大象传媒

INTO CAPTIVITY

My recollections begin on the 9th of May, 1940 when we were stationed on the Belgian border near Lille. At 6:30pm I was detailed to take the 'D' Company cooks out for the night, the sergeant cook directed me to drive them into a town called Orchies for a drinking session. I wasn't allowed to drink because I was driving the 16 platoon truck, a 15cwt Bedford. In the town, one of the cooks fell down some stairs with an armful of beer bottles and had a nasty gash in his arm, by the time we got him bandaged it was nearly midnight and we set off to return to camp. All the cooks were singing in the back of the truck. Standing in the middle of the road waiting for us was our transport corporal, Cpl Doyle, he gave us a real rollicking, but the sergeant cook took full responsibility.

All hell had broken loose at the camp, everyone was packing up and the other trucks were busy loading the platoon gear, 16 platoon set to and started loading my truck while I got some tea and rations. The news was that Jerry had gone into Belgium and we were to move off at 02:00 hours, so it was move at the double.

At the set time we got into convoy, the lads got into 30 cwt trucks and we trailed behind, a white tape had been laid along the route we were to take. Lights had been blackened and slits scraped in the middle, rear lights were fixed under the body near the axle casting a red glow down, this was very tiring on the eyes but we were on our way.

As dawn came up so did the German planes, bombers and Messershmitts. We passed a number of bombed villages as we headed for Brussels and Waterloo, finally we arrived at a place called Wavre and crossed the canal. The roads were full of fleeing refugees, and now at last we could hear field and machine gun fire.

'D' Company took up position on the fringe of a wood in reserve and Ltnt. Taylor detailed me to take him across the canal to the signal position. After a few hours there he jumped in and said we had to return to the Company as fast as possible. When we got to the bridge we had crossed by, it had been blown up by the RE's. Ltnt. Taylor directed me to drive to the next bridge, this had also been blown; by this time he was sweating, and so was I! The next bridge was a couple of miles away and by now mortar fire was dropping around us, I was flat out at 40mph. This bridge was also set to be blown, luckily the engineers told me to roll over dead slow and I did, then they blew it. By the time we found 'D' Company I was starving, but from now on it was all go, I got loaded with ammo and petrol. We had our first contact with the Jerries, I remember seeing a German observation plane flying so low along the fringe of the wood that I could see the white scarf the pilot was wearing, we were told not to fire at it as this would give our position away.

It was now the 12th May, the French troops were on our left flank and the machine gun battalion, the Cheshires, were on the other. They had Vickers, we had Brens and some Vickers and Boys anti-tank rifles. That day and all of the night all hell was let loose as Jerry tried to throw a bridge across. It simmered down as dawn came (the 13th my birthday!), we got some grub and I fell dead asleep. During the next night and morning the French Moroccans, who were holding the left flank, left their positions and withdrew leaving a gap in the line. A number of Bren gun carriers from each Company were sent to plug the gap.

The Germans managed to put a bridge over and were attacking in force, but they were driven back as the carriers returned to the positions the Moroccans had left. The Moroccans were eventually sent back by the French Command, when they returned they thought the Bren carriers were Germans and opened fire on them, eventually they realised their mistake.

The next night it got so bad we had orders to withdraw, we were in danger of being surrounded. We took up new positions about 10 miles away. This was the pattern, fighting all day and withdrawing at night, there was little time to wash or sleep. I remember when we had a lull in the fighting, we reached a farm near Froidmont and CQMS Barber said we had a new battledresss each. Just as we stripped off in a large farmyard overcame the Stuka's and literally caught us with our pants down! Anyway, they went and we changed into the new clothes and that day we had a rest from the constant moving and mortar fire, which I must say was very accurate.

We were just outside Tournai about the 23rd or 24th, we crossed the Le-Bassee canal amid a lot of confusion. We turned left down a road after crossing the bridge and came to a farm with a large house and courtyard, this was our first-aid post. Company HQ was further down the road at a group of farm buildings 16,17,18, platoon trucks of 'D' Company had only been there half an hour when we were told to move down the road to HQ.

Here, Capt. Haig, Ltnt. Taylor, Spiers and Verity were with stragglers from the Argyles and Norfolks who had lost contact with their Battalions. I remember Capt. Sillar who had been wounded and had his arm in a sling. The floor of the farmhouse was full of wounded and we were ordered out of there, our Corporal Doyle told us to speed as fast as possible down the open stretch of road. We had to travel about a mile down the road, there was no cover and I was out of the gates like a shot. As I turned left there were fields on either side and the road was under fire, I could hear the "pinging" on the Bedford. I was hoping that the ammo I was carrying would not be hit, there was no time to think, but I ducked down as I drove, I had seen too many bullet holes in windscreens!

About halfway along the road I heard a sudden swish like a zip, I was in a sweat when I got to the farm buildings but I remembered my dad telling me that they never shelled the same place twice. As I came into the yard I saw a building that had already been shelled and parked next to it. Mortar fire was all over the place and as I jumped out of the truck, I saw that the front tyre had been hit by shrapnel which had vulcanised the rubber. As I stood there looking at it I heard a welcome shout of "tea up" by the cooks who had set up their dixies over the road in a pigsty. I grabbed my tins and rifle and ran over, just as I got there the place started getting shelled and, guess what? my 15cwt got hit smack on and blew up. All the grenades, petrol and ammo tracers were flying all over the place, so much for my dad's advice!!

Everything was happening now. Fusiliers Bookman, Neil, Brown and myself stationed ourselves in a ditch opposite the farmhouse where we were covering the road from which we had just driven. We saw three armoured cars coming down the road with their machine guns firing. The wireless truck that had been opposite us had moved towards the house but our Bren carrier had been knocked out. One of the armoured cars stopped near us, the others had deployed in the fields. Ammunition was getting low but we had picked up some grenades earlier, we tried to roll one under this armoured car but it rolled into the ditch on the other side of the road.

The machine guns poking out the side were firing but we were so low that we were under it's elevation. I thought we were finished but the ditch we were in went right up to the yard where Ltn Peace and some of 16 platoon covered us. Smoke was everywhere which helped as well, I remember someone shout "there's no HE left sir" and the reply " well bloody well fire smoke" this was for the mortars. We withdrew to a yard, the whispering of bullets in the grass was terrible as we ran for cover. Second Ltnt. Spiers was there with a group of others, as I got round the corner of a wall the corner of bricks shattered. As we stood firing, more armoured cars appeared in a wide circle in the fields, I remember our camp bugler John Haggerty shout that he could get away, he ran out and three lads followed, the three lads were killed but I saw Haggerty jump a stone wall and I don't know what happened to him.

Eventually we were forced out of the yard and took up positions behind a hedge, the lad lying next to me got it in the stomach and was dead. It was really hectic now, our RSM nearby was firing his revolver, Neil, Bookman and myself jumped into a zig-zag trench. We were told that Sgt. Peace had been killed, we had all looked up to him as a first class Sgt. Finally our ammo ran out and we were told by our RSM that it was all over and our officers gave themselves up.

The Germans were shouting from one of the tanks through a megaphone that we had five minutes to make up our minds, it was the 27th or 28th of May. In five minutes we were P.O.W's as we removed the bolts from our rifles to make them useless and buried them in the soft soil. We had heard that the Norfolks had been caught a couple of miles away at Le Paradis and had been shot by the SS, but there were so many rumours around. Before coming out of our positions we were told to drop our weapons. As we came out we were surrounded by German infantry armed to the teeth and tough looking troops they all were. We were told, by signs and shouting in German, to line up and sit down on a grass bank, with rifles and bayonets pointing at us we quickly did as we were told.

I was sitting on the end, two mates were next to me. During the excitement I had grabbed four grenades and put them in my Bren gun pouches with some cigarettes stuffed on the top. I had forgotten about these, and we were going to be searched. The German standing in front of me was a vicious looking brute and wasted no time in searching, when he found the hand grenades I thought my number was up. He pointed his rifle and was shouting in German. Just then, a group of German officers came from the farmhouse and spoke to the soldiers, they drew back but still kept us covered. The highest ranking officer spoke to us in perfect English, he said " For you the war is over, I suppose you have all wanted to see Berlin, well you will see it but as P.O.W's, you will all be transported to a camp. Now pick up your wounded men and take those who can walk to the road". He pointed to a main road two fields away, then he gave orders to his soldiers to round us up and get out.

There was white smoke and burning vehicles all around the outbuildings of the nearby farm, we tended to the wounded who we carried or dragged. Stan Bookman, who was a Jew from Cheetham Hill had buried his dog tags just before he was taken. He and I carried a wounded Corporal (an RMP), his legs were full of holes. We were all taken over the fields to the roadway where half a dozen German army ambulances were lined up. There were many other trucks and tanks moving along the road and troops marching forward. When we got there, the wounded were put in the ambulances and we were all lined up and marched away towards the pontoon bridge the Germans had built overnight. We went over the La Bassee canal on a foot pontoon alongside the timber bridge, this was full of tanks and troops surging across in the opposite direction.

This was the start of a long march to Cambrai where we thought we would be put on a train, again this was the rumour. We slept in fields at night where we were given soup, I had picked up an old enamel jug with a handle on and I kept this tied to my belt, others had tins or anything else which would hold soup. We arrived at Cambrai after a 25 mile march and we stayed at Cambrai goods yard for a day or two. We had not had any food, except what we had scrounged, we were all weary and hungry. The guards marched us (we weren't really marching but straggling along) to a big landing bay that was deserted, at one end were some cattle waggons. As we all flopped down on the bay, the guards told us to stay where we were and we all sat down with our backs against the closed roller doors.

Of course we were always on the look-out for grub, I wandered over to the cattle waggons where there was lots of rubbish lying around, there had been cattle here a long time ago. Well, I scrounged around and opened some doors but the waggons were all empty. There amongst the rubbish I found an old enamelled jug , just the job for soup or anything else that was going. Then Vinie Neil and Stan Bookman came over and found some big drums full of some kind of oil, like coconut oil, the guards were watching but they just let us mooch around. Later, in one of the waggons, we found something like wheat or bran in the corners, where it must have spilled. I soon had my jug filled, then we went back to the oil drums and mixed the oil with the wheat, scooping my fingers into the jug. It was just lovely, we all had a feast.

We were soon on the dusty road again, we used to dive off the road into farmhouses for food but the guards soon chased us out. After a few days, we eventually arrived in Luxembourg where the Maginot line ended. As we marched down a long road from Luxembourg, I noticed that all the trees along the route had "V" cuts on the side facing the road. They must have intended to fell these trees across the road to stop the Germans.

We came to a rail depot and at last we scrambled onto a train. I managed to get in a luggage rack and there I stayed. We went over a high railway bridge, but it wasn't a very long journey, we arrived at a German town called Trier on the border. As the train slowed down at a goods platform, the guards threw open the doors and rousted us out. They were shouting and poking us with their rifles if we were a little bit slow. We finally formed up into fives and were counted at least seven times. It was scorching hot and we were marched to the middle of the town. We could see swastika flags all over the place, buildings were draped with them from roof to ground. The pavements were crowded with German civilians, spitting and calling us names. We didn't know any German then so we didn't know what they were shouting, but "schwinehund" was repeated.

After marching in humiliation through part of the town, we started to climb a steep spiral road, when we got to the top there was a camp with high fences all around and huts. Here, we were given half a loaf (dark brown) and a ladle of good soup, it had cubes of white fat floating in it and it was lovely, by now we were really hungry. We slept outside that night and thought we were going to stay there, but we were mistaken. Neil and I wandered around to see if we could find any of our Company but it was like looking for a needle in a haystack, there were thousands of faces (all dirty) British and French.

Next day we were marched back down the hill to the trains. A long line of goods waggons were waiting with the doors open, we were issued with a loaf of black bread, some margarine and a piece of cheese and were told that this would have to last us for five or six days. Then the guards started counting us into the waggons, 30 or 40 to a waggon and the doors were closed and locked. We were locked in and I started to get toothache for the first time. Soon we were on the move, we had no idea where we were going.
This was a nightmare journey, cramped up together with no place to have a run off or do anything else, and a few had the runs. We had a preacher who got us to sing songs and one of the lads had a mouth organ. This went on for four days and nights, rattling along and sometimes being shunted into a siding. At each end of the waggon the boards at roof level were missing and these were covered in barbed wire, from here you could see out if you happened to be near.

The time was spent sleeping, waking, standing up, sitting down, singing a bit and wondering where we were going. We passed Berlin on the first day, soon we were hungry because all the bread had gone. On the fourth day we began to slow down onto a platform at a place called Stettin. There was a German red cross woman on the platform and soup kitchens. As the train stopped, the guards jumped off (at the end of each truck was a small guards cab with about three steps to it and an opening which allowed the guard to see down both sides of the train), as it stopped we heard shouts of "rouse" "rouse".

One waggon at a time was allowed to get a ladle of soup and a piece of bread. Everyone had their tins or bowls ready, when our turn came we all queued up, the smell of the soup was driving us all crazy. I held up my old enamel jug and got my ladle full and bread then we were all hustled back and locked up to enjoy our soup, an hour later we were on our way again. Three days later we eventually arrived at our destination, a place called Thorn in Poland on the banks of the Vistula.

We were glad to get out of that sardine tin of a waggon, we were all lined up on a platform and counted. A bunch of us were marched away, out of the siding and around into a road where just a short march brought us to two huge open gates, as we marched through we were halted and counted again. Inside were more gates covered in barbed wire, these were about 20 feet from the main gates. After counting we were taken in and allocated to a room with straw on the floor, so we all picked our places and got together with our mates, Vinie Neal, Stan Bookman, Reg Stott, F.Woodcott, Rigby and a few more of our group. It would now be about the 8th or 9th of June, everyone started hunting for mates (such as "anyone seen any Argyles? or Cheshires? or Royal Artillery?"), finally we began to settle down and a routine began.

The man who took overall charge of us was an RSM Homer. Standing 6'6" tall , a real tough nut out of the KRR's or QVR. Other Sgt Majors were put in charge of various huts which we moved into after a few weeks. Our ration was five men to a black loaf and a bowl of soup (a ladle). We were now in Fort 17 - Stalag 20A (XXA) as I was to find out later this was the only fort without a moat around. As the days went on we were fingerprinted, names taken, and photographed with a card around our necks with a number on; mine was 7451. This operation took a long time as the Germans were very thorough, we found that some submarine sailors were here a few weeks before us from the submarine "Sea-lion" but they left a few days after we arrived.

One day, a notice was pinned to a big board in the square saying that France had capitulated. Then the Germans posted up lists of numbers for working parties, I was on one of about 40 men. We worked across the river, digging trenches for drains, we marched across the railway bridge, it was curved and had a footpath at the side of the railway tracks. The road bridge had been blown up by the Poles during the invasion in 1939. Sometimes the working parties were changed, you had to look at the board each night to make sure your number hadn't been shifted. Some numbers were on this board to go on, (what we called) a "transport" to a labour camp, if your number was on one of these you had to be ready at 6:00 am the following morning.

