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I was taken prisoner at Dunkirk and spent the war as a slave labourer in the coal mines of Upper Silesia. Cold, hunger, brutality and exhausting back breaking labour that went on day after day until so many literally dropped dead of illness and exhaustion is my memory of the years between 1939 and liberation in 1945.

We did not have the opportunity to train for special forces or some other intriguing and valued military exploit. Nor the chance to earn the rows of medals proudly carried by others on parade. Instead his war was one of every day survival within a situation of the deepest privations and brutality.

I’ll begin by saying that before the war had even begun I, like other conscientious young men, joined the Territorial Army which was formed in response to the military threat of Nazi Germany. This meant of course that I was amongst those who were first called up for service after war broke out in 1939.

In April 1940 as a member of the 5th Buffs regiment I, along with my own regiment and the 6th and 7th Royal West Kent’s, found ourselves in France and Belgium as part of the British Expeditionary Force.

We were classed as a working battalion but we were under equipped and under trained. When the Blitzkrieg started we were in the Somme area of Belgium. We were pitted against a fully equipped and trained Panzer Division with the inevitable consequences that most of us were too far from the coast to escape our fate. There were some lucky enough in our regiment who were able to get back to Blighty. I think there must have been out of 700 possibly 50 who got back to U.K. However I was not one of the lucky few, I was taken prisoners of war and remained a prisoner for five long years.

When our captors were sure that as many as possible who did try to make for the coast were rounded up we all had to face the stark truth of captivity for how long we did not know. After our captors were sure that none were left at large our long and gruelling march through East Germany to Poland began.

We marched for over a month having little or no food, few medical supplies and no knowledge of how the war was going or what our fate would be. It was a worrying and uncertain time for us. It was to be over six months before we had news from home and could comfort ourselves with the knowledge that our families knew we were at least alive and that there was hope that we would one day return home.

In the midst of our privations it was wonderful to receive a letter from loved ones at home. It was a link with home and our letters were our most treasured possessions. I still have a number of mine from that dreadful time of captivity. The letters were written on small piece of the thinnest of tissue paper and although they had to pass censorship they gave news of babies born, news of friends, assurances of the health and security of family which helped to give us the encouragement and hope we needed to carry on.

It was to be over a year before we got our first Red Cross parcels which provided us with a very welcome supplement to our merge rations. Our daily ration consisted of a couple of slices of Rye bread and a bowl of ’doubtful’ soup. This was not enough to keep us going with the hard labour were forced to do and we were all very much underweight. I think most lost 2-3 stone and I think it left us all with stomach troubles that persist for many of us to this day.

As well as lack of food the conditions we lived in were very unsanitary and damaging to our health we were also constantly plagued with lice and bugs that added to our miseries. This misery was added to by the brutality of our captors, beatings and shootings were common place occurrences even though this was against the Geneva Convention as to the proper treatment of Prisoners of War.

After a time at a holding camp I was sent to Stalag V.111B at Lansdorf which was near to the Auchwitz concentration camp (thinking about that makes me wonder how any of us survived!). Lansdorf was a big camp with a compound which also housed R A F prisoners it supplied work parties for the surrounding industrial area. We were put to work in local factories, mines, work camps and petrochemical works. Of course we weren’t protected from air raids on the area and sad to say on one raid over Blechhammer in the summer of 1944 about 50 of our lads along with their guards were killed.

I was assigned to a coal mining party and remained in it for 3 ½ years. These were hard years of cruel, pitiless toil from which many of my comrades died or never fully recovered. Others have given testimony to the horrors and cruelty of these slave labour conditions and I don’t want to dwell on them here.

It was a terrible time I just wish we had been able to live under the conditions German
P O W’s lived under in this country. Possibly it might be enough to say that when people talk about the conditions of German prisoners in this country and liken them to being harsh they just don’t know what they are talking about. We, my friends and I, could tell you what harsh and more that that was because we suffered it and as I mentioned some never survived or recovered from it.

My time in the mines ended because of my ill health. I will not say that this was compassion on the German part but rather a way of extracting all that they could from me and that my death would have meant a loss when they could still get more work out of me. However it occurred though I can’t tell you how wonderful it was to know that I did not have to go back down the mines. I was overjoyed!!

My next work detachment was as one of a 50 strong work force assigned to locomotive and wagon repair for the trains used in the mines. The work party were a great bunch of lads who were mostly all Irish from Eire. The Germans hoped to use them as a form of propaganda and could not understand, given the relationship between our two countries, why the Irish lads joined the British army and were fighting against them. Even though the Germans wanted to use the Irish lads for propaganda the Irish lads told them in no uncertain terms where to go even to the point of spurning their supposed repatriation if they were willing to allow themselves to be used in this way. This was very brave decision for them to take and it should be remembered with admiration by all.

