大象传媒

This story was submitted to the People's War site by a volunteer from CSV on behalf of Eric Dowse and has been added to the site with his permission. Eric fully understands the site's terms and conditions. During the war I was a signalman in the 2nd (Middlesex Yeomanry) Armoured Division which was eliminated in April 1941 when a large number of us were taken prisoner and held at Sulmona. I was captured in a place called Fort Mechilli in Libya, about 60 miles from Tobruk. We were put on a truck to Derna, then to Benghasi where we unloaded German bombs off freighters and the Germans then handed us over to the Italians.

The Italians put us on trucks from Benghasi to Tripoli where we caught an Italian liner to Naples. There we were temporarily put into a camp near the foothills of Mount Versuvius and interrogated, and were made to give them our name, rank and serial number. Later we were put on a train to Rome and then on to our destination, Campo 78 near Sulmona. We were held there with members of all branches of the services who had fought and been captured in Libya. 3000 troops in total, including 75 officers causing great celebration on our arrival in Italy.

For 27 months we lived in this camp run by Italians. Their favourite word was the Italian for 'tomorrow', because if we asked them for anything to do with the camp, they would reply with "Domani"! Just two weeks before the Italian war was over the Americans came over on a Friday noon time and bombed the town of Sulmona which was about three miles away from Campo 78. I was a barracks orderly and I used to go to the kitchen to get big urns of soup. Me and my friend whilst getting the soup suddenly heard the American planes and saw the bombs coming down. It lasted about 15mins and was then perfectly quiet again. They repeated this one week later. After the second bombing the Italians surrendered to the allies, so the next day the Camp commander announced that we were no longer POWs and could leave if we wanted to. The day was Sept 8th, 1943. Most of the ordinary Italian men had abandoned the camp and so we went to the barracks where the red cross parcels were kept.

The plan was to go up into the hills, take sufficient supplies for 2 weeks and wait unitl the Allies arrived. The Italians had cut the barbed wire on the fences around the camp but not knowing which way was north or south we needed to look at the moss growth on trees to determine which route to take. We got up to the hills and one of our South African fellows had managed to bring binoculars. He kept an eye on the movement of German traffic.

We thought we were safe but some of the people in Sulmona had noticed us and the Germans came up to the hills, early one morning and we heard them shout "Komme, Komme, Raus!" The only comment we had was "Oh no! Not again!" If we had gone off in twos or threes we probably would have escaped but such a large group of POWs caused too much concern for the Germans and on re-capturing us we were taken back to the same camp now under a much harsher German rule.

We were put on two 8/40 rail trucks (called that because they were designed to carry 8 horses or 40 humans)and taken to a processing camp in Saxony, Germany. Then onto another camp in Leipzig, Germany. We were showered, medically examined, given a shot and a dog-tag and sent on to a working camp. The officers went to another camp.

I got lucky and was assigned with 49 others to a paper factory in a small town in Saxony. The owner of the factory spoke perfect English and told us we had replaced Russian POWs that he'd had trouble with! They had treated the Russians dreadfully but he promised, and did, treat us well and we received red cross parcels. We, in our British uniforms were working alongside German civilians and yet both of our countries were fighting to the death, how ridiculous war is! They tried to befriend us and told us repeatedly that they were communists, not Nazis. They would give us apples to supplement our diets. We gave them some cigarettes from our parcels. We generally got on with them but were concerned about what our work was making. It turns out we were making stationary for soldiers to write letters home, not for propaganda. But eventually they ran out of wood and use for us so we were sent to a camp in a beautiful region on the border with Czechoslovakia. It was June and we worked as loggers in the forests. Unfortunately we didn't have any idea how to cut trees down and getting fed up with us, they sent us on to another camp in Germany where we helped to build huts for camps for Dutch civilians. We were supposed to not talk to the Dutch civilians because they were able to speak German and listen tot he radio, etc. One morning I was trying to get some information on the latest news about the D-Day landings from some of the Dutch civilians. But there was a sudden room inspection by a German officer so I jumped in to on of the beds, pretending to be sick so that my uniform was covered by the bed cover. The officer was cross but I had not been discovered!

Whilst we were in this camp, in February 1945, 773 Lancaster bombers dropped 650,000 incendiary bombs on the undefended city of Dresden. We heard the bombers flying over and the next day druing daylight we heard the American pilots dropped their bombs ont he city creating a fire storm which burned for 7 days and nights, killing 130,000 people. Two months later in we were marched to another civilian prison camp which held mostly women from Poland and the Balkans who asked that we protect them. A few days after our arrival we heard machine gun fire and we heard a few of our guys who went to investigate shout "They're Yanks!". It was the advanced armour of General Patton's 3rd army! What a sight to behold, I stood there in awe and saw the face of the leading tank driver and he was black! I shall never forget that day,it was the 15th April 1945 and I had been a prisoner of war for 4 years and one week!

We travelled back to England via Brussels where we boarded a Lancaster bomber for our trip to Gatwick airport. The pilot told us that he had, the previous day, bombed Berchtesgarden (Hitler's country retreat). After a medical check and interview with officers, I was given leave and immediately headed for Beryl Rd. in London where my family lived. Once there I walked right past my brother Bill, not recognising him. When I left he was 12yrs old and now he was 17! When I saw my mother she was able to give me the letters which she had written to me throughout the war and which had been returned to her from Egypt when I had been taken prisoner.

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