I stayed at Stalag 20A until September when my number came up for a transport to a place on the German border called Wistritz. As usual we were put into cattle trucks, after a few days we arrived at Wirzits goods station and had about five miles to march to the outskirts of the town.An old power station, not very big, had been made into a camp. It was a cold, tall building, the windows went from the floor to the roof and the walls were tiled. All the machinery had been stripped out and replaced with roughly made bunks, three tiers high and in long lengths, so that about 20 men slept on each tier. Bed boards were laid across and straw was laid on, at one end the floor was raised to about three or four feet with steel steps and a hand rail around, the double doors at the entrance were huge .

Of course, we had been crawling with lice since we were first captured but, in this place, they seemed to bite even more. We used to sit and scratch when we came back from work. The day after we arrived we were assembled in the small square at the front of the building and counted and checked for our Stalag numbers. This was on a metal tag which we had to have around our necks at all times, it was about 2" x 2" with two slits in the centre, mine read "Kreigsgefangennimmer 7451 STALAG XXA STAMMERLAGER".

Later, we were marched down into the town, or rather the outskirts where there was a Jewish graveyard next to a potato field. We were given picks, shovels and 14lb hammers and made to smash all the tombstones and marble surrounds and load them onto a truck. It took us about four or five days and the next time we marched past, about a week later, it was all ploughed over as if there had been nothing there. Our next job here was pulling down some old buildings and chipping all the mortar off the bricks then stacking them. Another job was the making of an open air theatre outside the town on the hill side, like one of the Roman theatres cut out of the side of the hill with the town like a backcloth.

It was at this camp that I got a big surprise, when a prisoner became ill and couldn't work he was returned to the Stalag and replacements were sent back. Well, one night when we had finished work I was standing near the gate when two guards came up the road with four replacements from the Stalag. After they had been checked they were ready to be let in and I shouted to one who looked familiar, it was a lad called Harold York from near Eccles, my home. The last time I had seen him he was on a scaffold laying bricks for the houses I worked on. When I was called up two weeks before war was declared ( I was in the T.A.), I had said goodbye to them all and I never expected to see him in this place. Well, it cheered me up no end! Plus, I had a good friend, and believe me you needed them here. We got on very well and worked together and killed lice by the thousand. We used to sit cross legged on our bunks and see who could kill the most, but we never won the battle, they stuck with us till the end of the five years.

I was in this camp until November, when I developed bad feet. They used to get all the sick P.O.W's together and the guards would take them into the town to a medical centre. A doctor would look at us and give the guard in charge a letter to give to the commandant, we never knew what was in the letter. It was so cold in our camp that the Germans decided to move to a large house in a thick woods, we were marched over each day to prepare it. We made bunks in the rooms, the Germans put barbed wire round it and we moved in. It was great compared with the other camp but when we had been there a few days and were just getting settled I was told to parade early one morning because I was being sent back to the Stalag. I was unable to work, but I wasn't alone there were three others who were sick. I was really down in the dumps, Harold was too we were good mates.

We left about 5:30am with all our belongings, such as they were, a bowl, a tin for drinking, my army boots which were worn out with all the foot-slogging, and that's about it. I wore my clogs as it was bitter cold, we were marched to the railway station about four or five miles away, my feet were killing me and I had a job to keep up with the rest. We were going down a road that was half cobbles and half dirt and the cart ruts on the dirt side had frozen, my clogs made it hard going. We got to the station in good time for the train, we were going to travel in a carriage for a change, I took my clogs and foot rags off, it was heaven to sit. Finally we arrived back at Thorn where we were marched back to Fort 17 and searched.

The first job I got after being settled in at Fort 17 was with a party of about 50 men, we were taken across the Vistula by the railway bridge to the other side, which was the city side. There we were split up into groups of 10 with two guards, our group went to one of the barracks and we did various jobs such as cleaning out stables, sweeping yards and barrack squares. One of my jobs was cleaning muck from the stables, there were four of us and of course our bellies were nagging, we had eaten our 5th of a loaf long ago. Two of us wandered out of a back door whilst the guard was occupied elsewhere, we always carried our tin cans tied to our belts, we wandered around the back of the stables and just over the road was the back of the army kitchen.

Standing outside were three large wooden barrels about four foot high, after about five minutes a cook (a big fat one!) came out and emptied a bucket into one of the barrels, when he went back inside we were over the road like a shot. I looked in and about a fifth of the barrel contained the swill, it looked lovely. I couldn't reach the bottom so I let myself drop on one hand into the swill and I picked out the potatoes and bits of meat and cabbage. Before I could get out, the guard must have come over and he could just see my feet sticking out, he gave a roar and grabbed my feet, he booted my behind and chased us back to the stables. I still had a tin of stew, the other lad and I soon made short work of that and it was worth it.

The Poles were great, they used to take the risk of being shot when they used to throw small parcels of food to a marching column of Pow's and run like hell, but the Poles didn't have much for their own use.

Another job we started during the heavy snow, was on the Thorn Aerodrome (Luftwaffe). I was put on this along with 150 other men. It was a seven kilometre march and it was very difficult to walk on fairly deep snow. I only had my wooden clogs to wear because the stiff leather German boots used to cripple me, so I used to wear clogs and foot rags. It was a lot warmer to my feet, but the snow used to pile up and we had to pick the hard snow off every time this happened. Anyway, when we got back to the Airfield the Luftwaffe guard took over, they took us all out to the runways which were covered in deep snow, and we were each given a snowboard to brush all the snow off.

It was still snowing heavily, so we had to keep going back and forth all day long, but we got a good meal afterwards in the Luftwaffe canteen. They took us there after all the Germans had finished and we got what was left. It was great. I used to fill my tin, which was shaped like a kidney dish, and by the time we got back to Fort 17 it was frozen solid. But the guards who search us let us keep the stew in the tin, which was for my mate who was on a (what we used to call) "no grade "job. We were only on this job for a few weeks. It was about the time Coventry was heavily bombed. The Luftwaffe used to show real photos to those who came from Coventry, some of them took it hard.

The next job was a right swine, it had started to freeze very hard, but the river Vistula had not froze solid yet and I and 400 others had been detailed for a 24 hour day shift job, it was on the banks of the river . The German Pioneer Corp were laying a new railway track running parallel with the river, and our job was to unload the Dolomite stones from trucks and spread them out level so the Germans could lay railway lines.

The 400 were split into three groups for 3 x 8 hour shifts. I happened to be on the 4pm to 12pm shift and the next week 12pm to 8am. It was so cold, the Germans and guards had big oil drums with holes in and let us stand by the lines, a few at a time for 30 minutes, and we were given mittens to keep the frost off our hands. We also cut three holes in the empty cement bags and put them on as pullovers and the paper kept us warm. I had a French greatcoat, light blue and thin, but it was so big I could have got two in it, and the buttons were about 3ins apart!

We used to pass the next shift coming on under a railway bridge and we used to shout to our mates, when we got back to the fort we just dropped onto our bunks. By this time I had been put into Hut 2 under a Sgt. Major Calver of the Ox and Bucks L. Infantry. There were about 200 men in each hut, the body heat of so many men kept it sort of warm. The bunks had been made from pine trees split into planks and four tiers high with about six headboards and straw. I was on a bottom one about 18" high, I used to drag myself in and kick my clogs off, we never took our clothes off it was too cold, and they might be stolen.

When the bread was issued it was six men to a loaf, we used to gather round the table and one of the six had to cut it into six even pieces and it had to be cut dead straight. We took turns for the ends where it used to slope away. Some of us used to half the ration and save half for the morning but this was risky as it would get stolen through the night, most used to gobble it straight away. I was so hungry I could have eaten the whole loaf. The bowl of soup was issued shortly after, it would be be potato soup for a month, then barley soup, then vegetable soup. Sometimes the rats used to come out of the walls and get in the straw, sweat seemed to attract them, I often found my bed dragged away to the hut walls.

It was now getting near Xmas, and in November I got my first letter from my dad with two crumbled Woodbines in it, funnily enough I was not a smoker then, but I had started picking dog ends up whenever we went to work, you had to be real quick as everyone was after them. So I enjoyed those Woodbines it took away the craving for food for a while.

By now it was bitter cold and a rumour went round that Red Cross parcels would be issued at Christmas, just before we were told that it would be one parcel between 64 men. We were then told to get into a group of 64 men and each 64 was to decide how it was to be split up. We split into two groups of 32, then it was decided out of each group one man would pick the highest card and the highest card's group got the parcel of goodies, I wasn't in that group. What a shambles, with everyone just about starving we ran around watching every move. Some groups separated the stews and dished one between eight, such as a small tin of jam each man got a spoonful and so on. When Xmas Day came we didn't go to work and the Germans gave us three men to a loaf, some sausage and soup and the dinner was on a tin plate, mash, cabbage and a slice of pork, Wow! were we blown out, still some men went round shouting "5 cigarettes a bread ration!" At night the lights went out at 9 to 9:30pm, Boxing Day we had off work.

About a month after, the sores on my ankles were getting worse. The leather on the German boots I wore were very stiff, and this made it difficult to walk. My name was down for a working party No. 434, it was rumoured that it was a 6 kilometres march but a good one for getting food off the Poles. So on Sunday I cut holes in my boot about the size of half a crown to miss my sores. In camp we always wore wooden clogs, and I decided to go and see some mates at the other end of the fort, I told the lad who slept above me I wouldn't be long. When I came back the lad told me that Sgt Major Calver had been on hut inspection and had seen the boot which I had cut, he asked who the boot belonged to and the lad told him, I had to go to the main gate, he had taken the boot with him.

I went down to the main gate, it was next to the Commandants office, it was snowing heavily as I stood outside. Shortly the R.S.M (RSM Homer) in charge of the whole fort came out, he stepped in front of me and said "Is your name Johnson, lad?" I said "Yes" He said "Well, you made a right mess of the boot. Did you think you would get away with doing what you did?" You see a new consignment had arrived a few days earlier of British army boots from Geneva, but I didn't know this. Then he said "I'm sorry lad but I can't do anything now you had better go in."

I went up three steps into the corridor and knocked on the door saying Commandant, someone inside the office shouted "Come!" so I went in. It was a long room with a desk along one wall and pinned up was a large map of Britain. Sitting at this desk was a Feldfabel aged about 30, and standing in the middle was Sgt Jansen (well known as a bastard) he was holding my boot in his hand, I marched up to the desk and stood at attention. The Feldfabel spoke in English, he had the red white and black active service ribbon through his tunic button diagonally. He said "Why did you cut your German boot?" So I told him I had sores on my ankles, but Janson started yapping in German, I understood some words he kept repeating "sabotage", his voice rising to a shout, as he was walking up and down . At the back of me he lashed out with the boot across my ear and it caught my right cheekbone "Swinehund", was repeated a few times, the outcome was I was sentenced to eighteen days in the bunker.

The Feldfabel said he would give me five minutes to get back up to my hut and get my belongings and get back down here or he would send the guards up with fixed bayonets to get me. Well I shot out of that office and ran as fast as my clogs would let me. When I got back to my bunk, the lads said "what's up?" I told them I got eighteen days and had no time to explain. I grabbed my blanket, tin and my gas mask bag and dashed back down to the gate. When I got there the big fat jailer (he was fat too!!) was waiting for me, he gave me back my boot and told me to follow him, he always carried a thick stick like a truncheon and a big steel ring full of keys.

We walked across the parade ground into the brick building opposite, and up the left hand staircase. We went along a corridor into a stone room. He made me take my belt and braces off and he kept my boots there. Then we went back down the corridor to a door at the end, he opened the padlock and it opened outwards. There was another door also locked, this opened inwards, as it opened he gave me a push into a long room with an arched ceiling, but it was narrow. On the right was a long wooden platform 3ft off the floor and 6ft wide, built with a slope towards the wall. The low end of the board had been fixed, this was to stop you sliding off. There was 16 men in the room , and it was stinking, in one corner was a jam tin for us to use as a latrine and it was full to the brim.

While in the bunker we were taken out in the morning after the men had gone to work, and we had a wash with no soap, emptied the jam tin and we got 6 to a loaf dry and water only. We got a ladle of soup every three days. The big fat guard watched us all the time, until we got back to the pen. I got 18 days but I served 21, most of the others did more than their sentence, the Germans just forgot to let you out. Sometimes we had to have exercise, that meant we had to run round the parade ground. My pants were miles too big around the waist and when we were made to run I had to hold them up and, because it was freezing, I kept changing hands so I could flap the other. Though it was only 15 minutes, we were just about knackered.

After I came out, I was very depressed. I was put on a working party of 20 men it was to work in Fort 15 which was about a mile away. Four hundred British and Canadian Officers who had been living in castles had been put into Fort 15 as a punishment, they had one batman between 16 officers. These batmen had luckily been picked at the beginning and had never been out in the camps or Forts, but had it cushy just cleaning up after officers who also never worked. We were sent to help these batmen out as the officers must have been protesting, well this was OK by me we got better soup and the bunks were better.

The officers were always plotting to escape, (they had all day to do it) they used to plan it like they were planning a campaign with a proper committee. I'll have to tell you about some of these attempts while I was there, all of them came to nothing because there was a stooge in the Fort passing as an Officer but they never found out who. One attempt was when two of us used to load all the swill onto a cart pulled by an old horse, and driven by an old Pole. Now, one day, two submarine Officers decided to hide at the bottom of the cart. We covered them over with all the sloppy swill (which we would have eaten in the other Forts), and they had cardboard tubes to breath through. One of us kept the Pole occupied and gave him some pipe tobacco, finally he set off across the drawbridge when he got to the other side he was stopped by the Guard who looked in the cart but let him out of the gate.

Outside the gate were German quarters and German officers quarters, which the old Pole had to drive his horse and cart past. At the end of the road was a guard box and a barrier. We went through this as the barrier was raised but following behind us on a bicycle was a Feldfabel and as he rode alongside us he stopped the cart, got off his bike, took out his bayonet and poked the swill in the cart, of course up popped the Sub Officers. They were returned to the Fort.

Another attempt was engineered by the Canadian pilots. They had made a strong plaited rope and had practised for some time on top of the Fort, which was the size of a football pitch, to lasso a peg in the ground until they had mastered it, but only one did out of the six that took part. When they were ready, they went to one of the windows level with the top of the wall and one night after a few attempts hooked the rope onto the spiked rails on the opposite side of the moat, which was about 80ft deep. They went hand over hand to the other side, but suddenly all was lit up by our lights and a ring of armed guards who were waiting for the men as they climbed over the rails; another instance of the stooge in the Fort.

Of course all this news of escape attempts always came after it was over. Us ordinary soldiers were kept separate, and in charge was a R.S.M of the artillery, him and the Stabsfeldfabel, (who was in charge of our guards), were both wounded in Norway and were put in the same hospital next to each other, so they became sort of friends.

