大象传媒

"This story was submitted to the People's War site by CSV/大象传媒 Radio Nottingham on behalf of Sydney Barthorpe with his permission. The author fully understands the site's terms and conditions"

From very young I was having experiences that were actually to happen to me during the war and i wondered how many other people had a similar experience. I have no dates because it was only when the war started that things began to make sense.
It was when I was about nine years old, we used to have silent reading while our teacher marked our books. For some reason I took out my geography book and not a fictional book. Flicking through the pages I came to a story, the heading was 'Poland the land of the rainbow'. It was sometime before I took my eyes off the title, it seemed to have a message for me. Ever after that I was reading the same story, about the bears in Galicia, the wolves and wild boar that roamed the forests .
Nothing more was to happen until I was about 11 years old. I was going to school and I heard the word Posen very clearly, as though it had been spoken. I was to hear this on many more occasions but it did not mean a thing to me. I got a bit nearer the message when we got a Ferranti wireless set about a year later. Looking at the stations I saw Posen civil and Posen military, for the first time I realised it must be a large town. But where did it fit in. Every time I passed the set I was drawn to the word Posen and wondered what is it trying to tell me.
Another time I had been playing with my friends and sat on a log and was day dreaming and quite clearly saw some longboats going past. There was mountains on either side and the water was quite calm. I saw myself in one of the boats and this confused me more than ever. Apart from the wireless set nothing more happened until 1 was called up. We were sat on the footpath in Barnbygate Newark, people had their doors open and we were waiting far 1 I o'clock news to see if war was going to be declared. I heard on the radio the Germans were fighting the Poles in the Polish corridor near Posen. I said that's it lads we're going to Poland. Eventually we went to Norway so I was confident I would survive the campaign.
I didn't land in a longboat but aboard a cruiser H.M.S. Galatea. As we went down the Molde fjord there was high mountains on either side. It was 1 a.m.. a beautiful moonlight night, the water was so calm we appeared to be gliding along on glass.
I was eventually captured in the mountains north of Dombas. After a week we were taken to Oslo. Another week and we were put onboard a converted troop ship the Utlandshorn and taken to Hamburg. After one night we were put on a train, first stop Berlin. Here we were taken off the train and did a two hour propaganda march around the city. Back to the train and the next stop, 1 couldn't believe my eyes Posen. Here we got off and marched about twelve miles to my -. first camp.
My fourth camp Fort Winiary, in Posen, gave me another surprise. Outside the front gate was the military radio station. From this camp I worked in a German army cookhouse at the citadel there was ten of us in the party there. Here I befriended a Polish girl Halinka, she used to bring me sandwiches and now and again buy me a bottle of beer from the German canteen. Her father had been a prisoner of the British during the 1914-1918 war and could speak a fair bit of English, he used to translate our letters. One day he gave Halinka two books for me printed in English. It was incredible one was about the Russian revolution "Yudeneffs Russia" and the other "Poland the land of the rainbow". I've looked for explanations but it is still a mystery.

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