大象传媒

At Joux-la-Ville the teams were being assembled, they had to be International, it would not have been prudent to have one team of the same nationality. Doctors were in short supply and teams were always waiting for a doctor to arrive and be allocated.
A team consisted of a Director in our case a Dutchman, a Doctor ours was
Dr. Michele Hardi a Frenchman 鈥� he had qualified as a doctor with the French Army 鈥� when France fell he went to the French resistance ), a welfare officer, Henriette Bergl (Belgian), a Belgian warehouse officer , a supply officer,Jean Biard a Frenchman, a food supply officer (me) A French nurse, Paula and two drivers ,one Dutch, Jacque one Belgian, Andr茅. We had been allocated two Army trucks with canvas sides and tops 鈥� we were team 158. We were in France about two weeks before the end of the war. We had a few days there and then set off towards Germany.
We set off with blessing of the Quakers who were doing the organizing of the teams,
鈥淕o with hearts full of goodwill鈥� one of them called to us. The down to earth French doctor said to me, 鈥� It would be better if we went with our camion (truck) full of blankets and medicaments鈥�.

We drove through France into Belgium, through the rubble and devastation, the dust kicked up by the vehicles was indescribable, and we were permanently covered.

We were near Brussels in the back of the truck when we heard on a small radio, I think it may have been one used by the resistance, that the war was over. We drove into the city for the celebrations. All the bars were open, all vehicles were sounding their horns, and everybody was celebrating. There was nobody that I could say I really knew 鈥� I had not got to know the team.

For me the war was over but for the rest of the team their countries were liberated.

The next day we made for Minden it was a difficult journey trying to keep the trucks together, as we drove through Cologne it was not possible to have all wheels on the road, two on the road and two on the rubble at the side. Crossing the Rhine we eventually got to Minden. In Minden the army had a Town Major, Major Mark Stewart. He told us to find a house we wanted as accommodation and to let him know, the occupants would have to leave taking only bedding and cutlery. They had the right to harvest anything growing in the garden. His words were, 鈥楢ny fool can be uncomfortable, find yourself something that can take care of the whole team.鈥� We saw the Gauliters (German District Officers) house and thought that would do, we went back and told the Major, he sent someone to have a look to ensure it was suitable and then sent two soldiers with us to requisition the house. It seemed a good idea to ask the lady who owned the house to be our housekeeper, on the basis as it was her house she would want it kept nicely for when it was returned to her. This worked very well, we were very comfortable there. Always clean linen, food cooked well.
Team158 were established

The army I think had taken over and prepared the barracks, The Bessler Kassern as
accommodation for the displaced person. There must have been someone directing the Displaced Persons there. Initially they came and went, we had no idea who they were, how many or where they went. They tended to sort them selves out into their nationalalities, eventually blocks were allocated on that basis. They knew where accommodation could be had and where food was supplied, it was only one meal a day and a stew of a sort, whatever was available.
There was no organisation and no way of checking of who had eaten or for that matter who had eaten twice

Once we had settled in we found that the gas supply was sporadic, it used to go off without warning. The water was heavily chlorinated in the early days, everything tasted of it tea, soup, whatever, but it was very necessary for such a heavy dose as the water could so easily have been polluted.
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There were a group of Hungarian lads, not much more than boys. The doctor said that none would make it back to Hungary as they all had TB. One of them one day decided to swim in the water tank. He just sank and drowned.

The Polish people who had been in forced labour in Minden had seen a number of their country men die in forced labour and were buried in a field behind our house. They wanted to exhume the bodies and bury them properly. The army would have done it, but the Poles insisted on doing it. The army supplied vehicles and equipment. I can recall the work going on, we offered them tea at our house if they wanted. A very young polish soldier came up to the house, obviously distressed at what he had been doing, he had a few tears on the shoulder of the hausfrau pulled himself together and went back to it.

A type of wood alcohol was being sold in the camp, it was dangerous, could result in blindness or death. On one occasion a few people had died from drinking this stuff. The Camp Commandant decided to put the deceased on display in open coffins to get the message home. The administrators told me it had the desired effect

Our drivers had taken the vehicles to get fuel, they were not filling stations as such but piles of 20 litre petrol cans organised by the British army. While they were there they heard two local people talking about a stash of stolen cloth in the loft of a local inn that was going to be disposed of. They no doubt did not realise our drivers understood German.