The German SM was known as scarface, because he had a nasty scar on his cheek, but he was pretty good as Germans go. He disliked officers both German and English. He used to call us out at about 10 pm each night on the drawbridge for roll call. Their were only about 30 of us, so after counting was over, he used to stand in front of us like an orchestra leader and we had to sing "Abide with me" then he let us back to the Fort. It was said that him and the R.S.M used to drink schnapps some nights on the Q.T (schnapps supplied by scarface), but this was changed as we were made to march from Fort 17 to Fort 15 in the morning and back at night, so it meant that we were back in the hut two.

Soon after I was put on another working party and about two weeks later we were all stopped from going to work (which was unusual) and Fort 17 was closed, and the Gestapo came in . We were all paraded on the square, the Germans had set a table up at one end, and we had to go up to the table and produce our disc, number and rank. They had all our papers, and it was all checked with our files including the photo they took when we first arrived in Fort 17, this took all day and all night.

I'll try and explain the cause of all this. In the working party I used to be on, that travelled each day to Fort 15, three officers had swopped places with three privates, they had been doing this a number of times. This enabled them to get into Fort 17 and find out about where other working parties went to, and as these men were pilots in the R.A.F., it was a party on an airfield they were interested in. Finally, when they had investigated enough, they got onto the airfield job.

All this was unknown to the Germans, there were none missing at roll calls both at Fort 15 and 17, and it was kept from everyone except R.S.M. Homer and a few N.C.O's who had to arrange the swops. Finally the day came when they were ready, three privates stayed at Fort 15 in the place of three officers. It was so complicated that the stooge in Fort 15 never found out. The R.A.F Officers got into Fort 17 then swopped with the three on the air force working party. When they got to the airfield it was snowing heavily, but they intended to get away in a plane.. They chose a Junker but had been spotted by some Luftwaffe Security Officers, and of course they were caught.

They said they were officers but when a check was made at Fort 15, all were present at the count but three privates were missing on the working party. That's what caused all the checking, of course the Germans found out what had happened, by the time they did we were all freezing, at the time we didn't know what had happened.

Another attempt to escape from Fort 17 was made by a Sgt. and a Cpl., the Sgt. could speak perfect German as he had worked in a bank. They had planned it all for some time, N.C.O's did not work, only privates. The plan was for them to be salesmen from the West part of Germany. They had Answiess's (identity cards), all supplied by the Poles, but us ordinary soldiers never knew how this was achieved, you had to be in the know. Anyway they got out and the story goes that they were about 15 miles away waiting for a train to take them nearer to Warsaw, as Russia was not in the war yet they were making for Russia.

As they were waiting they had to act as normal because there were a group of German police also waiting for the train, they were standing behind the Sgt. and Cpl. who by now were beginning to get nervous. So the Sgt. lit a cigarette and was puffing away when a tap on his shoulder made him turn. There was a police Cpt who asked to see their Answiess, he looked at them both and the identity cards but he wasn't satisfied, so he asked them to come with him to the Police Post, and because there were two other police with the Cptn they went.

When they got inside the police post, there were lots of police and Gestapo men and when they saw the identity cards, the game was up. On the I.D cards was a Swastika stamp, and the Poles must have photographed them because the swastika was the opposite way round. They were only away a day, but what made the police suspicious was the English cigarette that the Sgt was smoking. When they were returned to Fort 17, they had been badly beaten and had been put in an underground bunker for two weeks.

Shortly after, we were all moved about two miles away to Camp 13A next to Fort 13 . In charge was Sgt. Major McDonald and it was here I met some of my mates out of 鈥淒鈥� Company, Stan Bookman and Vinie Neal, but only for a short while as they were sent away on a work transport. I never saw them again. We worked on smashing boulders on a deserted wilderness about a seven kilometre march away. We were worked hard all day the 14lb hammers got heavy, then we loaded the stones onto lorries, it was the hot summer of 1941 and each night when we got back to camp we used to all dash for the shower, which was a jam tin with holes in and a drum of water above, this you tilted by pulling a string which tipped the cold water into the one with holes in it.

Some weeks after I had been here I began to feel bad, I could hardly breathe, I felt terrible. We were on parade one morning and as the Jerries were counting us, I just "conked out", I saw the ground coming up to meet me and I was out. The next time I woke up I was in a bed, yes a proper bed!!! I couldn't think where I was, it was a large room with about 16 men in it, all in bed. The lad in the next bed to me was a cockney, he said it was Fort 14, the P.O.W. Hospital, it's the first I knew there was one!

I had pleurisy and it was bad. A French doctor came and stuck a needle in my back somewhere and syringed about half a bowl of green stuff off me, from then on I slowly recovered. It was here that I found Freddy Stott in a room of his own, he was in my Company and we were in the same Drill Hall. He had dropsy and was due for repatriation, he died soon after getting home. In this hospital there were lots of wounded men, some with one leg, no hands, blind. Well I wasn't in long, two weeks and I was sent to Fort 13. It had been a lovely time in Fort 14, proper beds and sheets, the soup was much better, and I made friends with a Londoner, a little fellow who was waiting for repatriation.

Now I was back fit for work. I had never been to Fort 13 before, it was different from Fort 17. First, we went through a huge gate in a 12ft wall topped with broken glass, then a few hundred yards on we came to a drawbridge over an 80ft dry moat. Before we crossed, there was a German sentry, and there was a path down to the moat bottom. We reported to the sentry or our guard did, then he let us across the drawbridge which was 200 yards long. The building was half in the moat and half above ground level, a massive building of small dark blue bricks, a sombre building. We marched across and into an arched doorway, inside we were handed over to one of our Sgt Majors who allotted us a bunk in an arched room with about 20 men to a room. I was in here for about three or four months during the summer of 1941.

It was hard work every day, this fort was exactly the same as Fort 15. One Sunday I was going over the drawbridge (we were allowed to go down into the bottom of the moat) as the guard watched us. Suddenly a voice shouted "Johnno", I turned around and saw a face at the barred windows. You see there were cells under the ground beside the ramp that went to the bottom. Well, it was a lad called Len Rigby from Eccles, one of our lads from the T.A. I was surprised to see him as he was away at a working a working camp or "Stammerlager". When I asked him what he was doing in the "Bunker" he just grinned and told me he was suspected of sabotage.

It seems they were in cattle trucks and another train stopped alongside them, later the train moved off and after a few miles it caught fire and the P.O.W's were blamed. And of course it was him that had done it and he was waiting in the Bunker to be taken away. I only had a roll of tobacco called "Maryoco", so I let him have it. Then the guard shouted for me to move away, I never saw Len again.

It was from this Fort that a batch of P.O.W's were sent to a re-patriation camp. They were all ill and wounded, some were blind. On the day they were to go, we all lined the drawbridge to cheer them off. Those who were left behind were lined up nearby, some of us gave them messages to give to their parents or wives, so we cheered them off.

It was the winter of 1941-2 that I got a poisoned foot and my ankle went up like a balloon, all shiny and puffed up. It was agony even to bear a blanket on it. So the next day I was put on a stretcher to be taken to Fort 14 again, four men and a guard were detailed to carry me,three of the lads were the same height but the fourth was smaller, so every time they moved the stretcher it jolted, so they carried me shoulder height. It was freezing cold with snow on the roads. The sky was blue, and I could see the German fighters practising in the sky. But the pain was terrific, I had it out of the cover, my foot, I mean. I was certainly glad when we got to Fort 14, so were the lads who carried the stretcher over all that snow and ice. My foot was killing me by now and when I hopped off the stretcher they took me straight into the surgery and the surgeon operated, gave me anaesthetic and said count to ten. The next thing I remember was coming round and the surgeon was finished. He wore horn -rimmed glasses and when I looked up it just looked like a bicycle, and, still under the gas, I burst out laughing I couldn't help it. The surgeon said I was very lucky, as the anaesthetic had run out he would have had to cut it without. I was glad too!

I was taken to a bed in the same ward as before, and slept for a long while. When I awoke the next day I was in pain, it was to last for a few days before I got better. After about two weeks I was sent back to Fort 13 to work, my mates had gone, they had been sent to a working camp, I soon got some other mates.

We were put on a job digging trenches for large concrete pipes about a two or three mile march away. It was coming up to Christmas now, for Xmas we got one parcel per man and extra rations from the Germans. It was so cold that we were stopped for the time being as the ground was frozen solid. It was great being off work for once. I started to recover, it's marvellous how the body starts to repair itself after a time. I often found this out, that you should keep on and not give in. Some lads let themselves go and they got worse, letting the situation get them down, but it was the same with dysentery. I didn't get it as severe as a lot of others, but then there were a lot like me who sort of got used to the rations and work, I think it must be that some are different than others. We used to moan and some of us would predict the end of the war, but no-one was ever right. When the date had passed we just used to say "Oh, it's sure to be this year, next year or never." It sometimes looked as if it would go on and on as the Germans were so confident.

Soon after Christmas my name along with another 200 came up on the board. We were to parade with our gear, that was 1 tin mug, 1 mess tin 1 pair of wooden clogs. Next morning 250 of us paraded on the square at 6.00am. It was freezing but had at last stopped snowing, it lay about 18ins to 2ft deep. We were checked and counted about five times numbers and names. At last we moved off to Thorn railway sidings where we were loaded into cattle trucks about 20 to each. It was still dark and started again to snow pretty heavily. Of course we didn't know our destination but we heard that we were going to three different camps.
It was bitter cold in the truck, I wrapped my thin blue greatcoat around myself to try and keep the cold out, when we got down in the straw it was warmer. We travelled slowly to a place called Bromberg where about half of us were marched to a camp at Brabur a mile or so from the Vistula. It was a brand new camp the huts were built with a parade ground in front which turned into a quagmire each time it rained. We were paraded at 6.30am for roll call and to be counted, then one hour later we were paraded again and marched off to work. This was digging trenches with pick and shovel. These pipe trenches were 20ft deep in places and 12ft wide. The Poles put the shuttering boards up and the tree trunk struts as we each dug down 500mm. Sometimes there was 18 men in one bay with platforms every 6ft and a man on each platform with only room at the bottom for one man digging, the deeper we went the more men in the team.

One day we were down to about 15ft when suddenly the Poles who were working further along putting the boards up for us started shouting and waving their hands about and we knew that something was wrong. We got out of the trench in double quick time. We dashed to the place where the Poles were fixing the boards, two of them were buried as the sides of the trench had caved in. We'd had a lot of rain for the past few days and a pocket had formed behind the boards and the weight of the wet sand and clay had smashed the side and buried them. We all dug like mad but it was too late, when we had got them out they were dead.

We were taken back to the camp, it was time for finishing anyway. The camp was situated at the bottom of a very steep hill ours was the smaller of two camps. The bigger camp had about 800 men in, and the railway was between the two. The big camp lay directly at the foot of the hill, ours was across the railway line about a quarter of a mile away. We would be taken over for visits if the commandant felt like it and we would put boxing gloves on and some of the regular army boxers used to teach us. I remember being taught by a wonderful man named Harry Nicholl's V.C, he won the V.C in France but none knew about it until the Germans called a parade in the big camp, and a German General and other Officers read out the citation and some picture post cuttings, I did a pencil sketch of the action copied off one cutting and gave it to him.

He was about 6'4" and broad, it was rumoured that at one time he had 36 machine gun bullets in him, when the Germans found him they took them all out except one which was near his heart. He was an inspiration to us young ones and whenever I thought of what he had been through and done, it helped a lot when I felt down, but he was in the big camp across the railway. We in the little camp had a boxer called Alf Saunders, he was a regimental boxing champ from London. He used to lead the Germans a dance. Once when the guards were searching us every time we returned from work, which meant you couldn't get anything into the camp, if say, you flogged a pair of socks to a Pole for half a loaf of bread, it was taken off you.

So anyway, this Alf caused some bother, one day we came home from work and the Guards halted us for searching we stood with our arms on our heads while each one was searched. Most of us had nothing, but when it came to Alf Saunders the Guard gave a shout of glee, he had found a parcel up his back. So he let us go back into the camp, while Alf was kept out. When the gates closed we all stopped near the wire and watched what was going to happen, the Guard unwrapped a mass of paper and string. I don't know how long it took Saunders to wrap up the parcel, he must have got the paper and string off the Poles, anyway Saunders was stood there with a couple of Guards watching him while another was slowly getting madder. Finally he got the paper off and there in the middle was a small piece of coal about as big as a walnut.

By now the Jerries were blazing mad. The outcome was that two of the biggest Guards took him into one of their rooms to knock him about, but Alf was a good boxer. They were in for quite a while and when they came out the two Jerries had their coats off and were sweating like pigs, Alf was let out and brought back into the camp. They made him stand in a small triangle marked out on the ground, he had to stand for three hours and the guards had orders that, if he moved he was to be shot, so Alf stood.

Another time , in the winter when it used to get cold, Alf and two or three others gathered all the duckboards up in the square. Of course they must have done it when we were all locked up in the huts, then they proceeded to smash them up to burn and dished wood around to all the huts. We were warm that night, but at 6:30am we were all woken up to shouting and bawling by the guards about the missing duckboards. They had been put there mainly for the Commandant to walk about the camp, we suffered for a few days by being searched at every opportunity and we were worked extra time.

The digging was hard work, we had to move nine cubic metres, this meant one man digging (we used to take turns on the bottom) and the rest of us shovelling it up to the top of the trench. The Germans had a massive chain bucket tipper but it would only reach ten to twelve feet down, it had two big wide tracks and used to creep forward slowly and for about twenty buckets it would scoop the soil or sand and, at the top, it would tip it into an escalator belt.

One day, when we were all resting by this machine, I went to have a good look at it, it was massive but old and on the side was a small brass plate near the cab, it said "Massey Harris, Manufactured in Trafford Park, 1914". I thought "My God", this was about a mile from my home in Eccles, then the guards started shouting at us "back to work you schwinehunds! Arbiet schnell".

One day , when it was pouring down hard, we said we wouldn't go down the trench. We had no protection from the rain and the guards had capes, besides we were afraid the sides of the deep trench would cave in. A few weeks earlier the two Poles had died laying the concrete pipes in the bottom, they died before we could dig them out. So we argued with the guards until one of them threatened to shoot us if we didn't get down, luckily the Stabsfelfabel (Sgt Major) came to the site and played hell with the Unterofficer in charge, saying he was out of his mind, and ordering us all back to camp.Our camp was at the bottom of a steep hill and the path was like a river but was I glad, we were soaking but had the day off.

