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Staffs County Council libraries, on behalf of the author, have submitted this story. The author fully understands the rules and regulations of the People's War website.

I was eighteen and a half years old when I was called up and I served in North Africa until I was nineteen. I then spent from September 1943 until February 1944 in Italy. I was then pulled out of line and returned to England.

I went on different operations, in and out of gliders, until I was dropped at Arnhem. On my fourth day there, I was blown up and taken to Kate Ter Horst Regimental aid post. Due to such severe injuries, I remained unaware of my surroundings for the next two days, but I do remember my wakening thoughts. I overheard someone say: ‘Don’t give him any! He’ll be gone before morning.’ I knew then, that people lay dying around me. I was a mess. I had received injuries to my arm, leg and face. I was informed that all action had been stopped and our Division had been withdrawn. The Germans came and we were taken, by train, to Stalag X1B, Near Fallingbostell, Hanover, Germany. I remained there from the end of September, until the end of April and Liberation.

We were herded into a big room to be de-loused. I knew no fear. I trusted the Germans and just felt numb. It’s just when you think what could have happened! What those poor Poles and Jews had got in store, going to be de-loused in their camps. You have to remember that you only knew what was going on around you. There were one thousand British prisoners held in my camp.

Life in Camp.
To have our photograph taken, we all had to sit in a row. I held a board up with my number on, (118631) in front of the Leica camera. We were then marched into the British compound and I jumped into the nearest bunk I could find. This consisted of a hessian bag, filled with straw. There was a pot-bellied stove in the middle of the room. No chairs; no table; nothing!

We were split into groups of five mates (muckers.) There was one leader and he drew rations. Food came in huge billycans. We had ersatz coffee, made from ground acorns. Enough to make your hair curl that was! We had to use that for washing.
Food time, (skilley time) meant rations had to be split absolutely equally between the five of us. The leader used a little pair of scales, made by us, from a piece of wood and string. Dried rations were given to us, but we were also given horrible cheese to share. It was rubbery and wet in the middle! We were also given black ’brud,’(bread) to share between the five of us. It was that hard you could have kicked it around for a week and it wouldn’t have hurt it! We all sat around one bunk and cut the bread into five and then it had to be weighed out until each piece was quite equal. We then had a pack of cards with five numbers on. These were shuffled and everyone chose a number. This was all done to make it fair. We could spend hours sorting bread out. Time meant nothing to us. We were so hungry. I weighed just six stone when I came back.
I remember ‘wet ration afternoons.’ ‘Whispering grass,'(sauerkraut) took us all our time to eat that. It just went straight through us! We were given one potato, boiled in it's jacket. Nothing was ever wasted though. We had the choice to eat it all at once or save it. Red Cross parcels were so important to us. These we received every four weeks. All the tins had been punctured, which meant we had got to eat them straight away. It was just a matter of survival. People were starving. Everyone tried to do their best. We just found things to keep us occupied. For example, everyone made their own ‘blower,’ which we used to heat our rations. These were mounted onto our bed boards. We had to adopt an ‘easy come — easy go’ attitude! To amuse ourselves we played with bugs and lice. We had a coca tin, a bit of fat and a shoelace. We’d light it and put another dry tin over the naked flame. We’d heat that up and drop in a bug. The lice were massive. We used to have fun watching them go bang! Our personal hygiene left a lot to be desired. ‘Crabs’ were rife.

There were only three ways to get out. We could volunteer to dig wood. Then you would get two Russian cigarettes for digging roots. These made your toes curl! We could use this opportunity to gather moss off the trees, dry it out and make tobacco. Bible paper was the best paper for this exercise!
We used our cigarettes for trading. Not with the Russians though. You could give a Guard a cigarette in exchange to be let out into the compound, then use another, to get back in. We used to barter cigarettes to get white bread.
Another way out for us was - if we needed to have our wounds treated and the third way was — feet first!

Clothing.
We were given a tunic (battledress), which consisted of a shirt, no underpants, trousers and two pieces of paper, to make socks and given a pair of Dutch clogs. These were all one size so we had to make them fit. Everything was made out of paper, even bandages. We used plastic razor blades to shave, which we all had to share.
We had ‘Role Call’ at 11am but apart from that you woke up when you wanted. There was nothing to do and we were freezing cold. The conditions were appalling.

Liberation.
The Desert Rats liberated us, just a week before my twenty-first birthday. We could hear them in the distance. We had to paint POW in whitewash on the roof, to let them know, because Bat's 88 were being fired into the air. We didn’t know what was happening.
Just before being liberated we had POW camps from the East arriving to escape the Russians. It caused chaos. These were old prisoners from the start of the war. Red Cross parcels stopped and there was no food.
Then we woke up one morning and all the Germans had gone.

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