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(Told to Christine Barker at the VE Day Commemoration in Beverley 2005)

I was wounded and taken prisoner on Crete in 1941, aged 21.

You hear all that’s supposed to have gone on in the war, if only people realised the truth of what happened. What we had to fight with on Crete: half of the chaps didn’t have rifles, those with rifles didn’t have ammunition, and we didn’t have one aircraft when the Germans invaded. People don’t know that.

There is a funny side when you’re a prisoner, we were shipped to Selonica and a member of the Gestapo was sent to give us a speech and told us that they would shoot one of us in every five. Well up to then the only food we had was a hard biscuit you had to break it with your boots and share it between five men. As soon as he got the words out, a cockney shouted out ‘thank Christ for that lads only four men to a biscuit!’

Then I finished up in an NCOs and warrant officers camp, there were only 4,500 of us who refused to work for the Germans, and the hut I was in was known as the escapees hut. Because of this, they used to come underneath the hut searching for compasses and that, so we drilled holes and then all their our stale urine we used to put that in a funnel and tip it down there to ‘cool them off’. They used to respond with the odd German expletive!

By the way when the Germans first landed on Crete (and this has been kept hush, hush by all the governments) they went round all the little towns and beheaded about thirty of the male inhabitants to frighten them. If you go to Sturness, one of them was a young boy of four, if you go to Galatas you can still go down some steps and see some skulls.

When we were prisoners on Crete the women of the island used to throw us bread.
I am very fortunate now - I still go back to Crete, with the help of my wife who’s my carer, and every year and when I do even now I’m welcomed as a veteran.

I was beaten through escaping. This means now I have entitlement from the war pensions/veterans agency to receive treatment for many things. As you can see from that list: I’m like the young bull they carried out the operation on — what do they call it? Knackered!

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