There was an attempt to escape once in the big camp, a lad tried to dig under the barbed wire fences, they buried the wire about two feet deep and this lad tried to tunnel under it but the guard on duty came to the wire and shot him dead. He was buried in the local cemetery, the coffin was draped in a Union Jack sent from Stalag, and a padre was in front of the coffin. We were allowed to line the road in front of the camp to pay our respects. Before this happened, there had been a number of escapes, but they had all been caught, three men got four miles from camp and had been away for two weeks, they had travelled at night and laid up during the day. They thought they were miles away and must have been going around in circles, anyway they were brought back to camp in a terrible state, I don't know what happened to them.

At Christmas a concert was organised in the big camp and we were invited, they had a band from another camp, it was great a sort of concert with some of the lads dressed up as girls, where they got the clothes from I don't know but I believe they had to hand them back after. Well, when it was over, we weren't allowed to sing "God Save the King" so we all stood up and sand "Land of Hope and Glory".

We really gave it all we had, just to show the Jerries we were not down. Our Sgt Major (a Scotsman) was at the front with other NCO's and the Padre, we were just halfway through the song when there was such a roar from the back of the hall. It was the swine of an Unterofficer with his revolver out, he ran over the forms to the front brandishing his gun, when he got to the Sgt Major he screamed at him to stop singing and threatened to shoot him. The Sgt and the rest of us carried on to the end, the German thought we were singing "God Save the King".

The Guards at our camp used to get their food from the top of the hill at the back of the big camp, so 3 or 4 men would be detailed to carry it down escorted by a Guard. On the way down with the dixie of soup (thicker than ours). The lads used to spit a few gozzlers into the stew, it used to be well shook up by the time we got to the bottom. The guard couldn't see this as he was at the rear. I often wonder if it was ever suspected, you see the Labour Corp kitchens was up the hill.

We were in this camp until 1942, then we were moved to Danzig, some of us went to Stolzenburg Camp, some to the railway opposite the main workshops and wagon repair yard. It was a huge set of lines some through lines and some sidings. We were about 75 men and when we were marched down the path at the side of the railway we came to this brand new camp. It was rumoured that it was built for the French women but the Germans had put barbed wire around it and put us in. It was the best camp we had been in, it was just one big hut with 16 to a room. The Sgt. and Cpl. had a room of their own, the food wasn't increased but a lot better, the bowl of soup much thicker and jam, sometimes.

We did various jobs through Danzing. We used to march through the streets to work and the Poles used to smile at us, sometimes risked throwing a cigarette. We used to pick dog ends up as we weren't allowed to march on the pavement. Sometimes we passed concentration camp women going the opposite way, they looked terrible in these dirty long striped nightgowns and shaven heads. But at the time we knew nothing of concentration camps, they were just other prisons to us.

After some months we stopped going through Danzing and we started to work across the railway goods yards, and repair yards opposite the camp. There were six sets of railway lines, and the guards used to take us straight across the lines, often there were lines of waggons standing waiting to be shunted to some other line. 大象传媒 was for the railway, we used to unload coal from the coal waggons, 20 to 30 tonnes working in pairs with big coal shovels. We had to throw it out and over into the coal compound.

Some of us were quicker than others but we all helped each other to finish, the sooner we had all emptied the waggons, the sooner we were taken back to camp. It sometimes took us from eight in the morning to six at night. After a good while on day work they put me on night shift with a lad called Hawkins from London. This was filling skips with coal and pushing them on lines to the crane, it used to load up the engines, some had big white letters on the tender "RADER MUSSEN ROLLEN FUR DEN SIEG" and some had "IRST MAL `DENKON' UND DEN RIESEN". The first one read "Wheels must roll for victory" and the second "First think and then travel". The engines had armour plates that folded round the cab to protect the driver and firemen from Air attack, they also had a wooden box full of assorted round wood plugs to hammer in the holes of the tender if it was shot. One night we never stopped, we worked with two old Poles, and a party Obermiester with a red armband and a black swastika and a big 45 revolver. He came round every half hour to make sure we were still there.

When it wasn't so busy we would sit in the Poles little hut, at least it was warm because it was bitter cold outside. They couldn't speak English but somehow with signs and nods we had some kind of understanding. They didn't have much food for themselves but sometimes they would to share a slice of bread with us, (marvellous people). We would be taken back to camp by one of our Guards at about 7.30 or 8,00 A.M just when the rest of the lads were going to work. Whilst we were sitting in this little hut, which was dark and gloomy as it was lit by a very low bulb and we had a little stove, we would plot about escaping. Hawkins, me and the two Poles. One night it was snowing and bitter cold as we filled the skips and pushed them on mine rail lines towards the crane which lifted them up to fill the locomotives. It was a very busy night, the engines had come from the Russian Front, some had holes in the water tender that were plugged with wooden plugs, the engines had been under fire from Russian planes, some had come from places like Konsburg, Minsk and Warsaw.

About two weeks later I was taken off nights and put on days, that same week we had just got to work one morning and I was talking to Harold Fletcher my mate, when up comes the boss of the railway depot. He was called "Romart" and wore a black uniform with a swastika, armband and revolver. He called out " You come here" pointing at me. Of course I was surprised and a bit worried, for you never knew what they were up to, anyway as it turned out it was my lucky day.

As I followed him we went to the stores, a fairly large place about 50ft by 30ft, up some wooden steps. There were buckets all around with nuts and bolts in all sizes, washers, nails and all sorts of gear for wagon and locomotive repairs, in the middle was an office with glass all around. Romart took me into the office and there was an old man sitting at the desk, Romart said "This is the prisoner to help you with the heavy work, he is to work with you each day, watch him, he is your responsibility. I will check twice a day." He left me standing there, the old man looked at me and said his name was 'Leo' I noticed he had a Nazi party badge in his lapel. He said, "sit down Johnny" they always called us Johnny.

I worked for Leo for a few months, it was great, no more filling skips or shovel work, I got to like Leo, sometimes he would slip me a slice of his bread at dinner time (now we never got any soup until we finished work). I would sit in the corner of his little office while he had his meal, he had two sons in the U-Boats and he would talk about them, he was very worried, they were a bit older than me. One of my jobs was to unload two or three drums of oil and take them round to a small building where oil, rags and other things were given to engine drivers and firemen before setting out on their shift. I used to take away the empty drums and put full ones in their place with a tap in each. It was like a little store and a wooden partition separated it from a lean-to in the back, where I used to stack the empty drums and wooden boxes.

In this small store worked an old woman with grey hair, she was in charge of everything and used to issue the things out to the drivers. I was friendly with her and she also sometimes slipped me a piece of bread or a couple of potatoes. When I had done the work for her I used to go back upstairs to old Leo.

At the end of the day, the guard would come for me and I would join the others, then we would cross the lines back to camp. Our camp was level with the railway lines and high up behind us was the main road into Danzig. Just off this was a side road which lead to another camp, a very large camp called Stolzenburg. This camp had army doctors and a camp hospital. One day they sent a gramophone down to our camp for a week before it had to go back to Stalag, there were only a few German records with it.

When I got to work on Monday I was putting a new drum of oil in the stores for the old woman and, as there was no one near, I asked her if she knew anyone who had any records. The woman said that she had some English ones "White Christmas鈥�, 鈥淎n Apple for the Teacher鈥�, 鈥淪eptember鈥� and 鈥淥ne Foot in the Gutter" by Joe Loss and one or two others. She wanted some coffee and chocolate for them so I said I would see the lads. That night I told my mates I could get six records off the German woman but she wanted coffee and chocolate, so we went to all the other rooms and had a collection, not much - one small bar of chocolate and a packet of coffee!

Next day when we went to work I was ready to make a deal with the woman. When I talked to her, she hadn't got the records with her not only that but she was being sent to a depot outside of town. She said that as she worked until 10:00pm she would go home and bring them back if I could get out of camp before 10:00pm, this was going to be difficult! When we all knocked off work and were taken back to camp, I told the lads in my room what had happened. We talked it over and decided that I would have to go out over the wire, I don't mind telling you that I was scared to death. I put the stuff for the swap inside my battledress and buttoned it up, it was about 8:00pm now and dark outside, we figured that this would be the best time to go as the guards would be ready for changing.

Four of us went out to the corner of the wire near the ditch, Three of the lads helped me up about 12ft high, when I got to the top I parted the barbed wire, put both feet on the top and jumped. I thought I had broken my legs when I landed in the dark, I lay panting in the long grass for a few minutes listening and feeling for the stuff in my tunic, I thought if the guard comes I'll be caught. After a while, all I could hear was one of the lads whispering through the wire that it was all clear, then I got up and ran, at a crouch, towards the railway lines which were not far away.

There was a line of stationary waggons, I made for these, got under one and waited. Then on to the next line of waggons; I had to watch out for railway police now as they were always up and down with powerful torches. Eventually, I got to the stores only to find that there were two engine drivers changing shifts. I had to hide in a little wooden lean-to which was at the back, hiding there in the dark, listening to the woman and one of the drivers talking, I was shaking! After about fifteen minutes, which seemed like hours, they eventually left and there was just the woman. I knew I had to be quick and move into the office. When she saw me she said "Johnny, what are you doing here?" so I quickly told her that I had the chocolate and some coffee. As it turned out I only took a few minutes to give her the stuff and she passed over the records.

They were small plastic records that you could bend nearly round, I had never seen these sort before and I asked if she was sure that they would play, she said they would. One was Bing Crosby singing "White Christmas", "September", "An Apple for the Teacher" and "Love in Bloom", also some Joe Loss records and Harry Roy. I was in a hurry now to get back so I packed them in my shirt and buttoned up my tunic, then I went out and dropped on all fours like a dog and made for the first line of waggons. I was gasping for breath, not being very fit, so I just lay there between the sleepers till I got my breath back. Then I could hear a goods train coming so I waited until it passed, I ran across ducking under the other waggons till I reached the camp.

Before I could get close to the wire I had to watch where the guards were, me being in the dark I had a good view and they must have been somewhere near the gates, talking. I got to where I had jumped over and hid in the long grass again, two of the lads were waiting for me and I whispered "catch the records when I throw them over", they caught them OK. Now I had to get up the 12ft wire and back in, this was easier than getting out but jumping down was just as bad, anyway I made it OK.

When I got inside our room we were all excited. Sam Probin, Johnny Fenwick, Jonesey and Harold Fletcher were all looking at the records, everyone was pleased that, at last, we could listen to something that reminded us of home. We only had the gramophone for another week. The records were passed on to all the other rooms.

This camp was the best we had ever been in and, as there were only seventy five of us, we didn't have as many fights over stealing or other arguments. There was one bad thing that happened, Red Cross parcels started to come through and we got a parcel every two weeks. The Germans used to store them in room in their billet, the Sgt in charge of would go and draw the parcels until one day they stopped coming through. We were told it was because of bombing around Berlin and Lubecke, eventually it came to the last issue and there were several parcels short. Our Sgt kept the key to the room, he was going in during the day, when we were at work, and helping himself. He didn't think he would be found out when there were plenty of parcels, but of course he was, he was sent back to Stalag and a new Sgt replaced him, I don't mind telling you that there was hell on in the camp that week.

Well, eventually the cushy job came to an end and I was put on night shift with a cockney called Hawkins. The new job was raking the fires and cinders out of the engines, this was in a pit. One of us used to go in the cab and push the hot clinkers out and one used to go underneath and open the bottom to rake the ashes out. It was heavy work, the rakes were about seven feet long and very heavy, this used to go on all night. The Worksmeister, who carried a revolver at his hip, came round on the hour to make sure we were busy. we used to be taken across the lines by a guard at 10:00pm and he used to come for us at 7:30am. All the rest of the lads were ready for work by then. This job went on until we evacuated the camp, but it was to be many months before that happened.

The engine would come to the ashpit and the drivers and fireman would leave it for us to clean out, but not the fire, we used to push the clinkers to the back and rake the fire to the front, by the time we had done this the new driver and fireman would arrive to take the engine away. We used to have some good chats to some of them and try to get some news off them about the Russian front, by now it was becoming obvious that the Russians were getting nearer.

When Fletcher and I were on the coal unloading job earlier in the year, about March I think, an RAF Sgt appeared in camp one night, smuggled in by the Polish underground. We were all a bit suspicious, we thought the Jerries had planted a stooge on us. He was hidden through the day, it was a big risk as sometimes we had snap searches by the guards, it depended on how the Commandant felt. At night, when the guards had locked the door, we would sit around the table and talk to this Sgt. I can't remember now where he came from in England but two of our lads came from the same town and, of course, they would name certain places and streets to try and catch him out. He was only in camp two or three days, then he had to be smuggled out (this was before I was put on nights with Hawkins). He mingled with us, when we were being counted we would assemble in threes, it was tricky to fit an extra man in but we did.

Harold Fletcher and me were the only two with hats on so it was planned that we two take the airman as far up the lines towards Danzig where he was to be picked up by the Polish underground (we had never seen these people but we had heard of them). There were always long lines of railway waggons five or six lines abreast and the guards always took us across so we all had to duck under the buffers to cross , it was easy to slide behind some waggons, wait till the guards had crossed , then we took the airman as far as we dared before we would be missed. We said goodbye to him and wished him luck, we wished we could have gone with him.

By the time we got back to where we were working the rest of the lads were messing about to delay the count, this usually began as soon as the guards were ready, we were just in time to get in line. I often wonder what happened to that airforce lad. You might ask why we didn't try to escape? Well the time element, we would have been missed very soon because we were counted coming in and going out, and last thing at night before the doors were locked. Plus, you needed a compass and map, civvie clothes, our battledress had a yellow triangle on it's back and on one leg, also the police were always asking for identity cards so it was not so easy. Some of our lads worked on repairs to railway waggons, the Germans were always in a hurry for them and often handfuls of sand were put in the axle boxes, until the police suspected and they were taken off the job.

Once I got taken by Romart to Gdnya, the Germans named it Guten Haven. It was about seven miles away and while there I saw a pocket battleship in the docks. It was stripped of it's superstructure. We would collect nuts, bolts, cleaning powder and all sorts of things for Leo's store, a guard and I were on the back of a waggon.

In Ggnya once in 1944 there had been trouble with Mussolini and the King of Italy. The Germans were rounding up the Italian army and marching them as prisoners down the main street. About Easter Sunday 1944, it was our Sunday off (we used to get one Sunday off in four)) the air raid siren went about 12:00 am and soon after about fifty American Fortresses came over Danzig and dropped bombs. Some were shot down with flak and we could see the crews baling out. Then, at night, the RAF came over but passed our camp and bombed Gdnya, nearly hitting a pow camp there. It was nerve wracking because we were locked in the hut and the flak shrapnel pattered on the roof, but it was the bombs that kept us on tenterhooks until the all clear sounded.

One night in the Summer, after we had finished work, we lay on the grass outside the hut getting some fresh air before being shut up for the night. A train pulled up about five sets of lines away from the camp. It was a cattle truck and heavily armed, a guard was on each truck. As it stopped, the guards all jumped down, each had a Tommy gun, we knew there were prisoners in these cattle trucks because that was the way we were transported. We all crowded against the barbed wire thinking we would see some new prisoners and get some news. When the guards opened the doors, bawling and shouting "Rouse", "Rouse" there were women and children and old men jumping from the trucks. It was quite high for women and children to jump and most of them fell to the ground.

