大象传媒

This story was submitted to the People鈥檚 War site by Margaret Walsh of The Royal Star and Garter Home on behalf of Harry Drew and has been added to the site with his permission. The author fully understands the site鈥檚 terms and conditions.

On the Ides of March 1938 Hitler marched into Czechoslovakia. You knew then that war was going to break out.

I am not a violent man, but when it came to the Ides of March 1939 I was working in the City and I said I was going to join up in the Territorial Army. I went into the Middlesex Imperial Yeomanry. Their barracks were at the Duke of York鈥檚 Headquarters just off Sloane Square.

I did this for one purpose. I said to myself that it was my brother鈥檚 birthday on 2 September and that I would not be sitting at my office desk on that day. I would be in the army.

War broke out on 3 September.
Around Christmas time 1939/40, after a short training, I went round the Cape of Good Hope en route for North Africa.

I went up on the desert with Wavell. By the time we got to Tripoli the majority of the equipment we had came out of the First World War. It was all clapped out.
Mr Rommel came along and pushed us back. I was taken Prisoner of War at Fort Makele. As Libya at that time belonged to Italy we didn鈥檛 become German POWs, we became Italian POWs. [You got captured by whoever owned the land.]

Well, we got captured and were lying in the desert 鈥� no cover, very little water and very little to eat. The Italians couldn鈥檛 care less.

I saw a half track [15 cwt truck 鈥� tyres in the front and chains at the back] and other vehicles not far away. The convoy stopped. A man was sitting next to the driver in the front of the half track. He had air raid goggles to protect his eyes from the sand and the dust.
I said to the boys, 鈥淭hat鈥檚 him 鈥� that鈥檚 Mr Rommel, that is.鈥�
He wasn鈥檛 far from me.
I said, 鈥淚鈥檓 going to talk to that bloke.鈥�
They said, 鈥淵ou鈥檒l get shot.鈥�
I spoke to him in German, his own language. I said, 鈥淭hese boys have been lying here for three days 鈥� we have no shelter, and little food or drink. Some are dying and we are starting to bury them.鈥�
He said, 鈥淚鈥檒l see to it.鈥�

That afternoon the Italians came with trucks and took us to the seaside. We were put in a warehouse where there was shelter, water and sanitation.

Mr Rommel must have said, 鈥淵ou see those people get shifted.鈥�

We eventually got to Tripoli, then Italy, to Sulmona, in the Appennines. I remember on the journey to Sulmona that a parson came along with a whole basketful of cherries.

None of the fellows wanted to be there. There were four compounds, with huts, each of which housed 84 men in double tiers. In all there were about 2000 men and officers, of all nationalities 鈥� Australians, Arabs, French, [3 lots of French: the old French, Vichy French and ordinary French soldiers] 鈥� a real mixture.

They came from every walk of life 鈥� from Park Lane in London to the Gorbals in Glasgow. You could not tell who came from where 鈥� all were equal. It was a good leveller. Some had been in jail before the war. At that time there was mass unemployment. If you were unemployed you didn鈥檛 get very much.

People in the Gorbals were dying of White Disease. You got this if you didn鈥檛 have sufficient nourishment. We were better off in the camp 鈥� we had the climate in the mountains. We had the sun. We had the air. We got Red Cross parcels, but in the winter they did not always get through. So instead of having one parcel per man, often we had half or even a quarter parcel per man. Then we all had to share.

But we survived! I used to have a cold shower under the standpipe, not because there was no shower, but because I did not like all the smoke from the fire that heated the water for the shower. I would strip off stark naked and wash myself under that standpipe, in the open air, every day, summer and winter. The tap was at waist level and the water came straight out of the mountains.

In the camp the huts had walls, which meant you could only look out into the far distance. This was contrary to the Geneva Convention. In Germany the camps had only barbed wire, so one could continually be looking out. But we had to spend our time just looking at whatever was inside.

You learnt about people. You had to get on with people sleeping next to you. Living in a hut with 84 people and not being able to look out you had no other option.

People said that Sulmona was the best university they鈥檇 ever been to. You could walk around in that camp 鈥� and you鈥檇 find everyone was a specialist in something.
With the Italians you didn鈥檛 have to work 鈥� so I didn鈥檛 work. I taught German. Others taught maths or Italian.

You could read Italian papers and I could see how the war was going. Then they were looking for people for voluntary work and I went to work in a quarry 鈥� you got double rations! In life you can have big problems, but then you come to a stage in your life when a window of opportunity opens and you have to be ready to go.

After I鈥檇 been lying on my bed for 2 years the window for me was to work in the quarry 鈥� not that you did much work, mostly breaking up stones in the mid-day heat. The Italians didn鈥檛 work you like the Germans did. But, as well as double rations, which was the most important, you got fit.

As I wasn鈥檛 going anywhere at that time I did not shave. I grew a black beard. Unless you washed your beard every day in that heat in Italy you got an infection of the skin.

The Pope used to come down to Sulmona once a year. On one occasion, I met the Pope and had a conversation with him, but before meeting him I had to shave my beard and then, after the visit, start growing it all over again!

