Survivor of the Long March

this home with me but it was not the original one with which every soldier was issued on enlistment. I was given this book about a week into the March by a padre I met in a church. It is stamped inside Stalag 2B Gepruft – meaning ‘examined’, so it came from another camp.

I received this [New Testament] on 28th Jan 1945

During a halt on The March

About 1,000 of us in a church.

One of our boys is now playing the organ

As we walked on and on through villages and towns we began to see the effects of the war and the damage caused by the Allied bombing raids. It was dusk, after another long day walking, when we came to a large town or the outskirts of a city. It looked much the same as all the other places in the evening gloom with smashed vehicles – carts and cars, boarded up buildings, empty houses and deserted streets. There was a church standing in a square littered with stones and rubble. Some of the guards went ahead and must have checked it out because we started moving slowly in that direction. It was large with fancy stonework and buttresses and steps up to the main doors.

As usual we were at the back of the column following the others in straggly groups as they made their way towards the entrance. It took us a while to get there so we were the last to go in. Somewhere dry for the night. Fantastic! A couple of guards were having a quick smoke and then moved on inside. When we got in through the big heavy front door it was dark inside. We were in a wide, narrow, dark vestibule with steps and passageways off to the side. In the gloom I could make out the shapes of fellows hunched up asleep in a corner and moved past them towards the inside door. Sid and Heb were ahead, already poised to open it and go inside the church.

It was Jimmy, of course, who spotted it, always on the lookout for opportunities to make his and our lives better. He obviously had an idea.

‘Look, Chas,’ he said pointing to this full length plush red velvet curtain which was pushed back to the side of the door into the church. ‘What d’yer think?’ I nodded, wondering what he had in mind. It was thick and heavy and wouldn’t be easy to handle. What on earth were we going to do with it?

‘We can get it down.’ He looked at Laurie and me. We nodded. ‘It’ll be heavy to carry.’ It seemed mad to me but I knew Jimmy well enough not argue.

‘OK, then,’ I said. ‘I’ll do it.’

Sid and Heb came back to see what was going on and Jimmy told them to go and have a scout round. ‘What we need is a long bit o’ wood. A pole or something.’ He turned to me. ‘Quick, on my shoulders before anyone sees.’

I was the smallest and the lightest, although to be honest, we were all as thin as the wooden window pole which Sid and Heb came back with. Jimmy cupped his hand for me to get up and then pushed me up onto his shoulders and manoeuvred me towards the top of the door. I clenched my thighs firmly round his neck.

‘All right, Jimmy?’ I said, wobbling a bit. ‘Steady there, man.’

I managed to take the curtain off the hooks attached to the heavy rings on the metal rail and give it an almighty tug. ‘Timber!’ shouted Jimmy as the massive curtain flew past his head nearly landing on Laurie below. Laurie caught it and started trying to sort it out. I jumped down and between the three of us we managed to fold it over and over until it formed a tight bundle. Jimmy had some twine in his pocket – proper stuff, not the soggy brown paper nonsense from the Red Cross parcels, which he tied round the curtain to secure it.

‘That’ll do. Gi’us here.’ Jimmy grabbed the pole from Sid and pushed it through the centre of the bundle. ‘There you go.’ He and Laurie lifted it up.

‘Look, Dick Whittington!’ said Sid.

We all looked at each other again still puzzled.

‘That’ll keep us cosy at night,’ said Jimmy.

Ah, yes, of course.

Nobody had noticed all this kerfuffle of ours in the vestibule – or cared, thank goodness. We got away with it.

It was warm inside the church, probably because of the huge number of men packed in. I reckoned on a thousand there leaning, lying, squatting and sitting in every space and corner. They were in the aisles, the pews, up the pulpit, on the tombstones, against the altar. But there was room, there’s always room for one more. Wherever we went over the next months, however crowded it was – whether stables or pig sty, bombed-out railway station or church, you could always squeeze in a few more.

As Sid, Heb and I made our way carefully over the sleeping men on the stone floor, Laurie and Jimmy carried the pole between them like Indian bearers for a memsahib. Suddenly the organ burst into life and this terrific sound of music filled the church. A verse of Onward Christian Soldiers followed by the chorus of Roll out the Barrel. It was Jack, the one who played the piano accordion in our camp. So his hours of practice weren’t wasted. He had found a way into the organ loft and couldn’t resist having a go. People started cheering and clapping at the music.

After a final flourish of I Do Like to be Beside the Seaside and more applause (and a few cries of ‘Shut the f---- up!’) Jack came back down and managed to work his way through the mass of bodies to join us where we had settled down. He didn’t want to be separated from us. No good going off with another group in the morning. Never knew where you might end up. Even though we didn’t have a clue how, when or where it would end, it was better sticking with the mates you knew from all the years together than risk something worse with a bunch of strangers.

The doors of the church were locked. We five settled down in a side chapel near our own men. All looking forward to a good night’s sleep. Safe and dry. Sid and I propped ourselves up against a sculptured monument. I was squeezed up against another fellow who turned to me and put out his hand. ‘Harry,’ he said.

I returned the handshake, ‘Charlie. Nice to meet you.’

‘And you. Would you like a Bible?’

‘OK,’ I said. It would have been mean to say no to a padre.

He reached in his backpack and took out a small testament and gave it to me. ‘I’ve got a spare one.’ He smiled. ‘It’s always good to have God on your side,’ he said.

‘Yes,’ I said, ‘I need all the help I can get.’

Nothing, not even hundreds of coughing, grunting and snoring men, or the foot of a stone angel pressing into my back, could stop me from falling asleep straightaway. Jimmy and Laurie were curled up together and had the luxury of the velvet bundle as a pillow that night but from then on, two of us took it in turns to carry it and we used it as a ground cover and a blanket wherever we went.

Imagine the comfort and warmth of plush velvet round you as you slept in the open air, under a hedge or in a cattle byre. We managed to carry it for the next six weeks until we found it too exhausting and had to leave it behind. A real shame but I’m sure somebody else benefited from it when they too looked for shelter and found our velvet curtain neatly folded up on the ground.

13 Body and Soul

When I look at the notes I jotted down all those years ago on The March and trace the route now on a map, it looks absolutely crazy. How did I do it? How did I keep going all that way?

We made our way along the Baltic coast from our camp near Marienburg, on to Neustettin, crossing the river Oder at Stettin where the bridge was blown up soon after. On to Nuebrandenburg, in the direction of Lubeck where we had heard there were a million Red Cross parcels. We got as far as Schwerin and turned south towards Wittenberge. We walked across the frozen river Elbe, at some point, on to Stendal, further south to Magdeburg and Halle (just north of Leipzig). We zig -zagged across to Luckenwalde, Belzig, north west to Brandenburg, eastwards to Potsdam and finally in the direction of Berlin. Goodness me, what a journey! I must have covered about 1600km.