大象传媒

After the usual 6 months of square-bashing and wireless training at various camps I was bundled off, at very short notice, overnight by train to Gourock on the Clyde. My last memory of England was the smell of the hills as the train went over Shap Fell. I hardly had time to say goodbye to Olive or my family. None of us knew where we were going, or for how long or indeed, whether we should ever come back.

At Gourock we were put aboard a big ocean liner- the Strathnaver- and sailed off with no ceremony down the Clyde on a dull March morning. As we sailed past the shipyards, all the shipbuilders were lining the banks (the Clyde is a very narrow river), to wave and we all rushed to the ships side to wave back. Surprise, surprise! This huge liner that seemed as solid as a rock keeled over sideways- I wouldn't have believed such a huge hulk could have slanted over like that. However, we soon learned that these big ships could wobble about as badly as cockle shells when the Atlantic ocean took a hand.

We sailed across the Atlantic nearly to America and then back to Africa ( Freetown in Sierra Leone ). By this time we had mastered climbing into a hammock and later did this on the bare deck. We all had varying degrees of sea sickness but for the most part the whole voyage was very boring. The ship was full of troops of all sorts and sizes and there was very little to do except talk, read and wonder where we were going.

We were in a convoy of course with ships of all sizes spread all over the sea, or so it seemed. We had an escort of naval ships including a battle ship and several destroyers which were always dashing about like sheep dogs. We also had our own gun crews on board; in fact they seemed to be the only ones with something to do ( except for the sailors of course ). Luckily the German U-boats gave us a miss!

Finally we sailed into Durban where we were allowed on shore for three days. The green of the land when you first see it after weeks at sea is a marvellous sight. Also a marvellous sight was fresh fruit: which was good to eat after a diet of mainly Finnan haddock and thousands of tiny Egyptian eggs The South Africans treated us very well, but unfortunately I and some of the others got dysentery so this took some of the pleasure out of it! We were warned that many South Africans were Nazi sympathisers and might try to subvert the troops ; I never saw anything of that though.

And so we were on our way again for several more weeks. Eventually we sailed up the Red Sea and disembarked at Port Tenfirk at the end of the Suez Canal. We had been at sea for 14 weeks and we were heartily sick of the sea by the time our journey came to an end. However, one good thing that sticks in my mind is the wonderful phosphorescence that surrounded the ship at night. That and the leaping dolphins.

When we got to Port Tewfir both the Queen Mary and the Queen Elizabeth were there, highly camouflaged of course. They were being used to ferry troops from Australia and New Zealand to the Middle East and apparently didn,t travel in convoy as they were so fast that they could outstrip any U-boat. Anyway, they were never caught.

On landing in Egypt, I and a few others were sent up into the Sinai Desert to join an existing observation unit. Our first location was on the side of the Mediterranean at E1Arish. There we were split into groups of five two wireless operators and two gunners and a bombardier from the Royal Artillery. These groups were sent out onto certain map reference points around the Suez Canal. Our job was to report back to HQ any aircraft movements i.e. type, height, speed, direction etc. In those days and those parts RADAR as you know it did not exist and our planes and troops had to rely on such primitive observations.

Our original posting in the Sinai was mainly a training exercise I suppose but it was interesting and a proper job after our boring sea journey. It was also fascinating to feel oneself surrounded by so much history, but a bit eerie to be set down with only four others hundreds of miles away from anywhere in the wilds of the desert. Of course we were not able to wander away from our post so it was lucky that we all got on pretty well together otherwise it might have been a bit tricky.

After some weeks we were given a weeks leave in Palestine and we went up to Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. It was a very interesting excursion and we were privileged to have had the opportunity of visiting places of such historical importance.

Our spell in Sinai was short lived however and soo We were moved up to the real war zone in the Western Desert. On the way we went through Cairo. There we had another lucky experience; a visit to the Sphinx and the Great Pyramid and yes, we went inside it! But this was where the sightseeing fr pleasure) ended and the real thing began.

The Western Desert is a huge tract of desert hundreds of miles wide stretching westward fron Egypt into Libya. The northern fringe along the coast was Cyrenaica, an area which had a long history of Greek and Roman occupation. It was rather lille the Malham area, hilly with rocky valleys. South and west of Cyrenaica the desert became a stony uncharted wasteland. Further south still it became very sandy with rolling dunes and many sand storms.

