大象传媒

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During the later years of the war my father, HD "Johnny" Johnson, was a surgeon in the paratroops (6th Air Airborne division) and immediately after taking part in the Rhine crossing was seconded to the first group of the Allies to enter Belsen.

The Germans had been afraid that if they simply abandoned Belsen when they retreated the inmates would escape and spread Typhus through the German population, so they asked the British to send people to take over the camp several days before they withdrew. The British, not knowing what concentration camps were like, sent a platoon of sappers and a field ambulance unit and discovered a camp covering several square miles with the German commanders and German and Hungarian guards still in place.

They pitched tents outside the camp and, despite the arrangement with the Germans these were machine gunned by a German plane one morning as they were getting up. Luckily they were in the adjacent wood, washing and shaving.

When the British soldiers saw what the Germans had done to the inmates they had to be restrained from attacking the guards. My father met the woman guard who had made lampshades from human skin.

Only after a while of trying to deal with things did it occur to them to show the local Germans what the camp was really like, but by then it was not at its worst.

Eventually my father was moved on to do battle surgery but after a couple of days fell ill with Typhus, presumably caught in the camp, and was invalided most of the rest of the war.

During the first day or two in the camp he took some photos, one of which you can see here. (The others can be seen on the website listed below).

He had only part of a roll of film, 14 or 15 shots, having taken the others a few days before at the Rhine crossing - the only time he ever shot at a German, who was bayoneting his friend who was tangled in his parachute rigging which had caught in a tree.

Most of his medical team in the airborne were conscientious objectors who had nevertheless volunteered for the paratroops and were thus to be dropped unarmed among the enemy. An example of extraordinary bravery it seems to me. The Airborne divisions were entirely volunteers and were short of surgeons, so they accepted my father despite the fact that at 33 he was much older than everyone in his regiment except the commander).

He also wrote letters almost daily to his wife, my mother, while on active service, often not knowing when he could send them or when she might ever receive them. (They had only been married a few days before he left). This continued while he was at Belsen, though after a while he discovered he wasn't supposed to mention the concentration camp. But since he was also the censor for his men he had simply stamped them as censored.

My mother had been to the LSE and then been a personnel officer in a factory. She was driving army ambulances based on Salisbury plain when she met my father.

Here is his 24th letter home, and the first from Belsen, (I have some of the others from Belsen but some my mother felt were too intimate to show me) .................................................

17-4-45
Major H D Johnson
32 CCS.(Bn)
BLA ...............................................................

My Darling, usually I seem to start by saying I have no news but tonight there is so much to tell you about I am overwhelmed and hardly know where to start.

I joined this unit the day before yesterday and I expected to be hard at work on battle surgery by now. We had our dinner in a field containing dead cows and seemed to be nearer the front than I had been since I left 224. The men burnt one cow that smelt too strongly with 4 Gal of petrol.

Today our job was switched and we were sent instead to take over the site of a German concentration camp. We came here today and I have seen things which I could not have believed possible. Darling it is too horrible to describe. I have never really hated the Germans till now. Now I cannot believe they belong to the same species as you and I. This camp is over 4 miles long. It is packed with filthy, raged, starving, people 60,000 of them.

There are piles of dead 100 feet by 30 feet which have accumulated outside the huts used for the sick and dying. Between 1 and 2,000 are desperately ill and nearly all are more dead than alive. Typhus and typhoid are in thousands. There are doctors among the prisoners who are Russian, Polish, French and so on they have done what they can - with nothing the Germans have given them no instruments, no medicines, practically no food.

For the last three weeks the diet has been one bowl of swede soup per day and one loaf between 12 once a week. So many lie helpless on the ground and are grey skinned and cadaverous that one cannot tell which are dead and which just alive.

I went through much of the camp with a Polish woman doctor who has been here two years. She had been in another camp earlier where the Germans had wiped out her family, her husband and child in the gas chamber along with thousands of others.

There is, nearby, a fine German hospital - for Germans, full of wounded. The contrast is amazing. Here everything is clean and plentiful. Doctors and nurses in plenty and plenty of good food.

The Germans invited the British to take over the camp before the area was captured because they were afraid of losing control as we advanced and that the typhus cases might escape and cause an epidemic. It is a frightful disease. We agreed so the Germans left their guard and 600 armed SS.

When we arrived there were - and still are - armed German guards on the gates and armed Hungarians - many hundreds, patrolling the edges of the camp where it meets the area occupied by Germans. There is a truce and later the German guard is to be allowed to go - with their weapons.

It is a fantastic situation. We are all armed too. Now we have the area well surrounded and there is no truculence - arms or no arms.

I saw two German officers motoring through the camp this afternoon. That seemed to me a bit much so I gave chase in Phoebe. I did not turn around quick enough and they eluded me, but later I found the car and and three others in a wood opposite a big house. There was only one German Cpl there but on the back seat of one car I saw a pistol. I thought that was no place for it so I appropriated it.

Three German officers then came out of the house and one, a colonel, asked me what I wanted. I said I had confiscated a pistol which had been left lying in a car as the truce allowed officers to keep arms but not leave them lying about. The Colonel said 鈥渨ill you kindly return it鈥� in good English. I refused saying I would report the matter to my CO and the Germans meekly let us - me and my unarmed anaesthetist drive away.

My CO thought we ought to interpret the truce generously so I drove back to the German HQ and marched into the Colonels office to return the pistol - with a warning that the officer was to wear it or he would lose it for good. The Colonel said 鈥淭hat is very fair鈥� and saluted me. Such is the fantastic situation.

Of course there is no surgery here but there is a colossal job of doctoring a job after my own heart, and I shall be happy here as long as I am allowed to stay - I fear that will not be long. I have been told that I shall be sent to another C.C.S. which will be doing surgery.

We are in tents again, near the German barracks. There are some fine houses occupied by the wives of the SS, Perhaps later we shall have those.

I must get to sleep now my darling - tomorrow will be a hard day.

All my love dearest one.................

Johnny...................................................................................................................

My father did not speak much about his experiences but my mother tells me it changed him. He lost much of his idealism and became more cynical about humanity, though his commitment to helping people never wavered. The story above is as I remember him telling me and does not pretend to be history......................................

My father died in 1980 and I designed his gravestone like a Roman altar, calling him 鈥淪urgeon, researcher and brave gentleman鈥�.

My fathers Belsen photos (which I found after his death) together with the original of the letter above, can all be found on:

^{About links} ...........

Before the war my father had been a keen skier (as he continued to be when I was young). I have photos of his ski holidays in that more innocent time and put some of them on a ski website (with a little information about some of his other exploits). Since I think they make a poignant pairing with the horrible ones on the other website I will give this as another link: ^{About links}

I am an artist. My website is: www.david-johnson.co.uk.
Look under 鈥渨orks鈥� and then 鈥淢y father blind and dying鈥�. ...............................
I am sorry this is a solid block of text (it makes it lose much of its impact) but I have been unable to find any way to get the paragraphs to register on this site or to edit them in, despite much advice.

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