going or how long we would be in there. It was a shocking experience. Some were wearing their greatcoats like me, others just their basic uniform but you can imagine how hot it got with us all crammed together with no proper ventilation. Add to that, the stink of unwashed bodies and our filthy, shitty, lice-infested uniforms; it was unbearable but I had to bear it. To survive and not give in was the only way to beat the bastard Germans.
We were all severely dehydrated and some of the weaker ones were suffering from heatstroke. Nothing you could do. You couldn’t move to give them more space – there was none. The train stopped a couple of times, just long enough for guards to open the doors, refill the pails and put them back in. I never got a drink. Most of the water slopped out of the pails anyway, as our truck bumped and lurched along at speed or it was drunk by those nearest to the pails. Every man for himself, I was learning.
It was a rough time, even for the fittest men and many were in a sorry state, already ill with a fever and the runs from their weeks of marching across France and Belgium. Obviously there was no toilet, and no room to move to a corner out of the way in order to do your business. The soldiers who still had their steel helmets ripped out the linings and padding from inside and used them as chamber pots, passing them over for somebody to use and then passing them back with their contents over to somebody on the side. They tried to get rid of what they could through cracks or holes in the floor or emptied them in a corner out of the way. Some men couldn’t get a helmet in time and had to shit in their pants where they stood.
God knows how I escaped catching dysentery. Perhaps it was just as well that I didn’t drink any of the water or eat the bread or cheese which had been passed around by hands which had been holding helmets of shit and piss. When we arrived at the field camp I remember seeing hundreds of discarded steel helmets all over the ground. Nobody could wear their helmet again, even if they had wanted to, with no padded lining.
How could one human being treat another in this way? I was brought up to believe ‘Do no harm’ and ‘Do as you would be done by.’ How could they do this to us? We cursed Hitler, the German people, the war, even the British Army for sending us here. Some men were so exhausted or demoralised they never said a word the whole journey. Others talked a bit about what had happened to them, but not for long. Afraid. We were all terribly afraid and talking made things worse. Nobody had any words of comfort. How could they? ‘It’ll be all right.’ We couldn’t say that, not after what we had experienced since being captured. Silence was our refuge.
It was impossible to sleep in more than short bursts what with the noise of the wheels on the track, the constant battering we got as we bumped against the sides and each other, and the cramps in your joints. All I did was catnap, afraid to go into a deeper sleep, I think, in case I didn’t wake up. The feeling of suffocation was immense, what with being locked inside this hellish crate, pressed up against other men’s stinking bodies, you could imagine yourself just drifting into unconsciousness and never waking up again. I managed to survive the eternity of that train journey towards my long sentence of imprisonment, watching the track under my feet, through the cracks in the floor as the miles sped by.
It seemed never-ending. Sometimes we slowed down for a passing train and those at the side tried to peep through the gaps to see where we were. Then we moved off slowly again and speeded up and then off again. Mile after mile after mile, speeding on and on, as we went further into Germany, across Poland out towards the East. How much longer? How much further? On we rattled and banged about in these brutish conditions, getting weaker and weaker and more disheartened.
On the third morning, the train came to a juddering halt. Was this it? Had we arrived? There was a long silence and nobody dared speak. What was going on outside? What was going to happen next?
Then all hell broke loose. A tremendous noise of banging and clattering, men shouting, boots thumping, and doors smashing back. We were fourth or fifth down and our door was unbolted, pushed back and sunlight streamed in. We shaded our eyes and you could see what a sorry state we were all in. Nobody wanted to catch anybody else’s eye because what you saw was just a reflection of yourself, reminding you how low you had fallen. Ashamed of what was happening to us.
Dirty and dishevelled, hunched in pain from the confinement and illness, some managed to stagger out of the door and get down onto the track. Others just fell out, broken men, and didn’t get up again. I had difficulty getting out, practically crawling along the truck floor after the others to get to the door. My knees and legs nearly buckled under me as I touched the ground with my feet.
Free at last! Fresh air and space to move about. Then you saw where you had ended up after all that travelling – another dirty railway station siding in some scrubby countryside in the middle of a country you’d never heard of, the only signs you could make out could have been in Arabic for all you knew. Where in God’s name were we?
East Prussia, heading for Stalag 20A at Thorn (now Torun, Poland), which was the administrative centre for processing prisoners into the system. According to my International Red Cross records, I arrived there on 10 June and was registered and issued with my metal identity dog tag on which my POW no: 10511 was stamped. I signed my admission card on 26 June 1940 but I have no recollection of staying there. At some stage I was sent on to Stalag 20B at Marienburg (now Malork, Poland) near the Baltic coast which was where I was registered and then sent out to labour camps where I stayed until 23 January 1945.
It was impossible to know exactly where you were most of the time. Always hungry and tired, always afraid and in unfamiliar surroundings, it’s not surprising that we didn’t know what was going on. You joined a queue here, waited in a line there. You only thought about how to get through the day and survive the night. You lived in the present moment. I met so many different men, fellow prisoners, coming and going that I lost any sense of time or place.
How many prisoners of war were there? Where were they all staying? We were moved around all the time, from camp to camp, and very few men found themselves with people from their own regiments, always being divided and separated, divided again, and sent to various camps and forts, miles from the main Stalag. I don’t know if it was a deliberate act and a way of controlling us or just due to the sheer volume of men. All I know is that we were always marching somewhere and always for long distances.
We arrived at an enormous field camp where thousands of men were spread over the area. There were many different nationalities but they all looked in the same poor condition – dirty and half-starved. They were standing, sitting and lying down wherever there was space. There were some small tents pitched on the site and some large marquees which served as kitchen and canteen and quarters for the officers. We queued to have our papers checked and stamped and told to join a line to get our first bit of food. Queuing is what prisoners did most of their waking time.
We were told to stay there and get our soup because if we moved we would lose our place and wouldn’t get anything. We had to wait patiently for our turn, hoping that the food wouldn’t run out before we got there. The food turned out to be soup which was at least hot and wet and helped take the edge off our raging hunger. I think it was then that my stomach started to learn not to expect much, certainly not ever to be full again; to be satisfied with whatever it was given to keep starvation at bay. Mostly soup as it turned out.
I can’t be sure how long we stayed there, a couple of nights, maybe, sleeping on the ground, getting a wash with a tin mug full of water we were allowed from a standpipe; and getting more soup. One time when I came out of the kitchen tent, an armed guard indicated with his rifle that he wanted us to move elsewhere, directing us towards another queue. Another guard pointed at his head and mimed a pair of scissors with two fingers, shouting at us, ‘
I noticed a group of men gathered across the other side of the field and could see a horse and cart. Now I’m a nosy so-and-so and like to know what’s going on and I decided to go over. I thought it was better to be doing something than just standing around waiting for goodness knows what to happen next. I walked past the end of the barber’s tent and out across the open field. The grass was uneven and worn in patches and I had to watch my step, so I was busy looking at my feet.
Suddenly I felt somebody grab my shoulder from behind. I jerked to a stop and spun round to come face to face with a German officer. ‘