The main fighting was along the coastal plain in a strip of 50-100 miles inland. This area had been colonised by the Italians before the war and they had built a good coastal road and a number of small towns along it such as Benghazi, Derna, Sollum and Tobruk(in Egypt). It was an area first contested for between the British Allies and the Italians and later the Germans. The British were at first successful and advanced well along the coast to just beyond Benghazi in Libya, but when the Germans under Rommell took a hand, the British were driven back eastwards.

When my unit was first sent into Egypt we took part in one of these Westward pushes, advancing as far as E1 Aqheila just beyond Benghazi. We were mainly on the move and were soon on the way back. We saw many disturbing scenes of battle scars on the desert tracks. The first such experience being the aftermath of the battle of Sudi Rezegh, with bodies still lying about in a terrible stench. Not a very pretty sight, believe me, and a stern reminder of the awful reality of war!. We also witnessed the demolition of part of the Italian coastal road by the R.E.'s - just after we, the last to pass, had got through.

The military position became static then for a time with the Germans and Italians facing the British and the Free French along what was known as the Gazala line. This line was not a continuous line but consisted of "boxes" of troops with minefields in between. This line was about sixty miles inland from the coast. Our unit HQ was in the Tobruk area near E1 Adem airfield, but my personal posting was with my original four mates on an observation post well inland, to the south east end of the line, near a Free French outpost "Bir Hacheim". - the scene of a famous battle later in the war.

There was no British force between us and the Germans, only minefields,. though we did not know this at the time. We were stuck in this static situation for some weeks, but there was plenty of activity even though we were so isolated. We were near a rough track which led to Bit Hacheim and we got to know a number of Free French and other troops. There was also much air activity, dog fights above us and planes shot down..Also several machine gun attacks on us by German fightes and some lorries properly shot up in flames, but luckily the German pilots missed us. We had a.good defensive bolt hole ,fortunately, - an old desert rock cistern into which we dived if ve saw Gerry coming.

Obviously, this state of affairs could not last for ever and one night in early May 1942 we were told that the Germans were expected to attack. Sure enough, all hell broke out that night ; guns crashing and flashing all along the horizon, but no sign of actual troops. We had no idea what to do in this contingency, but we radioed our HQ as to what was happening all around ( not that they really knew). They said that they were retreating and our last message from them was G.L.(Good Luck).

The next morning we were puzzled to see, on the eastern horizon, a long column of tanks and troops. Since they were behind us we assumed that they were ours, but we began to have doubts when we got near enough to see Swastikas on some of them, although there were some British lorries too. The trouble was that both sides had captured so much and used so much of each other's equipment that it was a little confusing. However, we soon had all doubts removed when this mystery column began lobbing shells at us and sent out a few infantry scout cars. I must explain, that by this time we were not just four observers on our own but had been joined by several other bewildered odds and ends; an R.E. water boring unit and a few Guards who had become detached from their units. A sort of cowboy chase developed as we tried to escape with bullets flying all around. I was in the back of our lorry( the R.A. men were the drivers) when we suddenly made a violent emergency stop.

Everyone was jumping down onto the desert and lying down, hoping to dodge the bullets. The Gerries were also dashing around, shouting and obviously telling us to get our hands up quick, this we were not slow to do since our rifles were in the,lorries and we were vastly out numbered. What had happened was, that in our hurry to escape we had run plum into a minefield. It was a case of the devil or the deep blue sea; we chose the devil and that is how your Granddad became a P.O.W or a Kriegsgefangener.

The next few days were not very pleasant. The Germans were not ruthless exactly, but they were fighting a battle and we were a nuisance, so they just dumped us in the middle of a battle compound and left us to find a bit of shade lying under their lorries etc. we were not given any food nor water and just lay, hoping we would not be caught by any machine gun bullets, shells etc. from our own lads who were firing into the compound. There were plenty of planes around too and a few dog fights to keep up the general interest. This lasted a couple of days and then we were taken out through a gap which the Germans had made through the minefield.

Eventually we were loaded on lorries and: .t0ken up the coast road to Benghazi where we werekept in a largePOW transit camp for a week or two. We were given some rudimentary rations - water was what we mostly cringed- but conditions were not good and lots ofor ladst dysentery. =ome tragically died and since we had rmt at thittimebeen

recorded as prisoners their relatives would not get to know their fate for a long time. My fellow wireless op.(Bert Muckett) and I kept together through this ordeal ( indeed we kept together until the end of the war ) but we did not know what happened to our three gunners. When we were first taken prisoner their was utter confusion; groups were taken to different locations arid it may be that some were retaken or escaped in the confusion of the battle.

