Spelt?) and his family. My Father died in 1987 and this officer and his wife and other army friends came to his funeral. On the fiftieth anniversary of the D-day landings I rang this officer, called Granville Shan. He said my Father was in 612 or ?621 Field Squadron or Company, Royal Engineers, 11th armoured Division, (confirmed on the list from Thetford Forest) and that they landed at 14.35 at Juno beach to prepare the way for following troops and to repair roadways that had been damaged by bombing. He thought they were one of the first tanks to land. Later at Bayeux they were in the tank battle. Granville had returned to the scene and found my Dad鈥檚 tank burnt out and was told by others that they had been captured and taken prisoner. There is a letter in the family box where an officer wrote to my Mother saying 鈥榯here was no sign of any graves nearby and the conclusion was that the men had been taken prisoner.鈥� They did not then meet up until a few years after the war. He told me that my Father was one of his most reliable soldiers, who always did whatever work was needed totally reliably, remembering they were Royal Engineers. If he needed anything that was vital to be done he would ask my Father and his comrades, and would feel sure that the work would be done if at all possible.
They all received the war medals of the time but sadly my impression is that my Dad did not think much of them for a number of reasons. He certainly never considered himself as being anything except an ordinary soldier called up and involved in the war as were his friends and comrades and doing what they had to do for the country. His thoughts were mainly about the friends he had had who had not survived and the sacrifice they and their families had made.
Joan M. Dyer
March 12th 2004

Additional notes.
20thMarch 2004
My brother David has had the family 鈥榖ox鈥� out to check some dates having read my efforts on the 6th March. He has given me my Father鈥檚 call-up date of 12th December 1940, and the following: B.L.A.(British Liberation Army) D-Day landings. 11.06 1944 鈥�26.06 1944. Then from the dates at Thetford Memorial pre D-Day landings January1944- May 1944.
P.O.W.26.06 1944. Released 14th May 1945. We do not know the ways of return or whether he needed medical attention or other support after his experiences. He was extremely thin as I remember and I heard my Mother and Auntie speaking about him needing to recover his health and weight. So he must have been in a poor state at the time of release from Stalag X11a or b. However, he never ever put on weight in his lifetime, except perhaps a little.
May 2005. From Dad鈥檚 Army record we have learnt he was in Brighton at some point prior to demob but again do not have much detail.
He then had two days Compassionate leave 09.1945, which I refer to as a memory of mine of his return, and then some weekend home visits. I presume he had signed for army service and had to serve out his army commitment.
His final Discharge was on the 20th December 1945.
Joan M. Dyer. Author鈥檚 Copyright. 2004.

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