大象传媒

A well had been opened up and each of us were presented with about half a litre of water, even champagne would not have been more welcome at that moment in time!
Soon we were leaving Camp 82 for the railway station, but it was obvious that mayhem existed within the camp which we had just vacated. It appeared that many of our POWs had taken refuge between the sides of a long tent and the wall within, which were being machine-gunned. It was also mentioned that others had entered some sewers and that the enemy had dropped grenades into them, Italian women along our exit route were weeping.
It was still 'Journey unknown' at that point, rumours spread around that we were destined for Yugoslavia. We must have passed through Florence, certainly Bologna, where at the station overlooking the road below we stopped a while and our doors were opened, when we saw some young girls waving to us and who were very soon grabbed by the Gestapo. Onwards through Verona, Trento, and from a small grill we could see a breathtaking view of the Dolomites before passing through Bolzano, arriving at the Brenner Pass. At a small halt here, our train slowed up and I was astonished to have caught a glimpse of a young Italian in uniform, wearing a feather in his alpine hat, small case in his hand being ,grabbed by a German on our train and pulled on board. His country having capitulated he was now anti-axis.
Later on we stopped again above Innsbruck where we had to detrain, in order to be photographed for propaganda purposes!
Through the narrow neck of Austria, into Germany through Garmisch- Patenkirchen to Munich, where once again our wagon doors were opened and what
seemed like a celebration, we were given some life-saving soup. It must have been midnight by then.
We finally arrived in Eastern Germany on a single track railway and at a very desolate part of the world. It took me a while to find the camp, when I
noticed it in the far distance, in what appeared to be a mirage in the mist. This was Camp 1VB (4b)
En route to the said camp a large wagon passed by and what I thought to have been a load of bricks, turned out to have been rye bread bearing numbers!
For an hour or two we had to queue-up in biting cold wind in order to have finger-prints, photographs taken, with POW numbers around our necks.
This was to be our 'home' for the next fortnight and it bore the name of Muhlberg. Have since measued it to have been a mere 30-35 miles 'as the crow flies' from Colditz, some 120 miles south-west of Berlin.

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