大象传媒

4 May 2005

Continued from Part 1.

We used to look forward for letters from home, these were the better days. Sundays we washed our clothes the best we could. We had a shower when we came up from the pit and of course changed our clothes we had a sort of overall coat and trousers to wear down the pit also shoes, second hand of course, but anything was better than the clogs. The name of the place was Yewugiuow that is not the right spelling but that is how it sounded. There must have been a camp for Jewish prisoners somewhere near, as they used to stagger past our camp in their stripped coat, trousers and cap. I suppose they were also on a working party, they didn鈥檛 have Sundays off. We worked 10 hours a day but they worked longer as they passed our camp before we started and returned after we had finished. We used to call them striped jackets, we did not know of the concentration camps then, but we must have been pretty near Auswitch. I made quite a lot of friends but today there are only 2 names I can remember, one is called Metchezslaf Palko. He was the pipe fitter I worked with, the other one I haven鈥檛 met as yet in my story. We got very little war news as we didn鈥檛 have any new P.O.W鈥檚 coming to our camp, so we hoped and prayed for the best. All our mail was heavily censured especially the letters from home. In 1944 we had a feeling in the camp of change, the guards were acting differently, getting towards the end of 1944 they took us to the pictures and we knew then the war was coming to an end in our favor. A few weeks later in early December they marched us out of the camp without a word. We were kept on the move all day and in the evening we were turned into a barn, given the usual soup and bread and told to bed down for the night. There was plenty of hay so we were o.k. for sleeping. We were on our way again the following morning. This was the pattern for the next couple of weeks. There must have been other working parties, because our group was increasing each day. One day when we were lining up for our usual bowl of soup, I had the surprise of my life. The cook who was serving the soup was a school friend of mine when I was 9 or 10. He was the only person I really knew all the time I was in the army. He was in the Durham Light Infantry, and that鈥檚 where all my school friends 鈥榣anded鈥� he informed me. I palled up on this march with a chap from Dudley, he was in the same regiment as me, but I had just met him for the first time. We knew the war was nearly over, because we used to call at the farm houses for bread or anything to eat. It looked like my P.O.W. days were going to finish as they had started, hungry all the while. We had been walking about for 3 or 4 months when my friend whose name by the way is (Howard Bryant) said to me 鈥淚鈥檓 sure we have been here before, we are just moving backwards and forwards鈥�. After a bit of discussion we decided to hide that night and after the column moved off in the morning we would go in the opposite direction. This we did and no one bothered us, food became easier as there was just the 2 of us 鈥榦n the scrounge鈥�. The language we heard from the civilians had changed after a few days and we realised we were back in Germany, so we decided to carry on as know one was interested in us. About the end of March we bumped into a couple of Yanks and oh boy what a surprise. We were questioned and told them we were P.O.W. and that we had been walking for months. They had headquarters in the town, which they took us to. We were the first P.O.W.s they had seen, but now they were on the move they were sure to meet more. They took us to a hotel where we were put up and told to stay put. We could walk about but were to stay at the hotel as they would send any other POWs there. When there was enough of us they would get us back home. I was there for about 5 or 6 weeks and they were the best we had for some time. One of the P.O.W.s who came to the hotel could drive. We got a car from somewhere, so we used to ride about as long as we could get petrol. We were eventually taken to an airport and they flew us to France in a Dekota. We stayed in France a while and finally we flew home in a Lancaster Bomber the day before V.E. day.

The day befoe V.E. Day we landed in Oxfordshire, I think it was called Wing. We were given a pre-printed telegram to send to next of kin. Which of course were my parents, who were in Birmingham. I was given a travel pass and sent home on leave. My girl friend, Ellen Williams, whom I had not seen for nearly six years, she was also in the army, but on V.E. leave at the time, she lived in Oxford. As soon as my parents received the telegram they sent word to Ellen. Ellen managed to phone her camp and explaining the situation she was allowed leave the same as me as long as we got married. We were married June 2nd 1945 just 26 days after arriving home. We will have been married 60 years in a couple of weeks and are greatly looking forward to our diamond wedding anniversary.

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