I realised we had to act quickly. I wrote an order for the goods to be given up in my best German and put a number of the Gauliters official stamps on the document.
All quite meaningless as the Military Government were now in control..
It was really a worthless piece of paper.

The drivers went to the Inn with the document and were given the cloth without any argument. The came back with the lorry loaded with bales of cloth. It was mainly lightweight light coloured fabric. What were we to do with so much? We could not declare it to the Military authorities. We initially put in it our cellar. The welfare officer suggested it would be useful to have it made up into blouses for the women, shirts for the boys and first communion dresses for the girls. The displaced persons we were responsible for had worked locally, they knew more than we did where to go when things were needed or to get things done. A local factory agreed to make these items up for us. The Belgian welfare officer said that the girls would really need little Dorothy bags edged with lace. Rosaries and candles would also be needed.

I went to the Town Major, Mark Stewart with my request, who just looked and with a grin said, 鈥淗ave you not heard there has been a war on.鈥�
The Rosaries were obtained from Hamburg, the candles from the army Quartermasters Stores and the D.P鈥檚 with their local knowledge told us where we could obtain the lace.

The first communion took place with a small party afterwards with rations saved here and there

The was an out break of Typhoid, the doctor prescribed that the sufferers should drink water, this was, as I have said, heavily chlorinated and really undrinkable on its own. Cherries were in season and plentiful, we obtained the cherries and the D.P.s told as of an aerated water factory. We made an approach, supplied the cherries and a quantity of extra sugar, an acceptable sort of cherryade was made to drink, with the taste of the chlorine hidden.

Eventually food welfare parcels began to arrive from the USA. We did not just hand them out, as we felt that the contents would be swapped for schnapps.
We decided to hold them back and distribute food to the vulnerable groups as it was needed, for the children we would hold a tea party with little extra treats that they would not get at that time.

For this purpose I was given a an old German tank garage, a large hanger like building. It needed cleaning up, the Army supplied the white wash.
There were two distinct groups of Yugoslavs there, the ex soldiers and
prisoners of war, who were followers of President Tito know as Titoites and those of forced labour group who supported the deposed king, King Peter 鈥� Peterites. A lot animosity existed between the two groups.

The Titoites offered to white wash the garage, this was done and I went to inspect it, they had made a great job 鈥攂ut had painted a frieze around the top of the walls.
Zivio Tito Zivio Tito. They said it was Long Live Tito. I had to make it clear that we could not have anything political and had to get volunteers to white wash it out.

There were, Yugoslavs, Poles with Serbs, Baltic peoples - Baltic peoples Lithuanians, Latvians, Estonians, on coming to the tea party with the children, all insisting on saying Grace in their own language before eating.

Eventually the Yugoslavs sent trucks for their soldiers to be repatriated - they had the better barrack blocks than the Peterites. The British army were overseeing the operation to get the troops moved out.. The trucks were loading up with the returning soldiers, the last truck tailgate closed when the Peterites came out of their block, took over the soldiers block and began spitting on the soldiers. The British army got the trucks out without delay, if those Yugoslav soldiers could have got out there would have been blood spilled..

Repatriation was carried out as the roads and railways were repaired and transport became available.

Minden was really only a transit station and was gradually run down.

Many of the Baltic people had left their own countries before the war and come to Germany to work, they could not be made to join the German army but were made to work in munitions factories. Now in effect stateless, they were by this time in a large camp at Meerbeck in the British Zone, the other zones would have had similar, it was clear they would be in these camps for sometime.

In November 1945 we all transferred to Team 174 in Menden

This was the married quarters for the now defunct German army, small houses. There were roads and street lights, there were cooking facilities in the houses so we just gave them the food and they got on with it. These were all Polish people. My job really now was to meet the camp commanders to discuss the ration requirements for the day. While we were discussion the calorie allocation of the available food Major Zdziehowicz would be working it all out on an abacus on the desk while talking to me. Quite amazing.