They were Jews and the trucks were packed. The guards were hitting them and poking them with their guns and shouting. Some women had babies in their arms, it was a pitiful sight I can tell you. We all shouted at the guards but ducked out of sight as they let off bursts of fire at us, all our own guards came and shut us in the huts till the Jews were marched away, later we got a real roasting from the Commandant.

By September 1944 there were signs that the wasn't going so good for the Germans, trainloads of wounded soldiers would pass the camp en route back to Germany and trainloads of tanks and troops passed the other way en route for the front. They often stopped nearby, we could see the troops in the cattle waggons with the doors open, usually playing cards, sometimes they would get out to stretch their legs, being inquisitive they would see us standing near the barbed wire and come over for a chat. I remember once when a group came over, when they found out that we were British they called one soldier over and it was Max Schmelling, the boxer. He was a PE instructor and had a finger missing, he spoke good English and said he was on his way to Russia. We got cigarettes off them, they were just soldiers and all of them were OK, a whistle sounded when they had to go back to the train.

Around November, a red cross train stopped right next to the camp, there was a row of signals right next to the camp and they were often on red. This train was all Pullman coaches, most of the passengers were frostbite cases from Memmel, it was some sight.

Hawkins and I were on night shifts on the engine pit, some of the trains were now coming in with holes in the water tank which were plugged full of wood. They were being attacked by Russian planes each day. The engine cabs had 3/4" of steel plates on hinges so that they folded round the open part of the cab, protecting the engine driver and fireman. We used to have a good snoop around the cabs looking for left over food, but we never found any!

Time passed and it came to Christmas 1944/45, for some weeks before the Russian gunfire was getting nearer and louder, at night we could see a half circle of red glow from the Russian artillery. The sky used to glow from the direction of the East Prussian area East of Danzig. After the New Year things started to get really hot, bombers were attacking the railway sidings, air raids were getting worse. We wondered if we would be left to the Russians or transported out. We had long since run out of Red Cross parcels and the guards were getting jittery. In January Hawkins and I were working one night and the engines were queuing up for coal and water, one of the engine drivers, a pole, told us that Danzig was nearly encircled, little did we know that this was our last shift. When we got back to camp on the 8th January everyone was buzzing around talking about moving out. The lads didn't go to work that day and the swine of a commander came into camp and told us to pack up our belongings and be ready to move off at midday.

We were all for it, Fletcher and I got our gear together, I had an old Polish army pack and Harold one too, we stuffed what we had into the packs, we didn't have much! Harold had more parcels from home, so he had more than me. We put our soup bowls and a tin can, and any Red Cross parcels that were left in the German stores in our packs (about one and a half parcel each).
At 11:00 am we were all packed and ready to go, it was freezing cold, the snow was about two feet deep and it was still snowing heavily. We had a last look around the camp, this had been the best camp we had been in, good lads and fairly good bunks. We were told to take two blankets each, so you can imagine what we looked like. Fletcher and I had railway caps, they were warm and kept the snow off us.

Everyone was excited, the Russian guns were very close now, they were bombarding the towns a few miles East and South of Danzig. We all had a feeling it was too late to get away now but the guards started shouting for us to form up outside the camp, beside the railway. There were 75 of us and, of course, we all thought that, being near the railway, we would be put into cattle trucks. Little did we know at that time that it would be Shank's Pony all the way! We lined up in threes, the guards counted us and shouted "March!" Just past the camp, there was a steep path that led up to the road, high above the level of the railway. I had been up there before to a large camp that was a couple of miles away called Stalzenburg camp, and that was where we were heading. We slithered up the path, don't forget that we had been in the camp for fifteen months and the furthest we had walked was just across the railway lines, by the time we got to the road at the top we were sweating like hell. When we got to the top the guards got us all in line again on the roadway, there were about fifteen or twenty guards and off we marched to the big camp.

There was lots of activity on the road to Danzig, tanks and lorries in convoys and troops going into the city. We crossed the road to Stalzenburg. It took us twenty minutes to get there. When we arrived, there was a huge parade ground surrounded by huts and it was littered with discarded clothes, tins and empty Red Cross boxes. By now, it was getting dark and we were all put into one hut, given some soup and locked in. This was a very big camp and next to it was an open camp with some French workers, I don't know what happened to them.

Next morning, we were all rousted out double quick and lined up in a group of 500. The guards were shouting and bawling and shoving us in line. It was bitterly cold and still snowing, it had snowed for ages and was very deep. By about 9:00am there were three groups of 500, we were all loaded up with our gear, our blankets rolled up, then tied with string and carried over our shoulders.

As we stood there waiting, an officer got up on a platform and made a speech. While the Russian shells could be seen landing on the far side of the city, the German officer shouted through a loudhailer. He told us we were being taken to Germany to prevent us being shot by the Russians, he didn't say how we were going to get there. After his speech the guards once again shouted "March!" and we set off on a long march that was to end in Meklenburg 1,400 miles away. We had no idea that the march would be a detour around towns and lakes that would last for nine or ten weeks walking 20-25 miles a day!

The first day was agony for me, Harold Fletcher and I managed to stay together right to the end. As we neared the end of the first day, it was dark and snowing and we slipped and slithered as we climbed a hill to a small village. We were all bunched up and the ones in front were turned into a worker's camp. I was knackered and dropped down at the roadside in the deep snow, I thought I was going to snuff it but Harold dragged me up and said "only a few yards and we must be stopping for the night". I managed to get to my feet but I thought I was done for, we managed to struggle through the snow and into the camp.

We were given some thin soup and had some of our black bread. The rooms were packed and you just dropped down anywhere and slept. In the morning, around 6:30am, we were rousted and rounded up outside, by the time we had loaded our packs and blankets it was about 7:00am. The guards, as usual, were shouting "schnell!, schnell!" and pushing us about. We all formed up in the road and off we went, I didn't feel too bad now once we got marching, funny, I never once after that felt like I did that first night. The pace of the march was forced fast for the first few miles, we were now in Pomerania marching along the Baltic coast. We passed through a few small villages but mainly stayed on country roads.

The bloody snow was terrible, it was packed hard and we slipped and stumbled along. The lads from our camp kept pretty much together but this was every man for himself, 1,500 of us all looking as we went for anything we could find. It was bitter cold but marching with the gear we had made you sweat. It wasn't long before some began to tire, by the time it was dark (it never really got dark, more like twilight) we were straggling out over a few miles. If you looked back or forward it was like a snake with us somewhere in the middle. Following behind was a horse and cart with the bread ration, it was supposed to call at the towns and villages we skirted to collect the bread, but it was missing most of the time. We stopped at night in huge barns that stuck up in the middle of nowhere, the Germans must have planned the route for it was roughly 20 to 25 miles, sometimes 30 and these barns were about this distance.

Once, we were going down a road that went though a forest for about ten miles. The trees on either side of the road were set back 20 feet. The snow was blown across in ridges and frozen. Trying to walk on it was like trying to walk on a corrugated sheet. We were all just about on our knees, including the guards. Two of them had dropped out and were sitting on some fallen trees by the side of the road, we sat down too. It was dusk and the column of marchers were well spread out, it had been a tough march through the forest. We asked the guards how much further we had to go to the stopping place, they were just as sick as we were but at least they got fed. Taymouth told us we would stop at the end of the forest, when I looked up the road it seemed to stretch for miles.

Finally, the guards got up, we could hardly get going, the more you stopped the worse it was to get up, your feet and legs felt like lumps of lead. I thought the road would never end, eventually we came out of the forest and saw the barn a couple of miles away, somehow we found the strength. It was always the same in Pomerania, a mad dash to get the last places for the night. The Americans were being marched too but their camps were in the middle of Pomerania and they were a couple of days in front of us, on the same route. They must have stayed in the same barns as us, we found signs of cigarettes stubbed out only half smoked and tins of meat with bits left in the bottom of the tin.

It was still bitterly cold and icicles hung from the inside roof of the barn, we just dropped down and covered ourselves with straw. Every morning when we were roused we would flap our arms and stamp to get ourselves moving. If we had any bread, we would eat it before setting off.
We still had no idea how far we would have to march, we kept telling each other that we would be getting in cattle trucks at the next big town. As the days came and went, it was the same ritual, march, just keep going.

Harold and I shared everything, if he pinched anything out of the fields or off the German refugees, who were now heading West with their horses and carts and all their belongings. The frost and the snow were bad, while we were marching it was warm but when we had a break we would soon feel the cold. Most of the lads had a Glengarry forage hat, two buttons at the front undid and you could button the flaps under your chin so that it kept your ears from freezing. We wore socks with paper inside to stop frostbite, we used to stuff paper inside our boots, this was OK when they were dry but as soon as we sweated from marching it was useless.

It was now February and we were still in Pomerania. A German staff car with officers would sometimes travel alongside the column and tell the guards to close us up, the guards would then start poking us and shout to move up but it never lasted long. I remember once, we were walking along the road, we were all bunched up when we spotted a lad drop down and roll down the side of the road into a field. We dropped out and when we got to him he was frothing at the mouth, he looked finished. I lifted his head up and turned it sideways, he was blabbering away, he said to leave him. Harold was rubbing his hands, he was a Scotch lad from Dundee, by this time the column had passed and we were near the back. Three or four guards saw us and shouted to us to get back on the road. It was said that all the ones who dropped out were supposed to be picked up by a horse and cart that followed on behind about a mile back, but we never saw it, like the bread ration it used to go missing for days.

We thought it was tough in the Camps and Forts, but having suffered that and managed to come to grips with it, it was nothing compared with what was to come on this bitter March. With temperatures thirty below at times we were always scrounging and pinching food to keep going. We stopped at a small village once, about half way through Pomerania. I forget the name, but we were herded into a farmyard and Harold and I and about 20 other lads were put in this brick building. There was a combined Harvester in, and straw was strewn around it. We all made our places for the night, taking off our blankets and our packs. Mine was an old gas mask bag. Harold and I and the others had just got sat down and stretched our tired legs (and they were tired) when someone outside shouted "Soup's up! , Come and get it." There was a mad rush to get our tins and get outside. The people of the village had asked permission from the Officer in charge if it would be all right to bring us some potato soup. So they had brought a big pot, like half a dustbin just outside the doors. Of course they were astounded that we emptied it in no time. The sergeant was dishing it out one ladle per man, not much to starving men but it was good of them. We had some bread we had managed to save between us.

When we got back to our places, I noticed the flap of my bag was undone and when I looked in I saw we had been cleaned out by some rotten bastard. One or two of the others had lost stuff as well, we were boiling. Of course in the mad rush for soup we had all gone out and eaten it outside, it was still light as we had knocked off at two o'clock. I think the guards were as sick as we were. We'd gained a bowl of soup and lost what we had saved. I went outside to ask different blokes if they had seen anybody come back in the barn, but there was no luck, so I wandered around for a while.

There were four guards in the yard, two near the gate and two near the other barn. I spotted the two near the gate were leaning over talking to some of the villagers, and I ducked behind a small building and was over the fence and away through the house gardens in a flash. I went to the third house and knocked on the back door. I put on my downtrodden look as they came to the door, an old woman opened the door and when she saw me she beckoned me to come in quick. I went into the house (the first house I had been in for three years) and I followed her along the corridor into the living room where an old man was sitting in a rocking chair.

He got up quickly when he saw me and I complained that I was hungry. Luckily I had picked on a kind old couple of Germans, they were sorry for me and they said they had two sons and a grandson in the army. Two were POW's in Russia, they were in tears as they said "So young" then they wrapped some bread and a couple of boiled potatoes and a piece of cheese. I stuffed them up my coat and thanked them and went back to the door. When I got out I had to be crafty and careful that nobody spotted me, anyway I got back OK. Harold and the others sitting round looked up, I got down beside Harold and pulled the stuff from under my coat. I said we had better gobble it up straight away in case it got pinched again, it didn't take long. The others asked me where I got it from, I said if they wanted some why didn't they try at the houses, but too late the guards came and locked us in, anyway it was going dark now, it was the first time we had stopped in a village.

We were still in Pomerania and heading for `Stoep' but we would be skirting it. As usual rumours spread among us, some said we would be getting on a train. The guards were just as bad, after we had done twenty miles or so, they would say that we only had six or seven miles to go to the next barn, when it would be ten miles. After a while we didn't believe anything they said, we knew we had to keep going whatever. As it got dark, we could see the ring of red in the sky and hear the Russian guns, red flashs not far off, sometimes they would fade as we moved further West.

As we marched (or shuffled) along, I would go in a sort of trance just looking at the bloke in front and thinking of anything like when this was over, it was hard to think straight at times. We were never very far from the coast as we seemed to be following the coastline and could see some ships full of people. But our minds were on food, where the hell was that horse and cart with our so-called bread ration? It was supposed to be at the next stopping place but was most times missing.

We seemed to be approaching a large town in the distance, we asked the guards what it was. It was the city of `Stolp' but we went around it, flat and desolate country. At night we could still hear the guns in the distance, somehow they seemed to be keeping pace with us. By now as we got past Stolp the refugees were getting more and more, the horses and carts were piled high with their belongings, buckets, lamps and allsorts hanging off the sides, just like the old Western covered waggons, but the guards kept us away from them.

It seemed like everyone was fleeing West. We noticed now that the guards were pulling panzer-fousts (anti tanks) on trollies and were getting jittery. You never knew when you would get a poke in the back with the end of a rifle. I happened to be lagging behind and this bastard guard came up behind me and the shock of getting an unexpected dig knocked me face down in the snow, I scrambled up in case he gave me another. We all kept out of this particular guards way as he had shot some early on the march, he said they had tried to escape when the Officers came along.

We were never far from the coast and now at the end of February the snow turned to slush. As we approached the coastal town of `Wollun' the guards seemed to be uneasy and jumpy. It was getting dark and we were weary as we had done about 30 miles this day. We were on a hill coming down towards the town but still out in the open country, when the guards halted us and the car with Officers in came on the scene, we watched as the guards and the Officers were having a conference. After about 15 minutes after we had all stood shivering, the guards herded us into a field until we came to another field that was surrounded by high ground. This is where we were to spend the night, what was worse was that it started raining. The ground was soon wet, we all huddled together, six of us hooked our blankets and got down but it was a sleepless night even though we were knackered. It was terrible and I think this was the worst night as at least the other stops had been under cover.

As the night wore on we could see clearer than ever the red glow and flashes, and the thump of heavy gunfire to the South of us, the guards were silhouetted against the red sky, as they took up positions on the high ground. All the lads were up stamping their feet to get them moving, some just stayed down.

