大象传媒

I am a Hull man. I am 85, and my wife and I retired to Beverley 20 years ago. In WWII I was in the Territorials and was called up in 1939. I also got engaged, at Christmas of that year, to Irene.

In May/June 1940 I was a driver in the RASC with the BEF in Northern France. I had been wounded and was in hospital. The Germans were breaking through everywhere and I left hospital, joined some other soldiers and used a truck to make a road block. They wanted me to join them because I was a driver and could move and immobilise the truck. We then set up a machine gun nest. Two Germans on motorbikes approached, saw the road block and then went back. A large German lorry appeared next, Germans got out and started to try to move the road block. Our machine gun stopped them.

The British army was in disarray. We had no organisation or ammunition. I escaped to the beach near Boulogne. I spent some time in the sand dunes but after a few days it was no use and I was captured. I spent 5 years as a prisoner of war. To start with we walked towards Germany. Later we were loaded into cattle trucks and I was taken to prisoner of war camps in Poland.

I spent the next 4 1鈦�2 years labouring. I worked underground in coal mines. I also worked shovelling sugar beet and digging sand. The coal mines I worked in were not the same as those in England, there was little danger of gas so the fear of explosions was small. I remember the night shift was best for we sometimes hid in disused side tunnels and slept rather than worked. The Polish miners we worked alongside let us do this.

On one occasion I tried to escape. I had obtained a suit of civvies from the Poles I worked with down the mines. I was rigged up, to a fashion, for my escape with a forged civilian pass and ID card and when I came up from the mine I walked out of the colliery鈥檚 civilian entrance. I got on a train. But a couple of stops down the line an important looking German got on board, and sat down opposite me. We started to talk, I spoke some German and he asked me about my socks. These were good quality and the only bit of British kit on me. I was wearing them because I expected I would need to walk a long way, and I wanted to look after my feet.

I was asked where I had got my socks from. I explained that I had bought them on the black market. At the next station the German got off, went to a policeman and reported me as a black market dealer. I was arrested and questioned about being a black marketer. This was serious. Eventually I confessed to being a POW and was returned to my camp. I had to spend a month in solitary as punishment.

I mid Jan 1945 I was in a POW camp near Krakow in Eastern Poland. Over a foot of snow lay on the ground. The temperature was well below freezing. I was in a Lager of around 300 British POWs. The main POW camps were Stalags, smaller camps were called 鈥淟agers鈥�.

At 6.00pm we were told to be ready to be evacuated at 0600 the following morning. Russian forces were advancing fast and overnight we made small sledges from bed boards to each carry one Red Cross parcel of essentials. We were not allowed to carry any clothing apart from what we wore. We set off in the snow marching in a westerly direction and marched for 36 hours non-stop, often changing direction, eventually joining others until the queue reached to each horizon.

There were POWs of all nationalities in the column, British, Aussies, New Zealanders, South Africans, French and others. There were political prisoners clad only in thin blue striped pyjamas and clogs. Stragglers who could not keep up were shot. Numerous political prisoners lay stiff by the road side. Their corpses looked like skeletons. At one time we were strafed by Russian planes, this caused many casualties.

We marched on day after day, week after week, with generally no rations. Very occasionally we had a piece of bread and we thanked God for the Red Cross parcels. At night, if we were lucky, we were herded into a barn, we were luckier still if the barn had straw. Often we were just penned up in a farm yard. Polish farms were built in a circle with the buildings on the outside and a space for the cattle on the inside. We often spent the night out in the open, in farm yards.

One day, after a night in a straw barn, quite a few of our lads were missing. They had burrowed into the straw to try to escape. The Germans machined gunned the straw. No one escaped. On another occasion, in a farm yard, I looked through a little window and noticed a pile of spuds in a cellar. I got in through the window and started handing them out. A German guard came up, saw what was going on, poked his rifle in, and slid back his bolt. I was in trouble. My mate quickly offered him a tin of coffee from a Red Cross parcel. The guard took the coffee and buggered off, like any sensible German would.

We got to the Danube near Budapest. To get clean we stripped off and swam in the river. I hadn鈥檛 been in long when I saw a snake in the water. I got out pretty quick.
The rats seemed quite happy to share the barns and outbuildings on a night; they didn鈥檛 like the cold weather outside either. A couple of months or so went by with us daily walking 10 miles, or 15 kilometres. The snow went and it gradually got a little warmer. As we were now leaving the Russian front well behind, getting a little nearer to our Allies each day, our guards were getting less aggressive and a little friendlier. But they still wanted to carry there own rifles.

In the early days of the war, 1940/41, marching German troops used to sing about 鈥淔ahren Gegen England鈥�, 鈥淲e are travelling towards England鈥�. They didn鈥檛 sing it now, so we took it up. We were travelling to England. We were in better spirits and going well on a diet of spuds, swedes and sugar beet.

After 4 months of marching we were in Austria and things seemed very quiet and peaceful. We bedded down in a meadow, woke up the following morning and found our guards had disappeared. We were free. The lads lit a large fire. A pig was obtained from somewhere; it was nicely trimmed, put on a spit and cooked over the open fire. My friend Frank and I ate our fill and wandered off on our own. We were sitting on the grass verge of a country lane when we saw a tank approaching, followed by a line of others. Out of interest we just sat there wondering what would happen next. As the lead tank passed us out of the tank came a shower of cigarettes, sweets and chocolate etc. The Yanks had arrived.

For those two dirty, shabby, khaki clad human beings it was one of the happiest days of their lives, but more was to come. We got up walked around a bit and came across our former German guards all nicely penned up. We had the Americans line them up for us, then inspected them, picking out untidy uniforms, boots not blacked and those not standing stiffly to attention.

After that we came across a German Gestapo Opal staff car complete with its skull and cross bone emblem on the front. It had a hammer put through the dash board but we got it going, had a drive around and spent the night with a squad of burial troops. They tidied up bodies. Here we were introduced to flapjack and maple syrup. We then looked at photos of their families; it was a real home from home.

The next day found us on the autobahn going into Regensburg. Every thing was going fine until we came to this cross road where this great big Yankee military policeman, who looked like a 10 foot gorilla, was controlling traffic. He stopped us at the head of the queue, came to us very slowly, the earth trembled with his every step. He came along side, stared menacingly at us for a long moment, and then said, 鈥淵ou got no papers?鈥� I replied 鈥淣o.鈥� 鈥淵ou got no pass?鈥� I again said 鈥淣o鈥�. To which he announced 鈥淵ou got no car鈥�. I said 鈥淚鈥檒l drive it to the road side out of the way鈥�. He said 鈥淵ou got two seconds to get out under your own power鈥�. We only needed one. Our freedom was temporarily on hold.

That ended my journey. We went to an assembly area at the Messerschmitt offices at Regensburg where we were kitted out in an American uniform and field equipment, flown by Dakota to British lines, kitted out again and finally flown home.

As for VE Day, I am not exactly sure where I was on that precise day!
I came home, married Irene in 1945, and in August it will be our Diamond Wedding Anniversary

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