Sometimes they would ask if they could have a barrel of lard or a barrel of herring. These would be shared out between the families.
It became a bit of a joke at parties, me always being heard to say I am a bit short of calories or on about shortages and what should be done to make them up
There were two separate parts to the camp. The groups decided to name their respective villages
One group called theirs KOSCIUSZKOWO the other group called their NOVA KRAKOW.
By this time the leaders of the communities and people with skills had emerged from the Polish displaced persons, the doctors, priests, school masters, nurses. With Major Zdziehowicz at the head of Nova Krakow with Major Clymcyck.
A civilian camp administrator and Major Dobrowolski ran Kosciuszkowo village

I was told that Major Dobrowolski had been in the army and been an Olympic horseman

There was a wedding in Kosciuszkowo village, a Polish girl Laura married a soldier from a Welsh regiment Bill Pyle, she was given away by Major Dobrowolski. This was quite an event with the wedding taking place in the villages church with dancing late into the night with music from an accordion player who I was told had played on Polish radio before the war. They came to the UK and settled in Wales..

I can recall a large repatriation I think the camps were going to close, a lot did not want to go, those who had been prisoners of war still had their uniforms and proudly displayed the KGF on the back of the tunic ( Kriegs gefangen - prisoner of war) they were going to dispose of those uniforms before crossing the border.

It became clear that the UNRRA operation was running down, the military government was gradually handing over to the Control Commission, I was approached and asked it I would be interested in joining that organisation as they would need a dietician. I wrote to the Foreign Office and was told to go home and come backing my new uniform. From the khaki of UNRRA to the blue uniform of the Control Commission.

In the language of the day I went home a brown job and came back a blue job.

While at home in Edinburgh I met Dr McGillvray she was transferring to the Control Commission from the Red Cross and we were to travel out to Celle with an overnight stop at Bad Hoyenhausen not far from her old Red Cross base at Bad Salzuflen. She was invited there for an evening meal, an old colleague, an elderly Swiss doctor came to collect her with a driver. I had gone out for the evening with friends, Dr McGillvray did not turn up for breakfast, I thought she might have stayed over so I went to the station to wait for her there as she had the tickets.. When she did not arrive I went back to the depot at Bad Hoyenhausen. By this time news had reached there that the car they were travelling in had hit an unlit car on the autobahn killing them all. I had to go to the public health branch HQ in Berlin then to Hagen military cemetery for the funeral where I had to lay the wreath to represent the organisation before going on to Dussledorf .

There I stayed in Moronplatz where Oxford Nutrition Survey team number 4 were located. We inherited their mobile laboratory and an ambulance to start with but then requisitioned cars as we needed them.
The team was to observe the effect the food situation had on the German people.
Ration books had been issued to German civilians by the commission, the civil servants organising this for the British zone had four years of operating this at home and were well practiced in the administration but not really the practicalities, there were complaints that there was not enough food to meet the ration. On one occasion Dr Greta Widmann, the german doctor who had been with A K Farben (Pharmaceutical company) suggested we saw Dr. Erhardt, (later Chancellor) and asked why there was a shortfall. He just said that those administering the system had no real idea of what was required or what was being supplied.
The cattle that Bavaria have been instructed to deliver were being slaughtered there and the offal, (a source of food), and the hide, were being kept. If the animals had been supplied 鈥渙n the hoof鈥� they would have been a greater source of food and materials.
Gradually those who had been in administration in Germany before and during the war came back into the system and things were tightened up.
The quadrupartite control commission came out from Berlin , a French General, British Brigadier, American General, I don鈥檛 recall a Russian being there., I was told the Commission travelled in the train that had been used by Goering although I never saw it. The object was to compare conditions in various Zones. Dr Magnus Pike who later achieved fame on British television travelled with the commission as a nutritional scientist.

The work we were really doing were recording the body weights of the schoolchildren and making comparisons. I can鈥檛 recall any significant problem, they were all feeding themselves from the food that was rationed as in Britain.

The British and German teams would visit houses by arrangement and record all of the people living there, weigh all of the food in the house and get them to record all of the food bought for the household for the next week to establish how many calories they were surviving on.

鈥淗ampstering鈥� was a practice that was widespread, money was valueless, whatever you had or could get you kept and bartered it for what you wanted this was done quite openly.

There was also a lot of goods being bartered on the black market, food, alcohol 鈥� just about anything that was needed.

Wahrings reform curtailed both practices, the currency was totally reformed and stabilised. Trading with money began again.

I left the Control Commission in December 1949

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