At daylight the Germans brought a soup kitchen onto the field and, thank God, we all got some hot soup and a quarter of a black loaf or I honestly think we would not have been able to march another step. The rain had stopped and the sun came out. We hung our blankets on the wire fence and the guards let us rest until about 10 o'clock when they started to rouse us, shouting and bawling and getting us out of the fields and back on the road. It took some time to get us assembled as we had to roll our blankets and gear together.

Fifteen hundred people set off on this march but it looked a lot smaller now, it was rumoured that 500 had gone towards Stetten, which was to our South. Anyway we finally marched out onto the road leading to `Kolburg', as we all got going the guards started shouting and hurrying us, we didn't march we nearly ran. The Germans were panicking, as we came to the town we were hurried down to the dockside where loads of barges were lined up. The town and dockside were teaming with troops, antitank guns were everywhere. This was the front line by the looks of it. We had noticed heavy artillery as we came out of our field.

We were packed into these barges until I thought we would sink, the soldiers who put us on were heavily armed. Then away we went, at least we weren't marching. We were not far from Lund, we were packed like sardines, and so low in the water I said to Harold Fletcher "We're not going to make it, it looks like miles to the other side." As we came to the mouth of a river with two islands in the middle, I didn't know then but they were `Peenamunde' and `Swinermunde'. We got around them and I could see them clearly, also to the North were some large ships loaded with people.

We must have been two or three hours in the barge, soaked with sea-spray when we headed for the coast, German soil, we had made it. I think we were all a bit relieved that our feet were on firm soil at last. Fletcher said a little prayer, me too under my breath. (I read now that the Russians had taken Stettin on the date we sailed to Germany.)

We were all glad to get off that bloody barge. Soaked again, we set off straight away trying to get our legs working again. We came to a place called Usedam and we went around its outskirts. The roads were packed with refugees, horses and carts. It had been hell on Earth this winter of 1945, it had been one of the most savage except perhaps for the winter of 1940, and we had survived but we were marching through minus 30 degrees, with icy winds and snow it became a struggle to survive. Had we known when we set off how far we were to march I don't think we would have done it, we always thought we would get transport at the next town, like the carrot and the donkey, it's amazing what the body can do. This would have been a test of endurance for fit men, never mind unfit.

Now we were in Germany, the roads seemed better though still as long. We noticed that bombing was frequent in daylight and the weather was just as cold, but the snow was getting less.
It must have been about 1st March when we marched past `Acklam' to `Murchim', more lads were dropping out with swollen feet, our boots were worn down right through the heels through dragging our feet at the end of the days march.

It would be the beginning of March, still bitter cold but I think we were getting used to it, we seemed to be getting tougher and harder as we went. The fact that we were heading West and home just kept us going, after going through the Pomeranian blizzards we told ourselves that it could only get better. The refugees were still choking the roads, their horses were struggling along like us, the steam used to come off their bodies. I remember once we were coming down this hill and one of the horse and carts could hardly stop tearing down, the horse just gave up its legs, just spread out apart and fell down gasping for breath. We had all stopped for a break and watched the German refugees and some helpers cut the horses straps. But by this time it was dead, so they rolled it into the ditch. It was set upon by the lads and we had that horse hacked up in no time. Its throat was cut first and bled, we had lumps of red horse meat. When we had done there wasn't much left, the civilians had their share too, it was still steaming. We soon got fires going and stuck the meat on sticks or anything, bits of wire, this stopping place was littered with rubbish, old cart wheels, metal boxes, burnt out waggons, it looked as if there had been an air raid, some of the burnt out waggons were bullet riddled.

The guards had decided to have a couple of hours stop. I remember we were sitting under a tree, and the horses and refugee carts were passing, trudging along, some had come from Pomerania, but they moved in their own time, we were pushed. Anyway we were sitting around this fire cooking this meat and wolfing it down because we were starving, lots of lads had dysentery from eating raw stuff out of the fields.

Now that the frost and snow had gone, it was still bitter cold at night. We would wave at the refugees as they passed in the hope they might throw us bread or something. We were on a road that went down into a town called `Demmin', it was about to be bombed we could hear the sirens going, and the guards made us stay where we were, we were excited. As we waited, we had a great view of this town and it was a sunny afternoon. After about twenty minutes we could hear the drone of the bombers and the white streamers in the sky, hundreds of them in formation, they looked like silver birds. The guard sitting with us said they were Americans, then they dropped their load. The last time we had seen them was Easter Sunday 1944, this time we had a grandstand view.

There was some German flak, guns, pom-poms nearby in the trees, the noise was deafening. As the bombs landed, the ground we were sitting on shook, all the refugees had pulled over and stopped under the trees that lined the road. Flashes of fire and dust soon covered a large part of the town, some of the planes were overhead now and banked round in a wide turn, quite a few were coming down in pairs but none fell near us, they must have had a lot of planes.
By now it was getting dark and the all clear sounded and we started to move, the guards were bawling and waving their arms about, we knew that the staff car with all the Officers in was coming slowly up the road stopping to inform the guards which way to march us.

Names of towns and villages passed us by until we turned towards `Loitze'. It was dark now and we turned off the road onto a beaten dirt road and came at last to a huge barn, here we were to stop for the night. As the big doors banged shut, we were all nearly fast asleep, just dropped down absolutely knackered, hungry and sick. When was it going to end? We had been on the march for two months now.

We were now on the West side of the river 鈥淥der鈥� and the Russians had already reached `Stettin' and were coming down the East side of the river. We could hear the heavy guns as we assembled outside the barn next morning, the guards were getting angry at us as we were not hurrying enough for them, but we soon got our legs going again.
The weather was improving a bit, the snow had gone and instead we got rain and wind. The potato sacks that some had been wearing to keep the cold out had disappeared but we still kept our scarves that had been cut out of blankets around our heads. It was so cold, I think we were so used to the bitter blizzards by now that we didn't feel it as much, at least your nose and ears weren't freezing.

So on and on we went, Westwards. The civilians were still on the same route, we used to walk along next to their horse-drawn waggons and try to put our hands under the tarpaulin to see if we could pinch some food, but it was as scarce for them as it was for us after coming such a long way. Cold and malnutrition had taken its toll on us. The civvies were more able to stand the journey because they rode on their waggons, but earlier in the day we had passed many who were frozen to death sitting on their carts.

Yes the long march was a frightening nightmare, the guards had itchy trigger fingers and began to get more vicious as they realised that they were nearly finished, but most of them still thought Hitler would pull some secret weapon out and surprise everyone. Harold and I stuck together right through the march, we bumped into other lads from our camp from time to time, but we were straggling out with tiredness and day to day worries, and everyone was just struggling to keep going.

As we went on hoping and wondering when it was all going to end, I noticed that the guards at the front of the column had begun to split up, four went in a different direction. There were about 550 left in our column, the others marched off. We were heading for `Scheurim', then changed direction and eventually ended the march (thank God) in a place called `Hagenour' in `Mecklenburg' but at the time we didn't know, I thought it was another stopping place.

We marched along a railway and passed some briquette factories, then we turned along a siding next to a field. We thought we were at last getting a train, but no, as we came to the siding there were about ten waggons and a coach standing by. We stopped, it was the middle of the day which was unusual. After some time we were told that this is where we were to stay, forty men to a waggon, so we sorted ourselves out and got into our new homes on wheels.

The coach which was at one end was for the Guards. One hour later soup was issued and a piece of bread. So we rested our weary legs, some of the lads were in a terrible state, the big ones seemed to look worse, dysentery made them look like skin and bones. I never got dysentery, I had the runs sometimes, but I didn't eat many raw vegetables on an empty stomach.

So we settled in. The weather was warm now, we would light little fires outside the waggons. Iin between the waggons was a deep ditch, this was the side where the doors were opened, the ditch was deep and we used to do all our toiletry here, dysentery mostly. The doors on the other side were kept locked from the outside. On that side was about 15 sets of lines with stationary waggons on, as this was a large railway siding and a main line from Hamburg to Berlin. Also on that side was the `Hagenow' railway station, so it was fairly busy.

Every so far in front of our waggons were sleepers stacked on top of each other. We were recovering from the mad march and the weather was warmer now, and there was no work but American and British fighters came over quite often scraping the railway. We were starving, perpetually hungry, there was nothing to scrounge. The Germans had three Guards at the back of the waggons and one at each end with a barrier as well. The Stabsfeldfabel in charge was a right bastard, so were the Guards who were all young sods.

We were 40 to a waggon, when we settled in we had some straw on the floor, not much and we hung our bits of things and our tins that we had all carried for water or soup on nails knocked into the wall. At first it was a Godsend to rest after the slog, but anytime, day or night, the Germans would suddenly shove an engine onto the end with such a bump that all the gear and tins would clatter and drop onto our heads. There was one waggon full of picks and shovels and each time the railway line was bombed (which was often) the old engine was shunted on and away we would go locked in.

One of our first runs like this was to a place called` Wittenburg', we used to fill in the holes so the German Pioneer Corps could refix the lines. We did this as slowly as we could, the Guards were in no mood for this and we got many a clout, then we would go back to the siding, or if it took longer we would just stay where we were. After working until about eight o'clock we got soup and a piece of bread, some Ersatz coffee, anyone who had the runs had to get it done as we were locked in for the night.

This became a bit terrifying when the Yanks or the RAF came back, we could hear the crunch of bombs nearby, we would crouch there in the dark listening to the patter of flack shrapnel on the waggon roof. Flack guns were all over the place but I was so tired that I fell asleep easily, if we got hit we got hit, and anyway we wouldn't have known much about it.

The engines used` briquettes' instead of coal and the sparks that came out would set fire to the dry grass at the side of the railway lines. Sometimes they shunted an engine on the end of our waggons, and we would be taken a few miles to where the grass was on fire, often near a wood, and they would roust us out and we would have to bat the fire out with shovels. Harold and I were the only two with railway hats on, and the feldfabel in charge was a crafty one, he used to watch us and was always counting us, I said to Harold that on the first chance I would be away into the woods, which were really thick, so I watched the Guards and that bloody feldfabel. When he wandered to the other end of the gang I sneaked into the woods, I told Harold I wouldn't be long if I found anything. The wood wasn鈥檛 thick with trees with ferns about waist high, I ducked low until I was well away from the others. It was quiet and I was scared in case I bumped into any of the soldiers in case they shot me so near to the end of the war.

Not far were a farm and some old farmhouses, or should I say hovels. When I got to the edge of the woods I made my way to one of the hovels there was a man there who looked like a Pole. I wasn't sure but took a chance and spoke to him. He was terrified when I told him I was an English POW and asked him if he had any food. He took me into a narrow passage and we turned into a doorway that led to some rickety stairs, it was dark in there, then we came to a room and he opened the door and we went inside. It was a dark room with one little window, a baby was crying and a young woman nursing it. I sat down, there was just a bed a little table and two chairs, a little cupboard on the wall and a small gas ring. They were a couple who had been brought from Poland three years before to work on the farm. I felt sorry for them so I said it didn't matter about the food, but they gave me a slice of bread and a few potatoes.

The plaster was off the wall showing the bricks. I thanked them and shook their hands, they were taking an awful risk. I made my way down the rickety stairs and back into the woods. I thought I was doing well keeping low amongst the ferns, it was deathly quiet, just the birds singing, so I stood up and just walked a short way, suddenly from nowhere came that bloody Stabsfeldfabel. He stopped me and had his pistol out, I knew it was no good. He said `What are you doing away from working party, do you realise I could shoot you, but I won't, now move quick.'He was behind me all the way and I could feel the back of my neck prickle.

When we got back to the lads he just watched me as I went to Harold and Sam Probin. I said "I wonder how he knew that I was missing," and Sam said "It's them bloody railway hats."Harold and I looked at each other and I knew he must have come round checking. I said I was going to get rid of mine when we got back to the siding, Harold said he would too. Just then the train came up and we loaded the shovels into a waggon. We loaded ourselves into our waggons then the guards slammed the sliding doors shut and locked them. As the train pulled into Hagenow there was an air raid on, the sirens were howling and the flack was banging away, but we couldn't see anything, we just had to sit there and hope we weren't hit. At last the train slowed down as it came to the siding and we waited as it bumped into the other waggons.

I reckon I was lucky to be alive, I know some Guards or M.C.O's who would have thought nothing of shooting me, that's why after going through so much agony, we had to be careful (these bastards have a lot to answer for) In charge of all the Guards and NCO's was the commandant, he was about 34 years old, a lieutenant, and a right swine. One day, it was a hot day and the Guards at the end of the row of waggons used to let one from each waggon get some water from the tap by the signal box. This day I took a jam tin to get water for one of the lads in our truck who had dysentery and was unable to walk. But as it happened, when I got to the end of the trucks a bunch of lads with cans were there also. The commandant was there and he was shouting and bawling and pushing them away, you had to be wary of him because he was handy with his Luger.

After a while things quietened down, so I went to the Guard and told him someone was sick and needed water, he was just about to let me go when the commandant stopped me, so I told him the same, but he said no, I argued with him and he lifted his arm as if to belt me. I threw my arm up to protect my face and knocked his hat off accidentally. I thought he was going to burst a blood vessel. There were a lot of us milling around and in the commotion I dodged amongst the crowd and disappeared down the line of waggons, helped by the others. The commandant was roaring his head off, but I knew once I mingled with the rest he wouldn't find me. What used to happen, and I suppose would have happened if he had caught me was that the Guards used to take you into an empty waggon and two of them would bash the hell out of you, with one Guard at the sliding door with his rifle ready.

One morning about six o'clock we felt the waggons really jump off the railway lines and all our belongings and tins fell off the walls of the waggon. There was one hell of an explosion somewhere and we all woke up and the rumblings went on for some time. After about an hour we were shook again as an engine shunted into our waggons, and as the Guards hadn't yet opened the door we couldn't see outside, in a few minutes we were pulled out of the siding and going fairly fast to somewhere. In about an hour we slowed down and coasted to a stop, the doors were opened and we were rousted out.

When we got out, we found that an ammunition train had been blown up, and what a sight. The train had stopped in a siding of a small town and had been hit by mosquitos. The first thing we saw was a dozen fuel tankers burning and the smell of cordite and burning benzine. Just beside where we had stopped were three waggons of spuds, the top layer was roasted by the heat of the burning tankers alongside and we were up at the top shoving them down to the lads, we were issued with shovels and picks and marched up the line towards where the explosion had been. There was a crater the full width of ten sets of railway lines, the rails looked like corkscrews where they ended in the hole which was full of water.

The first job was to push some of the tankers that had burned out by now into the hole, we pushed six or seven cattle trucks in as well because it was that deep, but there were plenty of us standing on the lines next to the hole and damaged lines. The woods were all blistered and burnt. We had never seen anything like this in all our journeys from East Prussia, and believe me we had seen some sights, but this was different. The locomotive boiler had been blown half way across a ploughed field and could be seen sticking up, railway lines as well. Our job was to fill the hole in so that the German pioneers could lay a line or two as this was the main line to Hamburg and Lubeck.

