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Acknowledgements

Many thanks to members of my family who provided information for this story, particularly my second cousin, Joanna Capjon.

Introduction

When World War Two broke out my grandfather Henry Deterding joined up with the Fleet Air Arm to fly Swordfish planes. Although, at 41, he was really too old, pilots were desperately needed. However, his active participation was brief. He was taken prisoner in September 1940 and remained a prisoner of war (POW) until the end of hostilities in 1945.

My aunt, Betty Throssell, is the source here of the story of how my grandfather was captured.

The carrier vanishes

After some training on Swordfish, grandfather was told that he and his fellow pilots were going off on an aircraft carrier to bomb Trondheim harbour in Norway. As he had never flown at night, nor flown from a carrier, he was granted permission to practise before the mission.

After the raid on Trondheim, he was assured that the carrier would stay and wait for them. When my grandfather returned to the carrier’s position, he found it had beetled back to Scotland. Not having enough fuel to reach Scotland, he considered landing in Sweden, but remembered that the neutral Swedes had interned combatants in the previous war. So, he had to return to Norway.

As they flew over Norway, the observer could not work out their position. My grandfather asked for the map. He did not expect to be handed a school atlas. None the less, they landed in Norway. There the Norwegians provided them with a boat, in which they set out for Scotland.

Sight of land

About three days later they saw land — but it was Norway again. Eventually, the Germans caught them and flew them to Berlin, thinking they were spies, despite the fact they were in uniform.

Fortunately, my grandfather could speak German (self-taught by the Pelman system). He also sent messages to his step-mother Lotte, who was living in Germany, and also to Hermann Goering, who knew my great grandfather (Sir Henri Deterding).

The result was that my grandfather and the crew were transferred to a POW camp. Luckily, they avoided being put into prison clothes. During his internment, my grandfather, being the fitness fanatic that he was, used to encourage the younger men to run, which kept them fit and the madness of boredom at bay.

For you the war is over

My grandfather produced a book privately for family and friends entitled For You the War is Over. The following information is taken from it.

My grandfather and his colleagues were captured off the Norwegian coast in September 1940. He was moved around to several different POW camps, but spent most of the final two years of the war at Stalagluft III.

In the final months of the war he and his fellow inmates were moved constantly as the Russian offensive progressed. Carrying only absolute essentials, my grandfather was forced to leave several items behind, including his diaries of the previous four years.

The bare essentials

I have set out the list of what he did take on these final marches, as I think it makes interesting reading about what was considered the bare minimum. He carried one shirt, one vest, one pair of pants, six pairs of socks, six hankies, two towels, sleeping bag, air pillow, washing and shaving kit, box of studs, pins and scissors, one pair gym shoes, 800 cigarettes and four boxes of matches. They also each received a Red Cross parcel weighing 4kg (10lb).

He wore — it was January 1945 — two jerseys, an airman’s tunic, khaki trousers, a greatcoat, scarf, naval cap, two pairs of gloves and two pairs of socks. There was a feeling that the war was coming to an end, and they hoped that they would not have to rely on the bare essentials for much longer.

Kriegy cake and black bread

During this forced march, aside from the Red Cross parcels, the prisoners’ food consisted of kriegy cake, which two POW cooks had concocted from a mixture of biscuits and margarine. (Kriegy is slang for a POW, from the German Kriegsgefangener, meaning prisoner of war.) German rations only appeared sporadically and were chiefly coarse black bread and margarine.

The only way to obtain a hot drink was from the predominately elderly inhabitants of villages through which they marched. These local people, according to my grandfather, ‘responded nobly’ to their needs and ‘rushed to and fro with cans of hot water’. The German guards were evidently thinking the end was near as they let the kriegies mix freely with the German citizens.

A night at the cinema

Overnight accommodation during the march ranged from a disused cinema to old barns, and a ragged shed already occupied by ‘five sorry looking horses’. They were lucky enough to spend three days in the salubrious surrounds of the stud farm of Graf von Arnham. He personally saw to the POWs’ comfort as best he could and bedded down many of them on straw in the large coach-house.

The greatest bonus was the large pipes and radiators lining the walls and, as my grandfather remembers, ‘the adjoining bathroom with a real bath and constant hot water. There were long lines of kriegies all day to use this facility.’ Ablutions for the most part of the march were impossible, and calls of nature had to be dealt with on the side of the road. My grandfather had foreseen this and kept a tissue roll handy in his pocket.

Bully beef mixed with snow

Carrying even minimal belongings on their backs became increasingly wearisome. At one brief half hour halt my grandfather wrote:

‘I sat on my pack quite sure that I was at last at the end of my tether and would not be able to move another step. I miserably ate a crust of bread and a little bully beef mixed with snow.’

There were rumours of men suffering from frostbite and pneumonia. However, my grandfather, known for his iron constitution, was not ready to fold yet.

Escape would have been easy, because, as he observed, ‘the guards had lost interest and anyone could leave the column whenever they wished.’ But despite one or two trying it, they usually returned because ‘there did not seem much object in making oneself more uncomfortable in these last days of the war.’

The final push

The last part of this trek was a two-day journey by train — or, rather, cattle truck — to the German military depot at Bremen. My grandfather describes how ‘37 other very dirty kriegies squashed into their truck. A number of people were really seriously ill, suffering from biliousness and disordered stomachs. They lay continually groaning on the floor of the truck, and at every stop during our journey the permanent way was ceaselessly being lined by squatting figures.’

My grandfather amazingly stayed ‘perfectly fit and well’. The men illuminated the truck with one of the ‘almost world-famous kriegy lamps, which was made from a small empty Red Cross tin, filled with melted margarine, in which floated a wick obtained from a piece of pyjama cord’.