However, when we got to Benghazi transit camp we started a new existence. We were at first like a herd of cattle and physically and mentally we were at a very low ebb.

The next stage was a long ride on a lorry right along the North African coast to Tripoli-several hundred miles. Next we were loaded onto a German steamer. It was a queer feeling to see the nazi flag flying over us, but when we were herded down to a steel hold and battened down we had more to worry about than nazi flags. The next three or four days were the worst I have ever experienced. We were not aloud to make any noise for fear of subs. We had no room to lie down properly, there were no proper toilet facilities other than a big copper urn and the whole deck area was awash with filth. The water we were given to drink was putrid and the food was one or two hard tack biscuits with maggots in. The only time we were aloud out of this hold was when we called in at Sicily-what a transformation scene to see green hills for a few minutes.

Next day we were of again and our next stop was Naples. Believe me, it was marvellous to be on dry land again, but the most memorable thing about Naples was not the view of Vesuvius across the bay, nor the wonderful view of the Bay of Naples, but the first drink of clean cold water that we were given. One thing one learns to appreciate when one experiences very primitive conditions is the value of simple, basic pleasures. One also realises how thin is the veneer of civilised behaviour and how quickly ones standards can deteriorate.

Anyhow, back to the main story line. From Naples we were taken by rail in cattle trucks, first to Capua and then via Rome, Florence, Bologna and Modena to a village called Carpi which was to be our home for the next year. At Carpi the Italians had hurriedly prepared a temporary camp for us - merely a field ringed with barbed wire with lines of ridge tents. Each tent housed about twenty of us as far as I can recall. There was a central, primitive cook house from which each tent had to draw their food and water. At first their were no other facilities except primitive latrines. Our rations consisted of about a pint of-soup and a piece of cheese and bead per day. A sort of tea was also provided in big iron vats. This had to be drawn from the cookhouse by bearexs from each tent. Strangely enough, this provided me with my first exercise in conciliation.

You must understand that in the Forces and particularly when they are in adverse conditions men become very petty and selfish. So many different types are thrown together and often all one has to think about are the basic needs of food and drink. Anyway for some reason that I can't remember our two tents had a row and no one would trust anyone to fetch the tea. The result was that no one was getting their tea. You could hardly believe that grown men could be so foolish and petty so I took it upon myself to tell them with a bit of straight talking. As a result they decided to see sense provided that I and one of the other tents trusties would undertake the supervision of the tea delivery. A stupid thing I suppose you will think but so many problems I encountered when I was still a prisoner, and afterwards taught me how basically simple so many human problems are.

Conditions at Carpi gradually improved and a more permanent, hutted camp was built, but the basic routine was continued. Food was reasonable, if sparse but we had no books etc. We tried to amuse each other by talking and by having lectures and debates for those who wanted them. I remember I gave a about the Lake District and another about the National Health Service.

One peculiar episode concerned hygiene. We were all paraded and inspected for lice. When it was discovered that we all had them we were disgusted but one soon gets used to them. To combat the scourge, the Italians produced a machine very much like Stephensons puffing billy (Rocket). We all had to strip and our clothes were steamed in this contraption. We all concluded that it might have chased the lice about a bit and livened them up; it certainly didn't kill them.

Our Italian holiday was soon to end however. Italy surrendered to the Allies late in 1943 and we ofI expected to be released. The English officer in charge of our camp told us to stay put. The Germans, he said, were getting out of Italy as fast as they could; indeed, we could hear them roaring up the main road nearby. We were told that we would be safer in our camp until the Germans had cleared off, but the next morning the camp was surrounded by German troops. They had imprisoned our Italian guards and occupied all the machine gun posts around the camp. So much for our expert information.

Within a few days we were loaded into cattle trucks again and off we went via Verona, Bolgano, the Brenner Pass, Innsbruck, Munich and into Thuringia. We eventually arrived at a well established camp at Lamsdorf, on the Polish border near Oppeln (it's called something else now). This was an entirely different kettle of fish to the Italian camp. It was well organised, efficiently run and well estahd. It had been there since the beginning of the war and had about 20,000 prisoners in it. It was like a small town and we had to learn a new way of life and to live with different people.