Our cattle trucks had been shunted into a siding beside some woods, just past the railway station (Whitton). We got a good look at the houses, the rooves and walls were blown to bits at the back but funny enough the fronts were still standing. What had happened, according to some civvies we got talking to (when the Guards had their backs turned) was that at 5:30am three RAF mosquito's came over and dropped a bomb in the fields either side of the ammo train, then went away. Well the towns people who had been on alert had fled into the woods as they knew the planes would return, and they did. According to the Germans the three planes circled and the flack on the ammo train started firing, then as the planes started to dive, the gunners panicked and hid under the cattle trucks on the side next to the train. The mosquito's would dive in lines one after the other, the first two hit the target and it blew up, catching the third plane in the blast. These people were watching from the shelter of the woods. The Officers and some of the survivors came back after the explosion.

Now we were here we were sent to search for bodies, we found them still crouched under the bogies of the cattle trucks. Every two men, Harold and me, were given a blanket to collect the burnt bodies, just a push and they would fall over like burnt pigs, we were picking up arms that had blown off still with their watches on. After we had collected all the bits and pieces up, they were all laid out in the field and loads of Officers were organizing it. We all had to dip our arms into a barnet of disinfectant after the collection was over. Most of the bodies were unrecognisable, even their dog tags had disappeared or melted. I picked up an arm torn off at the elbow still with the sleeve of his jacket, watch and ring on.

The civvies came back to the houses and our mosquitos were still flying over and attacking the railway. We were shunted into a siding and we put a sign in the field alongside saying POW in big letters with pieces of wood or anything just in case they strafed us, but we knew they had seen it as they wobbled their wings.

We spent about four days here filling in the hole and collecting the burnt bodies. We were told that when the first bombs were dropped the gunners on the ammo train opened fire on them, but they panicked and jumped off and ran to cover under the waggons nearby, but the blast was so fierce that it got most of them. There were 150 of us on one side of the hole and about three or four hundred pioneers and Arbuetsdeinst on the other. When it was filled enough for the Germans to relay some lines, we went back. Now we could faintly hear the sound of gunfire for the first time since we set off from East Prussia, but this time it was the Yanks or ours. We packed all our shovels and picks into the waggon and we were herded back into our cattle trucks, the next day we were on our way back to Hagenow.

This was the work we did, but mostly now we did nothing. We could hear the rumble of guns and at night the red glow in the sky in the South and West was just like the Russian Front only I think the Russian guns sounded heavier. When the Guards used to lock us up for the night, we used to listen to the guns, the sound used to come and go. We had an idea that it would be over soon, but we wondered what the Germans would do to us.

During this time we got small jobs near the station and Harold and I were still keeping out of the commandant's way, but I think he had more worries than to look for me. At night, after the doors were locked, if anyone wanted to go to the ditch (most of us had the runs) you had to hammer on the sliding door of the cattle truck till the guard came and opened it. Then you jumped down and told them you wanted to "shizen", then you went over to the ditch, watched by the guard. Sometimes he'd get bored and went to meet the other guards, but only for a few minutes. Or he would stand by the door and wait until you had finished. Some of us had dysentery, especially the one I brought the water for, he was just skin and bone, if we weren't free soon he would surely die.

The sound of gunfire was getting closer but still seemed to be worse at night and if one of us hammered on the door to go to the ditch, when we came back we would give a commentary of the red sky and flashes of light. Everyone was excited at the prospect of liberation, but we had learned not to build up our hopes.

One night, we were all talking about what would happen when we were free. Forty men all yapping, one of them was a Scots lad whom I had never liked, he was against the doors that were kept locked, opposite to the one we used. He said he had seen a "koolwaggon" just at the back of us, a few miles away and that it was full of round, red cheeses. He was willing to go and get some if someone would go with him. I said to Harold that it was worth a try because we were so hungry, I said OK I'd come. We agreed that everyone would get a share if we got them.

Of course this Jock was a braggart and we said that if he was just shooting a line we would knacker him. "No, it's the truth, I saw them, round red cheeses, piled up high in a cool truck, and the seal had been busted", he said. So, it was all planned, that night someone was to rattle on the door about 12:00 o'clock, that was the time the guards were a bit lax. Jock and I got ready, we tied our bootlaces together and slung them round our necks so that we would not make any noise ( there was also a guard on the other side of the truck). I don't mind telling you that I was a bit nervous, but I wasn't going to let anyone know, especially Jock.

It took a few minutes before the guard slid open the door and one of the lads said he had the runs. He jumped down and we hoped the guard would leave the door open and he did. It was just about six inches but enough for me to slide it a bit more. After standing there for a few minutes, the guard wandered away to talk to his mate. I remember waiting a few more minutes as the guns were crumping away and watched the red flashes to the South. It was quite dark, although we were accustomed to it, we both slipped out and under the truck and froze.

I looked up and down the other side but couldn't see the guards, I whispered to Jock "let's go now, we'll get across one set of lines and hide under a line of trucks". We went across on all fours, like two dogs, as quick as a flash. We were panting like hell but we made it, we were fairly safe hiding under the trucks. When we got our breath back I said "which way do we go now?", Jock said we would have to get across another six sets of lines towards the station. It was a cloudy night and a good job it was dark too! It was either the first or second week of April by now.

After about five minutes we made our way across to the next line of trucks, we had to be wary of the loose stones between the sleepers so that they made no noise. We checked before dashing that there was none either up or down the line. We had managed to cross four sets of lines now, there were two sets of lines with no trucks on them so it was quite a gap to get across, but we made it.

Just as we scrambled under the trucks a troop train came along the line next to the one where we were hiding. It came puffing up slowly and it was coming to a stop right next to us. Jock panicked and left me, he disappeared up the line somewhere. The cattle truck doors on the troop train opened and it was full of German troops, I knew that when it stopped they would all jump out to stretch their legs and they did. I climbed onto the axle of the truck I was under and got right up behind the wheel, against the floor. As the train squealed to a stop, sure enough, out jumped the Jerries. They must have all been busting for a slash, pissing and farting. After a while I could hear two of them, stop right next to the wheel I was crouched behind. One of them had a powerful torch and he was flashing it all over. You can imagine, I was shaking and hardly daring to breathe, my boots were digging into the back of my neck, I was pressed up against the floor boards as far as I could go.

As far as I could gather from the two troops who were talking, they were getting ready to move up to the front. Suddenly I heard shouting coming from the direction Jock had taken, shouting and a whistle blowing. The troops got back into the trucks and the train started moving away. God I was glad. I waited for a while after it had disappeared until all was quiet, I eased my cramped legs from being doubled under me and loosened my boots off my neck. I sat down on the sleeper, still behind the wheel.

I wondered what had happened to Jock, after waiting to see if he would come back I thought 'to hell with the cheeses', I didn't know where they were so I started back to our line of trucks. If you try to run on all fours with two boots round your neck, swinging from left to right, it nearly strangles you. Anyway, I made it to the next line of trucks to ours and counted five from the end, then looked up and down for the guards who were on this side. No sign of them so I got under our truck and tapped on the underside of the floor, always keeping behind the wheel, then I heard the tap back. One of the lads inside started to bang on the door for the guard, it took him about ten minutes to get to the truck and he was cursing like hell for being disturbed. At this stage of the war the guards were getting sick of it and some of them couldn't care less. He slid the door open and the lad got out and went to the deep ditch, the guard shouted over to ask how long he would be, no answer so he slid the door back but didn't pull the lock over.

As soon as he had gone, I got up and opened the door and collapsed on the floor, they all crowded round me whispering "where's Jock?" and "where's the cheese?" They didn't know what had happened, I just lay there for a minute till I'd recovered then I told them I didn't know what had become of Jock. I told them about the troop train, everyone who had been awake had heard it pull in, they make plenty of noise. So it had been a failure, I slept sound after that, even squashed as we were. Next morning when the doors were slid back it was a lovely morning but, when we were counted, Jock was missing. It turned out that he had been caught by the railway police, that was the shouting I had heard, they brought him back later on. I asked what had happened and he told me he had run right into the police who were waiting for the troop train to arrive. It had tanks and guns on it, the tanks were on flat trucks and it was like an armoured train, the 85's guns were fired as the train was moving.

The police took Jock to the station platform where they had a room and an officer interrogated him but when Jock showed him his POW disc and told him he was looking for a way back to where our trucks were, he got a pasting off them and a good bashing of our underofficer too. We got no cheese!

It was now getting to the end of April and we could see that the war was closing in but you never knew for sure even as the guns were getting closer. One day all the guards and that bastard stabfeldfabel had been changed to old men with patched up uniforms and an old unterofficer put in charge. The others must have been sent to the front to fight. The day after, a large convoy of trucks appeared on the railway crossing full of SS soldiers. The officer came over to where our trucks were and went to the unterofficer in charge of us. He wanted to know who we were, we thought he was going to move us, but he changed his mind. These old guards we had were great, they couldn't care less whether we went away or not but they told us it would be better to stay where we were as our uniforms were unrecognisable, being so filthy.

We must have looked a right rabble, unshaven and all sorts of hats on. Harold and I had gotten rid of our bloody railway hats but we still had the lice. We got jobs to do, a guard would take about twelve or fifteen men and we had to clean all the trucks that were now standing behind ours. These were long lines of trucks, some cool trucks, some passenger coaches. The reason there was so many trapped in the railway sidings was that the lines had been bombed so many times that they could go nowhere. The Yanks were coming from the South and the Russians from the North so we were in a bottleneck, but we didn't know this at the time, we never got told anything.

While we were so called cleaning up we pinched all sorts from the trucks, spuds, carrots, anything that was eatable but we never did find those cheeses. When we got back to our truck, we would light fires and roast spuds and anything else, there were always a few fires outside each truck. One morning we woke up to find that the sliding doors had not been locked, one of the lads slid it back and looked up and down the line of trucks. He said "there's no guard", of course we all scrambled to the door, someone else said "hey, look over at the houses across the fields, they've all got white sheets hanging out of the windows".

We were all excited and everyone jumped down from the truck, we didn't know what to do, it was unusually quiet. All of the guards were standing together at the end of the line of trucks. The guards also slept in trucks but only ten to a truck. We all started hunting, I went into one of the guard's trucks and grabbed one of their packs. It had brown fur on the back, inside was his socks, a shirt, letters from home and a parcel with a few slices of bacon, some dark chocolate and a third of a loaf. I also grabbed a schmeiser sub machine gun, everyone was looting all sort, gangs of us were wandering round all the trucks looting.

God, we were free at last! It was a queer feeling at first being free. Harold and I kept together, we wandered about the railway tracks but we still never found that blasted truck with the round cheeses. All the civilians were looting the cool waggons, they had little carts and bags and were taking all sorts of food. Sacks of flour had busted open and there was flour all over the place, anything that could be taken was grabbed, we got our share. I got an officer's map case and binoculars but I was really after food.

The next day someone shouted that the Yanks were near, just then there was a terrific explosion in Hagenow. It seems that the Germans had blown up the airfield and all the fuel, a great mass of black smoke poured over the town. We watched three mosquitoes about two miles away bombing a small wood, it must have been an ammunition dump, it went off like a firework display and we all felt the blast as it hit the backs of our necks, we all cheered. We had made a big POW sign with pieces of wood and boxes in the field next to our latrine and planes that flew over us would waddle their wings to let us know that they knew we were there.

After we had eaten our best meal for years Harold and I decided to go over to the railway station at the back, as we got near to some outbuildings and came round a corner we ducked back quickly. I said "Look. There's something with a star on coming down the road in front of us." This jeep with two soldiers in was coming straight for us, we had never seen a jeep before and were a bit wary. Harold said "it can't be Russians 'cos it's a white star, it must be Yanks", so we both stepped out into the road and it stopped. God it was wonderful to see them, it was an officer and a sergeant, they asked us who we were and we told them we were British POWS', we must have looked like partisans!

The officer said they didn't know of any camps thereabouts and asked how many there were of us. I told him we were in the railway trucks and that there were about three hundred of us. The sergeant threw us an orange, the first in five years. We took them to where our trucks were and when they saw the guards they asked why we hadn't shot them. We told them that they had been good to us and that they were all old men.

After that more Yanks came, mostly hunting for Lugers and souvenirs. Harold flogged two Yanks (a tall thin one and a short fat one) a Luger and a leica camera for two white loaves, the first white bread we had seen since France. It was so soft you could squeeze it like sponge but it was lovely. Some of the lads got bicycles, I don't know where from. Well, we wandered round for a week and the Yanks just asked us to search all the Jerries that were giving up. As the fields near our cattle trucks began to fill up with Jerries we kept them there and searched them.
We weren't too easy on them, some of our lads had eight or nine watches, there were piles of Leica cameras, some of the Jerries had ripped the SS flashes off their collars but you could still see where they had been.

This only went on for one day as the Yanks soon took over. The field was also filling up with German vehicles of all kinds. A few of us had moved out of the cattle trucks, we had found a Pullman passenger coach that was ten times better.

Next day we were all eager to get in touch with the British and the sergeant went down to town to see the American officers about it. He came back and said that in a couple of days we could maybe go, that night we were mooching for food near the station when there was a lot of activity. Lots of American MP's were lined up on the platform, the lights were not on as it was still blackout, those lights that were on were dim blue. Just then Harold said "listen, there's a train coming in very slow", yes, there it was puffing in slowly and the Yanks were lined up on both sides all armed with four or five machine guns too.

We just sat on the side and watched. All you could hear was the slow puff puffing as it slid to a halt with steam hissing in the darkness. A Yank officer on the platform shouted in German through a loud hailer " you have three minutes to throw out your weapons and come out" there was dead silence as we waited in the blue lights. After about a minute the small arms clattered onto the platform then rifles started coming out of the waggons and tanks and then we watched as the men and officers came out until the train was empty. We were talking to a Yankee sergeant and he said that it was wired to blow up but that the engineers had disarmed it a few miles out of town as they came in with the train.

After much shouting they were all lined up and marched away, it was about midnight by now so we went back to the Pullman. The guns were still firing, we could hear gunfire about two miles away. Next morning we wandered over to the station and asked if it was OK to go into the tanks, they had already searched them for booby traps, so they let us in. All the hatches were open now so me and Harold climbed into one. They were tigers on flat railway cars and were used as an armoured train. The last waggon on the end had a huge ramp that could be lowered to allow the tanks to drive off. When I climbed down inside I was surprised at the space, but it still felt cramped. It was just as the crew had left it, the empty mess tins had bits of food left in and tins of ersatz coffee still in the cups, empty shell cases still lying about. I wouldn't like the driver's job, it gave you a trapped feeling and it had a bad smell. The crew must have been in it a long time, in the floor there was a circular escape hatch, we didn't find anything else of interest so we came out.

