大象传媒

This story is taken from a manuscript by Lawrence Travers Dorins, and has been added to the site with his permission by Bruce Logan. The author fully understands the site's terms and conditions.
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One day, as we went to work near the town square, we found the whole area roped off and people were kept at a distance while they attempted to blow up a not very imposing Polish statue. After about two attempts they succeeded. We never found out what it was all about but it was obvious that this relic of a Polish past did not fit in with the town's new image.

I had become friendly with some regular Royal Welsh Fusiliers who had some interesting tales to tell of life abroad, defending the Empire. They were bandsmen and served as stretcher bearers and gave first aid in time of war. One of them, a married man with children, missed his family very much. It was much easier for those of us who were unattached .He also had a very severe outbreak of boils that went on and on and made his life miserable. A supply of fresh fruit would have done us all good.

Meanwhile more contacts were being made with the Polish people and a way -had been found to improve this. At the front of the stage there was a prompter's box which gave access to the underneath of the stage. There was a door at the back, about three feet high and wide, which opened into the small room at the end of the building. Inside the room were two battens nailed across this small door and there were frames, criss-crossed with barbed wire, screwed to the window frames. There was a door leading into the yard and the guard on duty at night was supposed to inspect the room on his rounds. Potatoes were sometimes stored in this room and, over a period of time, prisoners sent to fetch or sort them had managed to fix the small door so that it could be opened and shut from under the stage while the battens remained fixed to it. They also fixed one of the frames over the window so that it could be easily taken down and put back again without showing that it was no longer securely fixed to the wall. All you needed for an evening in town was a friend who would secure the small door and put the frame back over the window after you had gone out and be ready to let you back in at the arranged time. While we were there several people went out and nobody was ever caught but it was a risky business. A lot of people must have known about it and we sometimes wondered if the only people who did not know were the Germans.

Our guards were mostly older men, or physically lower grade and unfit for front line service, but as the war progressed we got some who had been down graded after being wounded at the front. We got the occasional Nazi, full of slogans for every subject which saved them the bother of thinking. Many were ordinary men, worried about their families, anxious to keep out of trouble and longing for the time when they could go home. It was only seven years into Hitler's Thousand Year Reich and some of them may well have voted communist or socialist in 1933. People were cautious about what they said, and who they said it to, and some of them probably felt safer talking to us than to anyone else. This part of Poland had always been a mixed community and many Poles and Germans had lived as good neighbours but with the change in the balance of power, some old scores were being settled and some with new authority were using it harshly. Many Poles were being offered German citizenship and accepting it. At the time we all thought of them as traitors but in retrospect I understand. The situation looked pretty hopeless and, unlike us, their families were there at the mercy of the Germans. On the surface there were aspects of the new regime which appealed to the working man whose former government had treated the workers somewhat harshly. There was a price to be paid for the privilege of becoming a German citizen, military service for fathers and sons.

After talking to Rex Pearson on the 7 / 2 / 1999, I have some doubts about the date of some events. Rex kept a diary and he is sure that we arrived in Bruss on the 19/7 1940 which makes me think that some things happened later than I thought. It seems that Rex left Brusy on 19th. of April 1941. This explains why he is not on the picture taken at Mecikal in 1942.

On the 18th. of July, 1941, the men who were making the pipes reported that an advance motorized army unit had stopped on the square for a meal break and moved on. Not long after trucks with troops and military equipment began to come through, looking as if they had been travelling for a long time. This went on, day and night, for about three days and nights and on the 22nd the Germans attacked Russia.

On the Sunday, Dec.7th. 1941, I was unloading coal at the station when a Pole told us that Japan had attacked Pearl Harbour. This shows that we were in Brusy until Spring or early Summer of 1942. Obviously some of the events which I have mentioned took place over a time span of almost two years.

As the winter of 1940 approached we were working on the deepest section of the pipeline, up near the church and moving in the direction of the crossroads. The trench here was quite deep and it was here that we had to resort to platforms, tossing the earth from one platform up to the next. The road was closed and there were great heaps of earth at the sides of the road. It was at this stage that there was a problem with the supply of pipes and we were transferred to the section in the main street. After a while the pipes arrived and were laid but the frost had also arrived and the sandy spoil at the roadside had become like concrete. The pickaxe heads were continually being ferried back and forth to the smithy for repair and the lads were hollowing into the softer centres of the piles to form shelters from the biting wind. It took about ten times as long to get the sand back into the hole as to get it out. Looking back after nearly sixty years it is difficult to remember exactly, but I think we worked right through the winter. Sometimes we were sent out to clear snow and we continued to work on the sewage scheme. They were careful to make sure that only a short stretch was done at a time and no large piles of spoil were left to freeze. I was not used to working outside and doing so in Poland in winter is pure misery. One consolation was a more frequent delivery of Red Cross parcels and cigarettes.

