大象传媒

At five o鈥檆lock on the morning of September 1st 1939 the whole family tumbled out of bed at the sound of tremendous gun-fire. We lived in Garnsee in East Prussia, about five miles from the Polish border: the war had begun. I was fourteen.
Straight away, on that day, the first casualties, wounded and dead, were brought back to the village. One of the dead was our relatively new school teacher, a man in his twenties, who had brought a welcome breath of fresh air into school; most of the teachers were elderly.
As the German troops pressed on into Poland the fighting left us and life went on fairly normally. My grandparents lived just over the border but after a while they emerged unscathed.
I left school at fourteen and at first I worked on our smallholding; among other things we grew tobacco. My brother has said that because my father had refused to join the Nazi party he didn鈥檛 鈥渜ualify鈥� for help from forced labourers - I don鈥檛 know how true this was. At sixteen I was apprenticed to become a carpenter and then, in April `43, I was called up. I had a medical and then I was persuaded - more or less shamed - into the Waffen SS. I don鈥檛 know what would have happened if I had refused to go into the SS; my father was livid that I had gone in but he didn鈥檛 say much to me about it.
I was sent to Dresden for training and put in a unit which had just come back from the Russian front: there were only about half a dozen men left. We were sent to Greece in September `43 by train. I remember that we never had tomatoes at home and I didn鈥檛 like them, but an older man on the train had some and some onions and salt - and I鈥檝e liked that combination ever since! The journey seemed very long: at one stage we were left in a siding in Belgrade for ages. Eventually we arrived in the region of Larissa; we were on the move in the area a lot. There was no real fighting, just partisan attacks. I was very lucky never to suffer an attack - I was very interested in keeping alive. In one spot there was a big iron ore mine which we had to guard in scattered small groups. In another, disregarding whether we were on or off duty, we all struggled out to see the sun rise behind Mt. Olympus. It was mesmerising. And somewhere else, a place where we stayed for a while, we dammed the stream and made a swimming pool.
Once, we went to Volos and I remember going to visit a church. Attached to the side of the building was another space filled with human bones - a sort of charnel-house; I didn鈥檛 want to end up like that. Another time we visited Salonika - I can鈥檛 remember why - and went down to the shore; it was the first time I had ever seen the sea. I鈥檇 never travelled and had really never been out of the forests of East Prussia; I was bowled over by the beauty of the Greek landscape and the fact that you could see so far. I remember the snow on the huge peaks, the watermelons, the tortoises! Some were so big you could ride on them!
There was no animosity from the villagers. Two or three times a few of us were invited into a house for a meal - yoghurt and a sort of blue bread. If we gave them soap they would wash our clothes for us. But their houses were full of fleas. So long as you followed the rules - not to go out alone, to stay where you were supposed to be, it wasn鈥檛 really dangerous.
Our officers were fine. Every evening at supper the MO would pop a malaria tablet into our mouth - to make sure we took it and didn鈥檛 hoard it as something to barter with.
We were never told about D Day or the Italian campaign but, inevitably, we had to be on the move north. We travelled in troop carriers first to Albania then to Yugoslavia and eventually into Hungary where we met up with the Russians. I was using the mortars for which I had been trained while in Greece. I remember once we鈥檇 set everything up beside a river with the Russians on the other side and had fired 20 or 30 rounds and then a mortar got stuck; two of us had to dismantle it. We picked everything up and ran for it because the Russians had pinpointed our position. It was a very scary moment. You tried just to keep your head down as much of the time as you could.
It got very cold; one night I crept out to get something to eat from a big pot of stew; I had to break the ice on top of it. I did have a very upset tummy after that! A bit later, just before Christmas `44, we were in a ditch in a foot or so of icy water and my feet got frozen and my big toes went black; but I was given injections and I survived. On the fifteenth of January 1945 I was in a delousing station, possibly in southern Poland. Not only did someone give me a piece of chocolate but also I had a hot shower! It was my birthday and I couldn鈥檛 have wished for a better present!
We ended up in March 1945 not far from Gdansk, completely surrounded by the Russians. We were dug in, sniping. The Russians were very accurate. Once, a shot meant for my head hit my rifle - very unusual for them to miss. On another occasion a Russian tank came snooping around our position and swung its turret toward us. I shot at it - of course it didn鈥檛 do any damage, but it did cause the tank not to fire on us. I think that for me this was the worst part of the whole war: we had to creep out and collect our dead.
After a while the pressure began to ease off as the Russians set off in the push to take Berlin. At one stage I had to teach some elderly civilians who had somehow got left behind how to use a rifle. We were fairly near an aerodrome, now abandoned, and we went exploring; among the deserted buildings there were houses for the men and one of them had what looked like a newly bricked piece of wall. We knocked a hole through and found clothes, cigarettes and drink, all highly marketable items. I put about forty tins of tobacco into my rucksack.
On March 31st I was diagnosed with pneumonia and pleurisy and sent on a boat to the island of Hela, the only escape route left. From there I was put on a large ship; we were packed and I had to sit in the hold with my knees up, which was agony for my chest. There was a medical officer from my unit on board and eventually I asked him whether there was anywhere I could lie down. I ended up in a cabin. I still had my rucksack.
There is no doubt that the SS got better treatment; every time I had had a medical problem I was well looked after. So, although I have never been proud of being in the SS, I鈥檓 sure that it helped to keep me alive.
I was feverish all during the voyage - but I still had my rucksack. I ended up in Denmark, was put on a train and ended up on the west side of the Kiel Canal. And with my tobacco I could buy a white roll with butter and sausage every day - Heaven! I put on weight and I鈥檓 sure that that had a lot to do with my recovery.
The war was finished for me. I was in the British zone, thank Heavens. I was interrogated; the fact that my paybook showed I was in the SS didn鈥檛 seem to count against me at all. In July and August we were pretty much left to our own devices on a farm - there were no guards. Later we were sent to what had been a holding camp for the concentration camps; here life was much tougher. My group slept on top of the old brick ovens and the food was very meagre. We were counted morning and night and our Belgian guards shot at us if we didn鈥檛 get inside our billets fast enough in the evening. One day we were running for our lives as usual when a guard shouted, 鈥淲hat鈥檚 the problem? Why are you running like that?鈥� The Belgians had gone and our new guards were British! They asked who was the youngest - I
was - and they sent me to work in the kitchen. What luck! I put on a stone.
Later we were sent to Belgium and spent the awful winter of 1945-6 in tents. It was freezing cold and we had very little food, to the point where we opened our bowels only about every two weeks.
In about April 1946 we were sent to the UK. Most of those sent were SS - again, lucky. After about two weeks in Scotland we were transferred to a big distribution camp near Moreton in the Marsh from where I was sent to Setley camp near Brockenhurst. The Italians had left it in a right mess so the first thing we did was to clean it all up. There must have been the best part of 200 of us and we lived there quite happily. Every Sunday we exchanged some of our tea for coffee so were able to have a real cup of coffee and a piece of slab cake as a treat. We had our own kitchen and some of the men cooked. The rest of us worked on farms in the area. There was a big hole at the back of the camp and we pretty much came and went as we wanted! There was no animosity from the local people - in fact, they were very kind. I worked for quite a while at Exbury Farm and then in April `48 I was officially discharged form the army. Most of us went back to Germany but I had nowhere to go - Garnsee was now in the Russian Zone and I had lost contact with my family. They had fled to the West from the Russians in January 1945. On New Year's Eve 1949 I received a letter through the Red Cross from my parents - they had all survived. In April 1950 we were reunited.

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