Survivor of the Long March

but if you unravelled it, you would see what it was made of. Of course, it was no good in the rain as it just fell to bits. It was hot and sweaty work but still better than freezing to death in the middle of a field in winter, hacking at sugar beet in the frozen ground with a useless two-pronged hand tool.

A guard came across the farm yard. It was lunch time. You could hear the sound of the hooves and the wheels of the cart on the cobbles coming towards us with our food. The sound of the metal ladle like a reveille, clanking on the milk churn full of soup. I heard a voice shouting something in German, probably, ‘Los!’ – get going, or ‘Schnell, schnell!’ – hurry up, to the camp cooks or maybe to us. We stopped work, put down our tools and made our way out of the barn. I wiped my hands on my trousers as I followed the others. As I came round the side of the barn, I could see our chaps struggling to keep the churn upright on the back of the cart.

Soup of the day. Glorious soup of the Fatherland! Soup was all we usually had at midday after a long, hard morning’s work. Hot and wet, maybe a surprise bit of meat or lump of swede, a scrap of beet leaf, but nothing much to recommend it. I couldn’t see anything else on the cart. No bread. No such luck. If you were clever enough, or rather strong enough, you saved a piece from the night before to have with your soup the next day but most of the time you didn’t. It took an iron will not to wolf it down as soon as you got your evening ration.

We always carried our bowls and spoons with us so I went and collected mine where I had left them in the large inside pocket of my overcoat, which was hanging on a post. I went and queued at the cart where one of our chaps was standing ready, ladle in hand. You would have thought it was precious liquid gold the way he was serving it out, taking his time, careful not to spill a drop as the ladle travelled the distance between churn and bowl. ‘Come on, come on. I’m hungry,’ I said.

It was my turn and I held my bowl out with my hand cupped underneath to keep it steady. Didn’t want to lose a drop. Maybe it was special that, I was thinking. Perhaps one of the camp cooks had added a bit of something extra. As it was served out into my bowl, I could feel that the soup was stone cold and I thought that this was rubbish. This was no good. I tipped the bowl forward slightly to look inside and gave the soup a sniff. Terrible. What on earth was in it? Bits of rancid horse meat in a scummy grey liquid. How could anybody serve something like that to another human being? How were you meant to work twelve hours a day on this pig swill?

Now I had a terrible temper, I admit that, and something just went inside me sometimes. I lost all sense of where I was and what was going on around me. I didn’t care that the chap who made the soup was looking at me, worried that I was going to say something. That the fellow before me had already drunk his down in one go. I didn’t care who was standing next to me, behind me or across the yard. I was angry, so angry that I couldn’t stop myself. I walked over to the guard. I didn’t even take in which one it was. I did not care who it was. They were all the same that day.

We had a number of guards who came and went all the time. You marched out in the morning with one lot and by then end of the day there had been two or three changes. There was Hunchback Hans, the one I gave cigarettes to in exchange for a bit of extra bread; Red Face who loved garlic; or the ones we nicknamed Taffy Biscuits because they were all the same, only capable of shouting. ‘Mach weiter. Mach weiter.’ – do more, do more, when we were working. You know – sounds like McVite, Mcvite’s Biscuits, so Taffy Biscuits. Oh, never mind. And there was Jan who didn’t like the English and me in particular.

So this lunchtime guard was sitting on a wall, his rifle propped up next to him, head down, chewing and sucking his teeth. I walked across to him.

‘Look,’ I said, shoving the bowl under his nose, stabbing my finger at the disgusting mess in it. ‘That’s not fit for pigs,’ adding, ‘Fur Schweine,’ – for pigs, in case he didn’t understand. Then I repeated the word, ‘Schweine! ‘ and threw the contents of the bowl across the yard. The soup sort of curved up in the air for a second before it landed, splattering across the cobbles, leaving a greasy stain and then seeped away through the cracks. OK, that was done, I had made my point. I imagined that the guard was saying to himself, ‘If you don’t want it, then that’s your loss. You don’t eat it, you go hungry.’ End of story.

