大象传媒

Prisoners of War

Eventually, we were all taken out of the room, taken outside and put on trucks. Incidentally, I remember, one lad was a bit slow getting onto the truck and an Italian gave him a hefty push in the back, but then one of the Germans who was there, just turned round and gave this Italian such a kick up the backside. I think the Germans knew that we'd done a good job, you know, and they didn't like the Italians treating us like that. The average German was a real soldier; he wasn't a Nazi. They appreciated a worthy opponent.

Eventually, the trucks were loaded and we set out. I forget how long it took, but eventually we arrived at the port of Derna. We were all shoved into an enclosure there, with barbed wire all round it just like a big field. It was full of these little pup tents, only about four foot high. It was dark then, so we picked our tents and crawled into them. They only held about one. We just lay down on the sand. I know I was very, very thirsty. I looked round, but couldn't see anything to drink. We'd had no water since we'd left the ship. Come to think of it, we'd had nothing to eat either. I just lay down and in no time at all I was asleep, probably with exhaustion. In the morning, we crawled out and could see just what sort of a place we were in. I saw quite a crowd of lads in one corner of the field, so I went over to them. There was a big tank there, and there was water in that with just one tap and they were all quenching their thirst as quickly as possible.

There weren't any toilets, and there was one occasion when a lad went over to the barbed wire and ... while he was doing his business there, a guard came and bayoneted him! But that's the only thing we saw there.

After two or three days there, we were taken out, put into trucks again and set off to Bengazi. .. This was something the same as the other place, but larger and there were larger tents which would have held about a dozen. I picked out one tent there. I must describe the toilets. There was one here. What it consisted of, was a platform, about two foot high, about fifteen foot square, and as you sat on the edge of it, you sat on a hole. In other words, there were holes drilled all the way round, about the size of an average bottom and covering them was an old army helmet and that was the toilet seat. So when you went to the toilet, you just strolled up to one of these things, lifted the tin hat out, and did your business. Right out in the open of course, but you couldn't be modest in those conditions.

I remember seeing machine guns around the tents. I wondered why they were having this for us, and then I realised that this was for the Long Range Desert Group, which had been working in conjunction with the invasion force. Now these chaps lived out in the desert on their own and they raided various sections where the enemy were, sabotaged supplies etcetera and then got out as quickly as possible. Real dare devils these chaps. They actually had been in Tobruk, waiting for us to land. They had come in trucks pretending to be prisoners of war, the Italian guards, being some of their numbers with Italian uniforms on. They had machine guns and grenades underneath their seats, inside the truck. They were waiting in Tobruk for us. When the action was found out, and we were under fire, they came out of hiding. I believe they created rather havoc going round the air-raid shelters calling out in Italian "Anyone there?" And if anyone answered then they just threw a grenade down. They left booby traps all over the place, which continued to go off long after we'd left. Anyway they were there with us as well, those who'd been captured, .. That was what the machine guns were for.

The Commandant of this camp had actually lived in England for a long time and he had a tailoring business, in Manchester. He spoke very good English. He had come over to Italy for a holiday when the war had broken out and he had been called up. So he was quite sympathetic towards us. Whenever he came in the camp, he always had packets of cigarettes, which he'd hand round. He asked us what we wanted and we mentioned about the food and the next day sacks of grain, rice and other stuff came into the camp. So he was certainly doing his best for us. I know we had something to eat and we weren't really hungry there. We had no bedding of course. I used to just make a bed in the sand, scoop out a hollow for my bottom, and build up a little pillow for my head. We couldn't wash and there were plenty of sand fleas to keep you awake most of the night. I don't know how long we were there, it must have been about a week, I suppose. Incidentally, I had been in my bare feet all this time and they were getting rather sore, so I cut the legs off my overalls and tied them around my feet. A bit later, the arms went the same way, so I had a rather tropical overall with no legs or arms in!

Eventually, we were all taken out of there and carted down to the harbour where we boarded a cargo ship en route to our main prison camps in Italy. It took a couple of days to reach Italy. We were all put down in the hold of this ship which was battened down except for one corner where the ladder came up from down below, for ventilation and to allow us to come up and use the toilet which was on the main deck.

There was one unpleasant episode on the ship coming over to Italy. There were about ninety to a hundred of us down that hold, and a lot of the lads had dysentery. Yet they only allowed us up one at a time to the toilet. Imagine the smell and the heat of the hold itself. It's worth describing this toilet to you. It consisted of a trough, which had a hose at one end and the water went down this trough, on a slight angle, and another one .. which tipped the water out over the ship's side. There was a sort of a bar over the top of this and you sat on this, parallel with the ship's rail, so you put your feet on the ship's rail, your bottom on the bar and held on to the rail with your hand. It was wide open of course, no privacy. It took about six of us cheek to cheek.

Eventually, we got through the Corinth Canal, and we anchored for a while, in a port somewhere in Greece. From there we went to Taranto, the main harbour of Italy. There were two harbours here, an outer and an inner harbour. Joining these harbours was just a narrow passage with the main pier or roadway about 10 foot above the ship. I just happened to be sitting on the toilet as we past through this and I remember, looking up and seeing a young couple just bending down and looking at the ship coming in and I thought "Well, if it gives you a thrill, good luck to you!" I wasn't going to interrupt my very important duties.

We landed and were taken to what looked like a Mexican courtyard with buildings around it. We were all told to take our clothes off, so we stripped off completely and they gave us two tags .. with elastic bands on them and we put one round our wrist and the other on our clothes which were taken away to be fumigated. We had to line up in this courtyard, and they brought out soapboxes and half a dozen barbers. We all went along in turn and sat on these boxes so the barbers cut all our hair off with hair clippers. After that was done, we had a shower. The water was cold; there was no hot water and the towels just consisted of bed sheets or table clothes, which were already wet, so we didn't dry off much. Then we picked up our clothes, which were supposed to be fumigated, but they weren't and put those on again. Then we were led off to a railway siding and put into goods wagons. There were about twenty of us in each one, we were quite crowded and an Italian guard with a rifle. On the way, (it was night-time again) travelling up the rail going north, we didn't know where we were going, but when we stopped at one station, just a sort of a siding and we were dying of thirst. Now one lad had a tin hat, so he asked the guard to get him some water. The guard was quite a nice chap and said certainly, took the tin hat, handed his rifle to one of our fellas and disappeared up the platform. He came back with his tin hat full of water, handed it in and got his rifle back again.

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