By January 1945 we began to hear the sound that, I must suppose, brought fear of retribution to some but to us it brought hope of liberation. We began to hear the sound of distant gun fire! It could only be the sound of Russian guns. Still far away but each day bought them closer and each day bought closer the joy of freedom, the hope of making it home, the end of brutality, disease, hunger, privation and slavery.

We had heard the news of the German crushing of the Warsaw Ghetto and had not expected liberation for months but the sound of those guns was one that I’m sure we will all remember as bring hope in the midst of the cold, snow and ice that had seemed to mean that no one had seriously expected a major offensive to come so early in the year. At that time of year it was always sub zero temperatures but there it was the hoped for and long awaited offensive that to us spelt home, family and freedom.

However we were not allowed to await our freedom and we began to be marched off along the Baltic coast west across the Oder or south across the Carpathian Mountains into Czechoslovakia. Many were on the move during this time and by the end of April 1945 I think many must have marched over a thousand kilometres. After all they had endured as P O W’s and with this march as well it is hard to say how many succumbed to these turbulent times of further privations no one will ever know.

It was at this time that I had a chance of escape! It was a stark choice for the small party of us who took that chance, we could stay with the crowd and maybe just maybe get some food no matter how meagre it was. Or could we manage to get to safety if we made a break for it on our own. The future was uncertain for us all. There was always the fear that we could we fall into the hands of the S. S. or Gestapo who might shot us out right whether we stayed with the crowd or made a break for it on our own.
One night we made a break for it and got as far as the outskirts of Gliewitz. It was being bombed and shell unmercifully by the Russian Army. All day and all night and on the next morning the Russian army occupied the town. The sight of the carnage was indescribable. It was still mid January and in the sub zero temperatures bodies were frozen into the most grotesques positions. It was total carnage. A site I will always remember is that later in the days that followed slave labourers from the near by camps, clad only in rags, came into the town looking for food that was not to be found. They were all pitifully emaciated, this nightmare scenario is etched onto mine and anyone else who witnessed this terrible scenes memory for ever.

Even though we were free at last our ordeal was not over because in the following days the Luftwaffe were to fly over the town strafing the Russians and their traffic conveys on the roads in the area. The Polish people were very kind to us, sharing what meagre fare they had with us. Their kindness at a time when they had so little themselves will always be remembered with gratitude.

In February ~ March 1945 we began our journey home proper we were put in railway wagons and for 7-8 days travelled down to the Black Sea port of Odessa. The wagon I was in was the kitchen and from here we had a soup meal each day. It was a bit of a stop start journey because priority was of course given to transports and war material going westwards to the front.

When we got to Odessa boarded the S. S. Highland Princess bound for Port Said. What luxury we found on board! After the snow and ice and of having to taking our ablutions in icy ditches at the side of the road we were able to wash ourselves and our clothes. We could be clean for the first time in years it was real luxury! I can remember about a thousand of us including some French and some American G I’s with also some Paras who were taken prisoner at Arnhiem famed as the action that was ‘A bridge too far’. As we marched down to the dockside ready for embarkation we passed the Potemkin Steps which were famously featured in Einstein’s film of the Russian Revolution.

It was quite a stirring march to the quay we were led by a Russian Army Band and on our way we passed work parties of German prisoners. We gave them a bit of good natured jeering and although we remembered their arrogance and triumphal sneering as well as the treatment they had handed out to us we were really quite good natured to them. We were on our way home and I guess nothing mattered anymore except the feelings of euphoria we had because of getting home and seeing our loved ones again after 5 long years, so in the main we were without rancour to the Germans we saw.

After reaching Port Said we transferred onto an old Cunard ship the S. S. Samaria docking at Liverpool. We came home to the lovely English Easter Springtime. Back to the lovely Kent spring sunshine and the joy of family reunions, this was a blissful and thrilling time which was in such a contrast to the grim things still going on in Europe.

The cruel and wicked suffering of humanity at that time came about because of a savage and evil regime the symbol of which is the swastika. Many think it clever or fashionable to display or even have this symbol tattooed on their bodies. A young prince whose advisers and family should know better might parade around with this symbol as if it makes them seem fashionable or as if it gives them some kind of power but those of us who have suffered because of all that is symbolised by the swastika know and remember just what terrible and horrific things happened under this symbol.
My wife Iris and I went back on a pilgrimage to Poland in 1980 we were able to take part in remembrance ceremonies in Krakow and Poznan. It is in Poznan that the P O W officers who were shot (murdered) after being captured in the escape story filmed as ‘The Great Escape’ are interred. We also visited the infamous Auchwitz Concentration Camp as someone who has lived through the horrors of war I believe that we should never forget and we should always be grateful for our freedom and that we and our loved ones can live in peace because of the sufferings a scarifies of those who took part in

The People’s War of 1939~1945

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