大象传媒

1944 came around and we only had one aggressive guard left. The others were much quieter. There was one who came into our room one night. He heard the chaps playing music and one had a violin. He said "do you mind if I could try". He took the violin and started to play. We soon saw that he was a real professional and the music was magic. From then on for two or three nights a week after the lights were switched off, he would stand between the two rooms and play. When he finished the men would shout at the top of their voices "More! More!" He would then say "one more and then I must go". We discovered he was a member of the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra.

1944 was the year that some of the men got frostbite, including myself. We had to walk six kilometres in wooden clogs to see a doctor. It was a waste of time because he didn't do a thing. They kept us waiting to see someone we thought would be a doctor but after waiting quite a long time they decided there was nothing they could do and so we had to walk all the way back to camp. In the mean time, the warmth of waiting room caused the frost bite to thaw which turned it into excruciating pain and walking back in the snow wearing wooden clogs in our condition was terrible.

In the village of Finkenstein was a Palace and owned by a Nobleman whose title was Graf Zu Dohna. In its history they entertained Napoleon and other famous heads of other states. Napoleon stayed there on his retreat from Moscow. The Palace was beautiful! I have seen pictures of it as it stands today on the Internet it is in total ruins - the result of the Russian bombardment in 1945 after we left.

I was in hospital recently where I met a man in his middle eighties who had been a PoW in Germany. I was telling him about my episode with frost bite and he told me medical treatment for PoWs was nil. He then told me they had taken out his tonsils without anaesthetic! He described to me what it was like. The poor man must have gone through agony for some time. If someone had tooth ache the only alternative was to go to the vet.

When my mate and I escaped and were taken back to the Stalag to be interrogated. There were other men there waiting also for the same treatment and we got into a discussion about our situation. One of them was a Jew. He was in the British Army and was captured in France. While we were talking, a German guard came up to us to see what was happening. He got round to talking about the Jews, and to our surprise the English Jew said 鈥樷�橧 am a Jew and there is nothing you can do about it while I am in this uniform.鈥欌�� Not a very wise thing to say. Everybody could not believe what he had said and I don鈥檛 think he did. The inevitable happened - they took him away and we did not hear anything more about him again.

Another chap in the Stalag was the nephew of a famous car manufacturer in England. He found it very difficult to cope with life in the PoW camp he signed an I-O-U for a race horse to get some bread. It was quite an expensive piece of bread!

Towards the end of 1945 there seemed to be a change in the Germans behaviour. Rumours went around. Until about Christmas time we could hear the noise of guns in the distance, then it would quieten down for a while. By January, the noise was more distinct and the word was the Russians are getting close. This created an uncomfortable feeling in the camp and also with the Germans.

On the 22nd January 1945 the guards took us out into the compound. They told us to get our things together and each man got a loaf of bread and a Red Cross parcel. For them to give that much food made us realise something was about to happen. They lined us up on the road. This was the start of the march to the unknown. We tried to get the guards to tell us where we were going but they would not answer. The guards had a horse and small wagon to carry their belongings, they were not young men and throughout the march the guards were replaced from time to time, some dropped out.

After about three weeks we arrived at the Vistula River which was frozen over. More prisoners had joined the column, which by this time was stretched a long way back. From one side of the river to the other was quite a distance and it took a long time crossing it. The ice must have been very thick at that point but further down the river German troops, tanks and big guns were crossing. It was dark when we went over and it was snowing and very cold. A lot of the men had balaclavas and breathing through them caused ice to form around the mouth area. After about month men started to get weary and hungry. At the end of the days march, a watery soup was given out and most nights we slept in a hay barn. The weather was getting bad. We were going through blizzards, temperatures were below zero and it was about this stage the horse the Germans used for carrying their belongings dropped dead. It had just climbed a short hill, the road was very icy and it just stumbled until it couldn鈥檛 go any further. We marched day after day, February past then into March - sometimes we slept in pig stys at the end of a days march, other times in stables, but hay barns was were we slept mostly. It was in a barn that we spotted a farm house about 200 yards away. The other three chaps I was with thought we might be able to get to the farm house and try to get some food. We knew it was a Polish farm and we thought our chances would be good. We decided that I would go. I waited until it seemed quiet and no sign of any guards. It had just started to get dark when I left. I made my way down to the farmhouse and there was a man standing at the back door, he called me into the house he took me into a big kitchen with a long table with a crowd of men sitting round it all eating barley soup. They gave me a bowl of soup. I explained that I would like to take some soup to my three friends but he did not want to that, I then offered him my battledress jacket in exchange for the soup and he agreed. For that he gave me a big enamel bucket full of soup. The temperature was below zero and now I only had my over coat to keep the cold out. As I made my way back to the barn other PoWs were also trying to get back to it. I heard someone running across the yard to the barn and shots were fired. Then I heard the guards shouting "Halt". It was quiet. I then made a run for it and more shots went off. I was trying to keep my head down and I tripped over something and lost the contents of the bucket. I felt very disappointed. I could hardly face my mates. I knew how they were feeling and the look on their faces told it all. The next morning the Germans lined us up on the road to count us. They were four short in the count. They sent guards to the farmhouse while stood in deep snow freezing. It took them a long time. We heard shots and then the four PoWs were brought back having had a beating by the guards. They said one of the Polish men had been shot but they didn't know if he was dead.