Bert and I were allocated to an RAF compound, where most of the inmates were air crew who had been shot down. I became friendly with two of these ; Jack Rawlinson and Harry Alexander. These two, Bert and I formed a roup. Firstly because of the Red Cross parcel distribution system, which required sharing of food. Perhaps I should enlarge about the Red Cross. All the leading nations of the world were parties to the Geneva convention, which laid down rules about the treatment of prisoners. The Red Cross arranged for the registration of prisoners, the supply of food parcels, books, games, materials etc., so all prisoners owe a great debt to them. There were several different lnds of food parcels - British, Canadian and New Zealand. The luxury ones were Canadian very lush and rich. The British, because of the rationing in the UK were more utilitarian. The New Zealand ones arrived in bull necessitating a splitting system. All these parcels were an absolute God send but they were not regular. In Italy we seldom saw any and in Germany the fl.uidity of arrival fluctuated with the progress of hostilities. The basic German food was poor. A piece of black bread, sometimes a small piece of meat(of some queer type) or a piece of foul smelling cheese(made from fish I believe) and a small bowl of boiled swede. These basic rations were supposed to be based on some nutritional formula, but we would have been badly off if it had not been for the Red Cross food.

The German accommodation was just basic wooden or brick huts with a big latrine hut seating fifty at a time, We had wooden tiered beds and bed bugs were rife, but our beds were our "homes" and it is surprising how one gets attached to an to anywhere after a time.

My great salvation was chess. I had been quite a proficient player before the war and when I arrived at Lamsdorf I was delighted to find chess quite well established. When it was found that I was a reasonable player I became accepted and made many friends of all nationalities. Actually, I played in a team representing England in an international competition sponsored by the German commandant. The English team won second prize. Ironically, the winning team was comprised of Jews from Latvia and Estonia etc. This was remarkable in view of the Germans attitude to Jews at that time.

There were some very queer things in the camp however. Long serving prisoners were suspicious of new ones like us coming from other theatres of the war. It was suspected that the Germans tried to introduce stool- pigeons (spies) into the camps through these means and one tended to keep close to those who knew you. Chess was a great help in this as far as I was concerned. On qne occasion a prisoner was found drowned in a surface water tank. lo-one could identify him and we all thought he was a stool-pigeon who had been found out.

There was also a good deal of changing identity. This was because some army personnel were sent out on working parties, from which it was easier to escape. Now air crew personnel were issued with escape maps by the R.A.F. and so they were not sent out on working parties. Some ambitious escapees who had maps, therefore changed identities with some army man, so there were quite a few people masquerading as others. When I first met Geoff Trollip, a South African I became friendly with, he was known as an R.A.F. obesrver ( I forget his English name). Unfortunately this could create serious complications- sometimes people on working parties were killed in air-raids and the wrong man as reported as killed etc.

Whilst the months passed on, we kept hearing turnouts about the Russians advancing and, of course, our camp was very much to the east of Germany. Then suddenly, on Christmas Day 1944 we were all given immediate orders that the camp was being evacuated. Thereupon, we were all issued with a Red Cross parcel each and set off to march west in deep snow and freezing cold.

The first night we trudged along in a long column with guards with rifles etc. marching beside us. Naturally we wondered where on earth we were going. We soon found out. We were marched into a series of barns in the middle of the night and bedded down in straw. This turned out to be the pattern. Each day we were lined up in a long column and counted. Then off we trudged. It would not be correct to say marched. It was bitterly cold and the first few weeks were in deep snow. Mostly we were taken along country roads or tracks through fir woods. It was surprising how we improvised sledges or carts to carry our few meagre possessions. This is where our "group" system proved its worth; Bert, Harry and I looked after each other, with Geoff Trollip hanging on for a time, until someone stole his boots and he was taken off in a distressed state. We feared that he would never survive but he did. He was repatriated by train by the Red Cross and actually came to stay with Olive and I after the war!

Back to the march! Whilst our Red Cross food lasted we managed reasonably well. Most of us either got, or enjoyed the use of, improvised "blowers". These were hand driven bellows which blew air into a small container- a miniature fire grate. It was remarkable how a few small chippings could be wafted into a little, hot stove, enough to heat up water for tea(?) or thin stew. We got no help from the Germans in providing such concessions; we were left absolutely to fend for ourselves and this we proceeded to do, with considerable ingenuity. You would be surprised what men can do, when they have to, to survive. As the marching went and on food became a major preoccupation; Red Cross food was soon exhausted an we virtually lived off the lmlu .what we could steal- mainly potato, sugar beet, dried peas occasional chicken. To be fair to the Germans, they seemed very little better off. Certainly, it as very rare they gave us any food, so they had no option to turning a blind eye to our depredations. On most nights we were all shepherded into barns which in Germany seemed to be built around squares. The prisoners would be dumped into the squares and left to find a barn to sleep in.

