大象传媒

My father was born in 1916 and died three years ago. In 1985 he wrote his memoirs and I would just like to put on paper a small part of it. He was captured by the Germans in 1940 and released by the Americans in 1945. He stayed in about 14 different prisoner of war camps in Belgium, Germany and Poland. Below is an extract from his memoirs telling you how he was captured in his own words with his own spelling mistakes!

"As to how I was captured, well, we were in a convoy on the road between a placed called Elles and Dunkirk. Stuka dive bombers came out of the cloud, hedge-hopping, and started to bomb our convoy. We dived for cover in the ditches, except the Ack Ack men on the trucks. I saw the bombs falling at the furthest end of the column, then I knew no more for a bit - one must have dropped near by.

When I came to, I was lying on my stomach and I remember trying to get up, but then I must have lost consciousness again, because the next time I came to I was being carried on a stretcher into a house being used as a field ambulance No 6 where an MO fave me a shot of morphia. On the FA card - I still have - it says BATTLE CASUALTY 27.5.40 1/4 dose, 11.30 hrs. This card was fixed on me later and I was put into one of several field ambulances. Later in the day the ambulance convoy set off towards Dunkirk, but during the darkness the convoy got separated, the front half went to Dunkirk and the other half, which I was in, followed what afterwards turned out to be German trucks with a red light on the back. We were then in a village where we were put in a cow shed and I can remember a couple of women were milking the cows. When daylight came, I heard gutteral voices and a couple of Jerries poked their rifles over the door and that was that.

I understand the MDs of the RMAC asked the German MD for help with the wounded. He agreed and both German and British MOs took over the local church and operated on the worst cases. The rest of us were put into German ambulances and taken to Ypres and put into an old building in the town.

The conditions were awful - we all laid down on the floors on stretchers, with very little attention to wounds or general comfort to men. Food was also lacking as I remember nothing but watery soup once a day.

The smell of open wounds in confined conditions was dreadful. I myself suffered agony with constipation amongst other things. However, we were only there 3 or 4 days and then we were split up and taken to another hospital. I was taken to Reniox in Belgium. This was a hospice sereved by the Sisters of Mercy, mostly French and Belgian but there were two Irish sisters from County Cork. They were all very good to us chaps and fed us very well. It was t this place, with the Sisters' good attention and food that I begun to get better. They told me there was no treatment for concussion of the spine and that I should lay in bed and hope that I would gradually get my body movement back. It took several weeks and then I could stand on my feet by my bed - but I still could not walk. So next they gave me a chair to hold on to and keep pushing forward a step at a time, after after a week at this I began to walk.

Eventually the Germans appeared on the scene again and said we were "walking wounded". They put us into motor coaches.

Just one thing I will mention on that day. I ws sitting on the front seat of the coach by the open door, we had already been given a loaf of bread and a tin of meat for our journey. I found some green mould on my bread and I was just picking it out and throwing it out of the coach door. A German Officer standing outside saw me and went mad. He said in broken English "you are too fat you English pigs, and where you are going you will be glad to eat green bread". Believe me - that Jerry never spoke a truer word because before the war ended I was searching the mule bins for green bread and glad of it."

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