Sleeping like sardines

The most successful method of allowing all the men a chance to lie down and sleep was achieved by employing a head-to tail-system. Grandfather remembers ‘rows overlapping and fitting into each other like sardines in a tin which worked quite well but felt like sleeping in a vice’.

Nevertheless, the prisoners were very relieved when they arrived at Westertminke prison camp. The train journey had been infinitely worse than the march. Their Red Cross parcels had proved invaluable, especially the American ones with their tins of coffee powder.

Westertminke camp

Westerminke camp was very sparse with: ‘No furniture of any kind, neither bed, chair, table nor stove nor light. With the greatest of difficulty we managed to obtain a quantity of wood-shavings on which to sleep.’

Many of the men continued to be very sick with severe stomach disorders, and most were exhausted.

Gradually, life improved as furniture appeared, but beds had to be shared. When a stove arrived, the Germans allowed 40 men at a time to go out daily to cut wood to fuel it.

Half a mile to the shower

The only water container was a little tin jug that 12 to 16 men ‘used for fetching hot water for washing up, shaving and laundry purposes’. It also had to be shared with men in the opposite room.

There was a shower hose half a mile outside the camp, and visits were limited. My grandfather had only one shower in 16 days and washed his clothes once in that time under a cold tap.

The black market

Through the wire the black market operated between the German guards and the kriegies, the former exchanging bread and eggs for American cigarettes. Food was scarce. Everyone was on half Red Cross rations, as they had been at the other camp for the previous five months.

Nobody was able to send letters. The German excuse was that they did not know the camp’s official address.

Luftwaffe conspicuous by their absence

25 February 1945 — ‘We have seen quite a number of British and US aircraft flying over the camp. They seem to have it all their own way. The Luftwaffe are conspicuous by their absence.’

4 March — ‘Woke up with a swollen face and very bad toothache. I visited Hooper our dentist, and he pulled it out in his usual efficient manner. I’m afraid I shall not have many teeth left by the end of the war.’

Repatriation turned down

5 April — My grandfather tries to be repatriated when two of them go before the medical repatriation commission and are examined by an English doctor. But he is turned down, his only ailments being that he is 10kg (one and a half stone) underweight and old and tired.

But it was worth a try. Everyone was very much still aware that the end of the war was very near. ‘As in all camps and even on the march, we got the latest ´óÏó´«Ã½ news by means of our secret wireless set, which, in spite of repeated searches, the Germans never discovered.’

On the march again

On 9 April the prisoners were ordered to march again. They marched all day and slept in fields at night. Grandfather writes that ‘On the second day the RAF shot up our column, two killed and several injured.’

The last night of the march was spent by a marsh. My grandfather ‘cut a quantity of reeds with nail scissors to make a bed’.

Disguised as a Polish orderly

Another two horrible nights on cattle trucks, and they eventually arrived at Lübeck artillery barracks, where he found ‘good accommodation, no wire, practically free.’ There were many POWs of all nationalities and a separate French camp.

My grandfather was invited to spend a day and night there by two young Rothschilds and ‘got in by disguising myself as a Polish orderly carrying a soup container and passed out by the same method the next day’.

War can hardly last much longer

A week later, and ‘the news continues to be marvellous. Most of Germany seems to be already occupied except for our small corner. The Americans and Russians have joined up south of Berlin, and there is fighting in the Berlin suburbs. The war can hardly last much longer, but that the end should, at last, really come, seems too good to be true and difficult to realise.

‘The suspense and anxiety are most unsettling. Are we about to be liberated or will the Germans have time to move us again, perhaps to Norway? I’ve had no letters for months. My last letter was dated 11 November 1944. British aircraft often fly over. We are very nervous of being shot up again or perhaps bombed by mistake. We have marked out in large letters on the parade ground the inscription "RAF" and under it "POW".’

Hearing that Hitler is dead

2 May — ‘Big parade of Germans outside our block. The senior officer starts to make a speech. His words were music to our ears — Hitler was dead, fallen at his post in deadly combat with the Russians. But they must remember that the war would go on, and they must continue to fight for their country.

‘Later in the day there seemed to be some fighting going on in the town of Lübeck. We kept hearing loud explosions and seeing columns of smoke.

Going mad with excitement

‘About 200m (200 yards) from the camp wall a sunken road runs under a road bridge. At about five o’clock a tank or an armoured vehicle passed along it and halted under the bridge. People rushed about wildly and said British troops had come. I saw only the heads of the crew over the top of the bank as the vehicle passed, and they certainly did not look like German heads. Presently, more vehicles arrived and halted behind the one under the bridge.

‘We all went mad with excitement and lined the wall of the camp. Some daring spirits jumped over the wall and ran toward the waiting armoured column, which was still partly hidden by the high bank of the road. I thought it a bit risky to leave the wall, as there were still some German guards about with rifles.

‘After a time, most of the kriegies came back with a man in British uniform. He spoke with an American accent and said he was a reporter. He wanted to know who we were. Most of the men crowded round me were Belgians and Poles who he couldn’t understand, so I talked to him.

A friendly face

'Soon afterwards the column moved up the road, and from then on the continuous stream of armoured vehicles passed the camp. A few minutes later a jeep turned into the main gate of the camp followed by a couple of British lorries.

'The British Army had at last arrived. The German guards all fell in with their luggage, which they had been packing all day and were quietly marched away under the watchful eyes of a couple of British soldiers, and we were free. I was free at last after 1,678 days and nights of captivity.’

One of the first people my grandfather met sitting behind a desk processing the POWs was his brother-in-law Beaumont Reynolds.

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