Then the fun would begin. The guards would be posted around the edges of the squares and we would be left to our own devices. Just an example: our four were bedded down in deep straw in a large barn. When I awoke in the morning, I was staring up at the rafters when I saw one or two figures crawling on the rafters and disappearing into a hole in the roof. I immediately thought -Hello, there must be something worth exploring up there. After a whispered word to my mates I managed to climb up into the rafters. The hole in the roof led into a storage room full of sacks of grain. The first arrivals in this room felt as if they had landed in treasure island, and soon everyone, including me were busy stutng their pockets and anything that would hold anything, with corn, oats etc. Suddenly there was a crash and below us a door was flung open. After a torrent of"RausRaus", there was a clatter of German boots up some wooden stairs and some guards burst upon us. I managed to dodge behind a sack and then ran for the stairs when the guard was chasing my fellow malefactors. There was no time for niceties and I ran straight down into the arms of another guard. About a dozen of us were caught on that occasion. We were all lined up against the barn wall and we thought our end had come. We were stood there for what seemed like hours, before a German officer, seemingly displeased with us, gave us a real lecture that none of us could understand. Then, much to our surprise, we were waved off. This is just one example of how we lived. Sometimes we managed to succeed and sometimes we were forestalled but the Germans could certainly have been rougher with us. They must have realised that there was little they could do, although I was nearly shot stealing some wood. I was caught red- handed breaking a fence down, and as I stood looking down the barrel of a guard's rifle, I really had given up the ghost. Then all of a sudden he swung the rifle round, knocking me flying with the butt across my shoulders.

And so our column progressed slowly across Germany, with the weather changing from deep winter into hot sunshine. Sometimes we got mixed up with civilian refugees, Russian prisoners etc. All very pathetic and confusing. I managed to preserve an interest in the country and towns we passed through, since I had always enjoyed that. I recall passing through Gorlitz, Jena, Meissen, Weimar and Eisenach. Then we were turned back S.E. towards Czechoslovakia passing through Planen before being deposited in a fir wood at a village called Rodewisch. In our fir wood we built ourselves little shelters with the Germans shelling over our heads and the Americans firing the other way across the valley.
Finally, after one false start, a truce was arranged and we were left to march down a woodland track to the American lines, waving a white flag.

As we left the shelter of the fir wood, we were marched past a German officer and a sergeant who had controlled the guards along our route. When the sergeant saw me he shouted, "Ah, Kartoffeln"(potatoes). He evidently remembered a few occasions when he had caught me! However, we then met the Americans and they were anything but friendly. Perhaps they suspected a trap. Anyway we must have looked a horrible bunch of scarecrows.

And that is how I returned to civilisation. After being cleaned up and fed, we were eventually taken to Erfurt where we were flown home, via Paris, to England.(Tangmere). The war ended while we were at Erfurt.

I have estimated that our march covered about a thousand miles and every form of sleeping accommodation: brickworks, farms, railway stations, open fields etc.- in snow, rain, sunshine etc. We experienced many forms of human degradation and misery and we saw the thousand bomber raid going towards Dresden. We saw the results of part of that raid on Planen, a town that was absolutely flattened, with miserable looking inhabitants picking through the ruins. An awful sight, whatever the rights and wrongs of it all.

So my war ended. I arrived back home numbed in spirit I suppose and a bit of a wreck physically. I had learned a lot about human beings and about myself with many illusions and ideas shattered.. I realised I had been lucky compared with thousands who had never come back at all or who came back only in pieces. The main positive side to all these experiences was the realisation of the importance of comradeship and real friendship which really did exist. Without that it would have been 垄]icult to pull through.

In conclusion, 50 years after all these things occurred, I can honestly say I never felt any hatred towards our so-called enemies. They ll seemed to suffer the same things that we did. I did not go into the war with any great sense of excitement or adventure and I did not come out of it with any change of opinion. It gave me many marvellous opportunities to see parts of the world and different people I would have never have seen otherwise and to that extent it can be said to have widened my experiences and made me a wiser and more tolerant individual. But if anyone ever tells you war is a glorious and exciting experience, tell them to think again!

This story was told to the staff of Chesterfield Library.

漏 Copyright of content contributed to this Archive rests with the author. Find out how you can use this.