We continued to march, some days long distances, other days were shorter. Whatever the distance, we just walked and kept our heads down. Some days we would be overtaken by big German convoys, in which case we had to jump into a ditch and lay in the snow until it passed. Sometimes if it was a big one, we would just fall asleep in the snow and would be woken up by the guards shouting at us.

One day we passed about fifty female Jews. I thought we were in bad condition but these poor girls - they were wearing sacks for clothing - and behind them was a very tall woman dressed in a nurses uniform. When we got further down the road we saw one of them lying in a pool of blood. Obviously she been shot; in all probabilty she was shot for not being able to keep up with the others.

By now we were in Germany which was being paid frequent visits by the RAF and the Americans. We were comming to the end of a days march a little Scotsman was wandering through the column seaching for dog-ends apparently. The only thing he looked for was something to smoke. A couple of days later I saw again and in that short time he looked thin and his face was yellow. We slept in a barn that night and in the morning somone found him dead. He could not be buried because the ground was frozen deep so the Germans ordered that they put him on a farmyard dung heap and that's were he was left. I, along with my mates, felt very sad, that was all the value that was put on life!

Occasionaly there was a funny side to all this misery. In 1940, a man got seperated from his unit and was wondering across the country trying to catch up with his unit when he spotted a column of men walking along a road and reconised one man as his mate and took off after him shouting "Wait for me Johnny!" His friend was trying to wave him back but he kept going until he caught his friend up and found out he had joined a column of PoWs. It shows how close friendships were in those days.

The closer we got to Germany the more we got caught up in the bombing day and night. We arrived at place called Stendal. It had been bombed the night before and the Guards told us not speak or even look at any one. The feeling was very grim. We were taken to the railway yards which were devastated and we were put to work taking goods out of damaged wagons and putting them into undamaged ones. One of my friends found a block of honey and before we knew it, a crowd descended on him some. Some had home made knives and were digging into the honey, until finally the poor chap had to let go. All he got of the honey was what was stuck to his hands and the wounds to his arms.

We left Stende. We were now East of Berlin and were caught up in the heavy bombing. Sometimes a plane would get hit and the crew would parachute out. As they came down, our guards would shoot at them. When I first saw this happen I made a remark and one of the guards heard me. For this I got a rifle butt in my chest that sent me flat on my back. Things were going bad for the Germans and it started to show in their behavior and I realised we were getting close to freedom and I had to keep my mouth shut and play it safe. I thought we must be getting close to freedom and it would not be very smart after going through what we had been through to push things. We had a couple of frights when the American planes dive bombed and fired on us but we survived that a couple of times and I still had this feeling we would soon be meeting up with our troops pretty soon.

Now the Germans were taking us South and were running into the dreaded SS troops. The first time we saw them was when we had to cross a bridge and they were laying explosives to blow up the bridge. Our guards had to ask them to let us cross. We had been warned by the guards not to look or speak. As we went over, some of the SS troops were shouting "hang them" and "shoot them", we all moved pretty fast over that bridge, sometime later we heard a big bang and someone said that鈥檚 the bridge!

It was now April 1945 and the bombing was very fierce. Planes were getting hit and brought down and we would see pieces of planes floating down. The weather was improving, but the food, once more, was none existent.

As the march progressed we seemed to be getting close to the British and Americans. We noticed that the old guards had gone and new ones taken over.

One day the column came to a halt. We had arrived at a blown bridge. We waited for sometime and then a small American plane flew over and dropped leaflets which said that American troops were about a mile away and would be coming in to liberate all prisoners of war and no harm must come to them.

By this time all the guards had disappeared, except two whom we had never seen before. One was a young officer and a private and became very friendly. After about three hours, a jeep drove up on the other side of the river. There were four Americans in the jeep and one of them got out and shouted for us to cross the blown bridge as best as we could. There was only one single beam that was possible to walk on and it meant that we would have to cross single file. With so many prisoners, it took hours to cross. The Americans apologized to us that they did not have anywhere for us to sleep that night. He then said if you go into that building you can find yourselves some bedding. The building was about four storeys and two of us went in to find the bedding while me and the other mate went looking for food. The chaps had found a mattress and blankets and we found bread and something to go with it. We built a fire and just settled down for the night.

The next day the Americans found us a place in a German Airforce Barracks, where we oganized ourselves. Two found a bus and went looking for food while the others found a kitchen and got the sleeping quarters ready. That night we celebrated in fine style with roast pork and all the trimmings - we even found a piano to top it off. We overloaded ourselves with so much food some of us were quite sick the next day! We were able to get something from the American medics to take away the discomfort. We were given American rations and lots of vitamin tablets. We thought we were at the Ritz!

We were with the Americans for couple of days. We were then put into trucks and taken to an airfield and loaded into Dakota airplanes - twenty five to a plane - and were flown to Belgium.

We landed in Brussels where we stayed with the British Army for the night. The next day they took us back to the airfield and this time Lancaster bombers would transport us to England. The pilot was an Australian. He asked us if we would like to see the Atlantic Wall and he did a detour and he flew us down the coast. It was a miracle that the troops ever got through those German defences.

We arrived in Oxford, England, where we were fumigated and given new uniforms and leave passes. The next day our dream had come true and we headed for home.
The first thing my Father said was 鈥淚 thought you would have come home on a stretcher鈥�. We were given double rations for the first six months and in that time I met my wife and we were married on VJ day. That was fifty nine years ago and we are still together.

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