The parcels were actually card board boxes and contained tins, margarine, perhaps a stew, corned beef, tea, condensed milk, cheese, a bar of chocolate and one of soap. Later we had some from Canada which also contained butter, cheese and large biscuits. We had also received some British Army clothing and the occasional parcel from family, friends or charitable groups. The letters from family and friends were read time and time again and did so much to comfort us and raise our spirits. We owed a great debt to those who kept writing and only rarely received a reply. As I remember it, we were only allowed one letter and one card each month. The Red Cross parcels were irregular and probably averaged out at one a month. They made an enormous difference to our diet and gave a great boost to our morale and must have had a depressing effect on the guards as the war continued and shortages became more and more acute.

There was a local lady, no longer youthful who used to drop notes into the trench addressed to Dear Heroine English soldiers. She obviously had a dictionary but her letters were somewhat difficult to understand but she wished us well. Our barber, Yanto, had a message from her that she had a food parcel for him and a friend if they could come out one night and collect it. There was a path which ran behind the houses and gardens along the street and her house was not far away. Yanto, who was quite a bit older than me had persuaded me to go with him.
After we got out of the window I felt exhilaration at being free for the moment but I also felt fear that we might be caught. We moved cautiously through the garden and on to the path which led to the lady's garden where we found her standing in the shadows. At one time there had been a group of Arbeitsdienst stationed in a house nearby. This was the compulsory youth service which was a forerunner for military service. They even did guard duty with polished spades. We greeted our benefactor and had some conversation with her and when it was time to go she produced a bag of food and a bottle of wine. Yanto was delighted and nudged me and suggested that as a reward for her generosity, I should kiss her. I nudged him and said, "No, you." After a few more nudges we said goodbye and made our retreat. When we were safely back in camp I was quite elated for a while but on reflection thought I was lucky to have got away without being caught. We had taken her some English soap and chocolate which pleased her.

Some of the guards often liked to show us photographs of their families or homes. I remember one embarrassing moment when a guard showed us a photo of a lady and my companion said, "Mutti?" and the guard rather sharply replied, "Nein, Frau." They were also very interested in any snaps that we had.

I can't remember what our first Christmas was like. I expect we had some Red Cross to make it bearable. Some of us said that perhaps we might be home for the next one which was completely unrealistic. We would have been very depressed if we had realized that we would be away for five years. The rumour mill was working overtime but there was little hard news and most of that was very depressing with bombing raids on England, shipping losses, successes by the German forces. It was a sorry tale.

The commandant used to give Tony the Danziger Vorposten and he could sometimes glean some news, reading between the lines, especially as the balance changed in our favour. After the attack on Russia death notices began to appear, some were of the descendants of Scots who had emigrated to the Danzig area at the end of the last century. There were names like Joachim of Campbell or Wolfgang of MacGregor.

During the week we were out working and had some contact with people but at the weekend we were cut off and could not even see the street which made life boring. There was at least one metalled road going through Brusy, but any minor road turned into a sandy track as it left the town. I read that the former government had created large numbers of very small farms, subsistence farming with a tiny cash crop. Shoes and clothes had to last and women often carried their shoes and put them on when they reached town.

One of the men who had been given the job of making the pipes had obviously been a real rural rogue at home. He used to regale us with stories of poaching and other scams. One day he sold two of the shovels from the yard to a passing farmer for cigarettes.
There was another suspected scam in the camp. The kitchen was a small self-contained room next to the hall and the only people allowed access were the corporal, the cook and their friends. They used to spend most of the evening there and we were told that they were helping the cook to clear up but nobody was very happy about it. It was a situation which caused suspicion and resentment. Complaints were made and I noticed that in an old photo from the next camp, the corporal and cook are missing, and the other corporal is in charge.

One night four of us went out to meet the girls who were studying English. We talked for a while and then some more of the lads came along and we decided that this was too dangerous, there must have been at least ten out, so the girls left and we went back to camp.

Some time after this the authorities
decided that we should be transferred to Mecikal. I never found out if the sewage system was ever finished.

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