At the other end and in the middle were two Pullman coaches so we walked along the platform and went in. Here was luxury, it was the officers quarters and planning centre. Typewriters, telephones, lovely clean sheets on the bunks, a kitchen, swivel chairs, they must have had it good. There were personal steel lockers but anything that was any good had gone, the Yanks had been there first. We were going through the corridor which was lined by steel lockers, most of them were locked. Two American soldiers were behind us trying the locker doors but if they couldn't open them they pulled out their guns and blasted them open. It nearly burst our eardrums, they were hunting for Lugers and cameras.

Shortly after, we were told to leave the train as it was going out of the station. The Jerries were still holding out in the woods around about and we had to be careful of snipers. There was rifle and machine gun fire in the distance and as we got off the train and wandered back to the POW trucks there was a terrific explosion from the direction of Hagenow town and a pall of black smoke rose up. The Yanks said it was an ammo dump in the woods that had been hit by their aircraft. These used to fly in threes, also our mosquitoes which were made of plywood (so I was told) and tracers used to go right through their wings but I never saw one of them brought down. One day we were watching three of them attacking a small wood on the other side of our field, they dived one after another then swung high into the sky and the ammo dump in the woods exploded. what a sight, we all cheered.

We spent the whole week disarming the Germans as they gave up and were marched into the fields. A lot came in their own transport and gradually the field was packed with a variety of cars, trucks and six seaters. The job of searching the Jerries seemed funny to me after being snarled at and sometimes beaten by them, then standing in front of them face to face, telling them to give up any weapons and taking their cameras off them.

The Yanks came with big trucks to take away the watches and cameras and sidearms. Hagenhow will always stick in my mind with those Yanks forever hunting for Lugers and cameras. The Yanks gave us food and "K" rations but we wanted to get to the British HQ so the sergeant in charge of us went to see the American officers for help.

When he came back we all got together and he said "Right lads, this is what we have to do, we have got to help ourselves as the Yanks are too busy. We have to go to the field where all the German vehicles are and pick our own transport, get petrol from the other trucks and then when we are ready we will make up a convoy with a big placard on the front truck saying POW in big letters, OK now get cracking".

After that speech, Harold, me and four other lads went to the fields where there was an assortment of vehicles, after we'd looked at a few we picked out a Kubelwaggon seating six. It had no doors, just openings in the steel body and a canvas roof. I got in and had a drive round the field, I was a bit stale after five years and it was a left hand drive, we arranged to take turns at driving. Well it took all day to get the convoy of about forty different assorted vehicles out in line on the road, a few Yanks wanted to know where we were going and we said we had been told to head for the Elbe and cross the pontoon bridge to get to Lunenburg where the British HQ was. (I found out recently that the American 82nd Airborne troops who had liberated us under Ltnt Colonel Gavin).

On the convoy we had to erect a banner on the leading vehicle to say we were British POW鈥檚 to get us past the Military police. As we travelled towards the Elbe, in the fields on either side of the road not far from where we set off, there were signs of the action we had been hearing each night and day for weeks. There were tanks burning and burnt out at the roadside both German and American. Some of the places must have been holding out, SS mostly.

We were stopped every few miles as some battles were still going on, bodies were loaded onto waggons and ambulances taking away the wounded. Batches of wounded were sitting at the roadside, bandaged up waiting to be picked up. As we got further away from the area things looked more organised, towards evening we got to the long pontoon bridge across the river Elbe. It took a while to get across, we were tired by now but we began to see more British troops marching, we cheered them as we passed.

When we got to some good roads it was better, hundreds of big Yankee trucks in convoy travelling in the opposite direction came tearing along and they all seemed to be driven by big grinning black Yanks, they tooted their hooters as they passed. As it was getting dark, we pulled up at a crossroads and asked the American MP's if there was somewhere to stop for the night, they directed us a couple of miles down a side road to a small village taken over by the yanks. We were made welcome and got food but stayed with our vehicles. There was a large building like a Nissen hut where they had a film show, the first I had seen since I left England in March 1940. It was packed and Harold and I went and stood in the gangway. The film was "It Had To Be You" with George Murphy, it was great, I really felt free at last. The screen was only makeshift but still a good size. Next morning after sleeping in the Kubelwagon (which was no hardship after the places we had slept in!) we set off on our way home.

We got to Lunenburg, in the leading vehicle was two sergeants and a CSM. They were directed to a huge barracks where we all stopped outside and left our transport at the roadside. We were assembled, about two hundred or so and we marched or straddled through the big gates and were met by a committee of the army. Some were assisted by medical orderlies as they were in a bad way and this last journey had taken it out of them. I didn't feel bad but we were still all lousy and dirty against all the squeaky clean people.

First we were given a good meal, dished up believe it or not by German civvies, but we didn't care. We daren't eat too much as we became sick, it just came back up. next we were taken inside the barracks, stripped of our clothes, into the shower and squirted with delousing powder and given a brand new uniform. It felt good, our hats were different from the glengarries but God how good it felt, so many happy faces, all wondering how long before we would get to England and home.

After settling down and going through an interrogation we were given a five-pound note and told we could go out and walk around Lunenburg, but not too far in case we got lost. We felt so clean and good in our new uniforms. Harold and I went out of the gates, down to the main street, we just wandered about, we stopped outside a shop window where there was a crowd of Germans. In the window were large photos of Belsen concentration camp and its victims, it was sickening, much worse than our camps, the German civvies were forced to look.

We wandered on enjoying the freedom. Looking at the German people on the streets, no more walking in the gutter as we had done for five years. As we got a little way out of the main streets we came across some wooden huts like ours and there was singing and dancing going on in one of them. It was getting towards evening so we decided to investigate, the hut was a long one with a passage down the middle and rooms off.

As we went in, the corridor was full of Russian "D" persons who had probably been brought to work in Germany. They were happy and drunk and we were pushed into one of the rooms, it was big and full of men and women singing and dancing. Harold said "everyone's drunk, I don't know what they're drinking but it must be strong wallop". One Russian, a big black bearded giant came up and grabbed me, sat me down on a wooden form and slapped my back, I thought he'd broken it.

Harold sat opposite and they filled two tin cups with what looked like schnapps. There were about ten or twelve sitting round this table, all drinking and laughing, we were all happy. They told us to drink so I put the can to my mouth and it nearly burnt my mouth off. I said to Harold sitting opposite "Bloody Hell! It tastes like benzine or petrol!" We just pretended to drink it but found something later that was more like a watery beer. After some more singing and dancing they all conked out one by one and so did we, we just slept on the dirty floor, all the bunks were full.

About four or five o'clock in the morning Harold shook me awake, God what a mouth, it was stinking and my head was thumping. We both tiptoed out of the door into the passage. The Russians just lay where they had dropped, loud snores came from the open doors of the rooms as we passed, what a sight and what a stink. We were both glad to get into the fresh air. We must have come out at the opposite end of the hut, we stood looking down into an army camp and we were lost.

We went down a grassy bank and into the camp, there was a guard on the gate and as it was about 4:40 am we asked him if the cookhouse would be working and he directed us towards it. We went in and got tea and slices of toast with jam. The cook sergeant asked who we were so we told him and said we had been roped in by the DP's in the camp up the hill. We told him and the rest of the cooks what we had been drinking, one cook said that the Russians had been draining a small locomotive of its fuel and had mixed it with schnapps and vodka and had been drinking it for the last four days.

Well, we both felt better now, we told the cooks about when we were captured, some of them were too young to have been in the army in 1940, except the sergeant who was at Dunkirk. We were directed back to the main street, when we got there we remembered the way. As we were walking towards the town hall there were crowds of people and soldiers, the road was lined with redcaps. I said to Harold that someone important must be expected so we stood and waited. It was about 10:00 am by now, the steps leading to the town hall were lined with redcaps, eventually seven or eight big Mercs came up the road escorted by motorcyclists. As they came to the steps they stopped and out stepped some German officers and some in civilian clothes, they were escorted into the town hall by armed redcaps. We wondered who they were, it was not till I got back to England and on the front page of a morning paper was a picture of Himmler lying on the floor of the Lunenburg town hall, dead.

Harold and I hooked up with some of our lads and made our way back to the barracks. I felt funny not scratching every five minutes now we had got rid of the lice. When we got to our rooms we were told that we would be flown out in the morning. At last it had come, there were times when I thought I would never get back to Blighty, we were all very excited.

Next morning, we had breakfast and gathered all our gear. We had a kit bag each now and I still carried one of the guards fur backed packs. I had a good lot of floating soap, binoculars, a camera, some watches and other odds and ends.
We were all loaded onto three ton trucks and away we went to an aerodrome some miles away. It was now the 11th May, when we got there the Raf took over and organised us into groups of sixteen dotted at the side of the runway. The airlift went on all day, Lancaster bombers were landing and taking off every ten minutes. Of course Harold and I were in the last group and by noon everyone had gone except us. After about half an hour, an officer came over to our group to say that all the Lancasters had been used but he was going across to the other runway where a few silver American planes were standing. He was going to see if one of those could take us, we watched him walk over, it was some distance, and we were all talking, worrying about our luck at being last. After about fifteen minutes we saw two figures in the distance coming across the field.

It was the RAF officer and a tall, lanky Yank officer. It seems that he had volunteered to take us, we all gave a cheer of thanks, picked up our gear and followed them over to where a B17 was standing, the crew were standing ready. As we went in our names and numbers were taken., this was the first time I had been on a plane and we were spaced out in the gangway. The wireless operator sat in a cubby hole about halfway along and the sides were open with twin machine guns and a gunner stood on a platform to reach the blister on top.

As we taxied down the bumpy runway, full of filled in craters, the engines roared for take off, what a noise! We couldn鈥檛 hear anyone talk, we were silent anyway as it rose in the air, I thought my stomach was turning over but as he levelled out it was great. During the trip we were issued with American 鈥淜鈥� rations to eat and the wireless operator had jazz and dance music from America. They let us fire some rounds from the machine guns, they were smashing Yanks.

As we came over Holland, the pilot swooped low to show us all the parts that had been flooded, it was like dropping suddenly in a lift, but exciting and wonderful! Two lads were sick out of the bomb bays. I went along to the tail and stood up to look through the plastic blister on the top. We were all in high spirits and we said we would kiss the ground when we landed. It was nice and sunny as we crossed the North Sea it looked blue but we were all waiting for that first sign of the English coast.

Then the shout went up 鈥淭here it is the coast of Blighty鈥�. It looked lovely, I had never seen it before. The plane came in low as we came overland and we could see the people in the streets and roads looking up at us, we could see houses and cars on the roads and we cheered. I think it was East Anglia, and then we arrived at Guildford Airport and we circled and landed. The plane taxied to a large hangar and we could see a lot of people waiting, they were WVRS the first English women we had seen in five and a half years. We were so shy that we didn鈥檛 kiss the ground after all. We got off and all thanked the Yanks, then we were fussed over and taken into the hangar.

We were the last, everyone was sitting down, the hangar was full with long tables covered by white cloths and loaded with food of every description. We got tea and cakes, sandwiches, anything we wanted but it didn鈥檛 take much to fill us. If you ate too much it just came back up!
At the far end of the hangar an officer stood and gave a speech saying that he was glad to see us and that we would be taken to a camp close by and given new clothes and be medically examined.
If we were fit enough, we would be given a travel pass and sent home, we would be given forms to fill in, if we were too ill we would be kept in the hospital.

After some time in the hangar, all our bellies full, we made for the large door at the end. When we got outside we found lines of three ton trucks with the backs down. A Sgt/Cpl was at each truck and planks had been put up for us to walk up as if we were cripples, all the seats had blankets on. It was only a short ride to the camp which was spotless, with tarmac roads and wooden huts. We were shown our billets and given a locker each to put our gear in. The beds were like hospital beds, white sheets, pillows and a piece of carpet at each one, God this was VIP treatment.

After settling in, most of us were very excited about being back in England, but it wasn鈥檛 long before we fell asleep. I was very tired and tomorrow was my birthday, I would be twenty five years old. Next day we all had a nice breakfast, we had a medical examination where we told the MO that we felt great but he gave us a thorough checkup anyway. Then we were escorted to a large hut that looked like a classroom, with tables and forms. Placed at the tables at intervals was were pens and a long questionnaire form. The Sgt, who had been in charge of us since we arrived, told us that we were to fill in all the questions as best we could. Harold and I sat down, we had a look at the paper, it was all about how we had been treated, what work we had done, how many camps, what Stalags we had been in. Harold wrote down that the Jerries owed him some hundred marks, I said it was a waste of time.

After filling in the forms we were taken to the QM鈥檚 store and given new uniforms and boots, then we were issued with travel warrents, mine to Manchester, Harold鈥檚 to Leeds. We all collected our kit bags with our souvenirs and new underwear, given five pounds and taken to the station. It was very strange to be travelling on a proper train instead of cattle trucks, we were so happy. I had missed out, back at the reception camp we were in such a hurry to get home ( as anyone would be who had spent five years behind barbed wire) I should have told them that our POW records had been destroyed in the shelling of Marianburg.

I was, at last, on my twenty fifth birthday, heading for home. The train pulled in at Victoria Station at about 2:00 am and I could just go a cup of tea! It seemed strange standing on the platform with my kit bag, I saw a Redcap (Military Police) standing near the exit so I asked him if there was a canteen open and he directed me to a WRVS canteen. I went and had a pie and cup of tea, I joined another soldier sitting at a table and we swapped yarns.

I wondered how I was going to get home, so early in the morning, it was Sunday 13th of May. This lad at the table said I should go across to Tibb Street and get a lift on one of the Daily Mirror trucks, I thought it was a good idea. When I found out where the Mirror was it was about 4:30 or 5:00 am and al the small trucks were loading up with Sunday papers. I asked one of the men which of the trucks was going to Patricroft and he took me down the row of trucks to the one I wanted and said get in the back. There was already a sailor in the back, so I joined him and off we went. He was going to Irlam and it didn鈥檛 take long to get to Patricroft Bridge where I said goodbye and thanks.

I picked up my kit bag and set off to Barton Road and home. I walked from the bridge to our house with not a soul in sight. When I got to the house, chalked on the pavement outside was 鈥淲elcome Home Stan鈥�, at last the end.

We got leave from the 14th May, 1945 to the 14th June, 1945 then I got 拢219, my back pay for five years and a travel warrant with instructions to report to Barnstable in Devon for retraining.

When I got there, Vince Neal and most of the other POW鈥檚 were there, we started training with the new weapons that we had never seen, we did five and ten mile runs and night training. Then we started parachute training but luckily we only had to go up in a balloon because, by October, the Japanese war was over, after the Hiroshima bomb was dropped. The intention was to have a 鈥淒鈥� Day on Japan, wasn鈥檛 we lucky?

We were all sent up to Alnwick in Northumberland to wait for demobilisation, that took until August, 1946 but I met my wife who worked in the NAFFI in Alnwick, so that鈥檚 it! Now to Civvy Street!

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