Since then I have taken groups of fellow prisoners back to visit Sulmona. I have never had any problems 鈥� they always paid the money owed, were always on time, never drank too much.

I was taken prisoner in April 1941 and got out in September 1943, when the Italians signed the Armistice. That was when I saw another window of opportunity. I walked out with a couple of others before the Germans took charge of the camp. Most went up in the woods and just stopped there. They got captured by the Germans.

Life is a matter of luck. We did the wise thing. We walked across the valley to get away from the camp. The three of us walked from Sulmona to Foggia 鈥� some 300 miles.

The first night we went up a hill and slept there in a barn. Then we made for the woods and slept there. In the morning an old man was standing on the path in the woods. He told us that we had slept in his barn the previous night.

He said to us, 鈥淟ook at this path here. That is the sheep track which the people from the plains of Foggia use in the spring to drive their sheep into the mountains. They stay there for the summer. If you follow that path you will reach Foggia.鈥�
We took his advice and set off. We lived mainly on grapes because it was the right time of year. We used to eat about 12 lbs. at one go. The grapes gave us sugar and that kept you going. I still love grapes!
We鈥檇 been going for a fortnight, sleeping rough, when we met up with some Italian gypsies. We went along with them for 4 days. But then they went up to one of the Abruzzi villages, all of which were on the top of hills because of the mosquitoes.

At that point we fell out with them because they started pinching things from the village and the villagers came down with axes and pitch-forks. We said that that was the end of the gypsies.

When we were with the gypsies you never took your boots off because if you lost your boots you were sunk. I always went to sleep with my boots on.

Well we crossed the line to freedom 10 miles out of Foggia and we were taken down in trucks to Naples. We stayed outside Naples for 2 days. It was a lovely place and I remember that the cherries were ripe at the time.

From there a boat took us to Benghazi and then to Tripoli. We stayed in tents on the race track. Many of the boys got drunk and were put in jail. We used to commandeer a truck in the mornings and go around the jails and get the boys out!

From there we caught a troop ship to Liverpool.

I had a compassionate posting for 3 months. Then I was shown a list of regiments I could join. When I saw the list I realised that they were all down for D Day, which I wasn鈥檛 too keen about.

Then I was transferred to the Intelligence Corps, so I didn鈥檛 have to go to D Day. I caught up with the army when they were fighting in Belgium.

Around Christmas time there was the Battle of the Bulge in the Ardennes, when the Germans got all the available equipment they had. They wanted to get through the Ardennes and make for Antwerp which was the base for all the supplies for the British and Americans.

For about a fortnight we were in those forests 鈥� there was no sunshine, only mist day after day. The Germans were doing well at that stage, since, because of the mist, we had no air cover.

Then on Christmas Day we had the best present 鈥� a clear blue sky. We saw a squadron of British planes. That made all the difference. It changed the battle completely. The Germans didn鈥檛 get any further than the Ardennes. Then I went back to Brussels.

Then came the big push 鈥� late winter or early spring. The push came from the Netherlands south of the Rhine, around Nijmegen. We pushed the Germans onto the banks of the Rhine and in March or April we crossed the Rhine. We went over in things like floating tanks, but open at the top.
I was more scared to be in that than to be in the battlefield. We crossed the Rhine at midnight and the people with us were from the Black Watch. They were all drunk. I was more scared of them than of the Germans at the other side. We had skirmishes with the Germans 鈥� but they鈥檇 had it by that time.
The first night we were in farmhouses. I slept in a big well-made box like a linen chest. Then we moved into a house. As we slept one night they were knocking down the house around us because it was in the way of the road they were building. We woke up to find a big hole in the wall!!

From there we pushed up to Stade, on the west side of the River Elbe north of Hamburg. The object there was to incarcerate everyone in the Gestapo and the S.S. and also senior mayors in the Nationalist Socialist Party.

With a couple of pals I incarcerated about 300 people and put them in jail 鈥� big camps where they were interrogated properly.
Then at the same time we had to get the whole organisation going again. We had to appoint mayors and councillors in all the villages and towns because the old brigade had been incarcerated. We also had to get the unions going again.

One big advantage with the Germans was that when hostilities had ended there were no 5th columns 鈥� blowing up bridges, rioting etc. I suppose they had been so used to being told what to do. The only thing they did was to put wires across the road so that if you were on a motorbike you were likely to lose your head!

The district where we were was agricultural so we didn鈥檛 meet any hotheads round there. I used to go out drinking with the local farmers and I am still in touch with people there.

I was in Stade on VE Day and was demobbed from there.

No war is good, but I saw all aspects of war, both the good and the bad. I saw the rock bottom and I saw the other side as well. For example, I was locked up in Italy and then later I was locking people up in Germany. From one extreme to the other.

Post script
I was helped out of Italy by some kind locals 鈥� country folk. They gave us the odd meal. I left my address with one of them. This man wrote to me and asked if I could do something for his son who was unemployed.

As luck would have it, there was a Commonwealth Conference in London. So I wrote to the Australian High Commissioner and told him about this situation.

They found him a job and he is now living in Adelaide and is a flourishing tailor.

So life is not only about taking 鈥� it鈥檚 also about giving

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