So I turned and walked off towards the stables where they kept the farm horses. There was a tap outside where you washed your hands, cleaned your bowl and sneaked a drink if you were lucky. I was bending down to turn on the tap and rinse out my bowl when I heard the guard get up. Now German soldiers wore boots with steel toe caps and heels and I heard the clack, clack sound of his boots on the cobbles coming towards me. Oh God, he was following me.

I straightened up and turned round to face him. It was Jan, it would be, the guard who didn’t like me. He was a very big bloke, over 6 ft tall. He was what was known as einer falsche Deutscher – a false German, half Polish, neither one thing nor the other, I suppose. He had never liked me. Not that I had ever done anything in particular to him. I was English, a prisoner of war and he didn’t like the look of my face. He was coming straight at me now, fixing his bayonet to his rifle, which should have been fixed all the time by their law. He speeded up and when it was finally attached he suddenly lunged at me and caught me in the chest with the bayonet. I felt a sharp pain, which spread across my chest and made me gasp.

He wasn’t trying to spear me, I didn’t think, just give me a bit of scare. I dodged out of the way as I saw another one coming but the tip caught me in the side in the rib cage. That hurt too. I was unlucky; not quick enough. So when I saw a third one coming my way, I’d had enough. I grabbed his rifle by the barrel and with tremendous force pulled it out of his hand and threw it on the ground. It was a bloody stupid thing to do as there was bound to be a round of ammunition in the gun. I knew it because their rifles were meant to be loaded at all times. It might have triggered off and killed either one of us or one of my friends. What a stupid thing to do! Me and my temper. If I had killed a German guard that would have been certain death.

My two pals ran to me and got between me and Jan. Jimmy was shouting at me, pretending to tell me off, and Laurie was holding me off with one hand and waving the other at Jan as though to say, ‘It’s OK, OK, I’ve got him.’ Jan looked as though he had had enough. He was thinking, ‘I’ve given him a fright, shown him who’s in charge, and his mates have got him now and are telling him off.’ I took deep breaths and then let go and felt Jimmy and Laurie holding me, taking control.

Another guard arrived to take over from Jan. Jimmy and Laurie marched me away and told me what a bloody idiot I was. They were cross and said, ‘You could have got yourself killed.’ I looked over my shoulder and saw that Jan had retrieved his rifle and was checking the bayonet. I saw from his face and gestures that he was telling guard No 2 about what had happened. Telling him all about me and what I had done to the soup and to him. He disappeared and we went back to the hay barn to finish the job.

It was painful trying to work, especially bending down and stretching up. My chest and ribs hurt and my shoulder felt as though it was coming out of its socket. I opened my tunic a little and rubbed the area through my vest. It was sore. There was bruising; it would be purple by morning. I carried on working, well, going through the motions. Afternoon turned into evening. There was another change of guard and we finished about seven and marched back to our camp.

Nobody said anything on the way home but we all returned in a good mood, looking forward to something to eat, especially me. Anything to take the edge off the awful hunger. No breakfast and my lunch left on the ground in the farmyard so I hoped that there was a bit of Wurst that night.

Word had got round about the incident, presumably from our cooks and as I entered the camp yard, some of the chaps who had returned earlier called out, ‘All right, Tyro, what you been up to, then?’ Some of the chaps used that nickname. Apparently Tyro was an Indian word for ‘Wait’ and I suppose I got it, not just because of my surname but because I had been known to get a bit impatient over things. One of the cooks joined in: ‘Fancy some soup, then, or shall I cut out the middle man and chuck it straight on the floor?’ They knew about the trouble with the guard and wanted to know more.

‘Go on, Tyro, what you do?’ But we were interrupted by the Unteroffizier calling us all to order. Everybody was told to go inside except me. ‘Hier bleiben,’ – stay here, he said. What was this? I was thinking. This looked like trouble. I was worried then because Jan had obviously reported me or word had got back to the Unteroffizier from the other guard. I didn’t know what was going to happen next. They were not going to forget it. I was going to be charged, wasn’t I? Charged and punished.

The officer said, ‘Name und Nummer,’ – give me your name and number, which I