Hitler's British Slaves (12 page)

In these conditions leather boots lasted no more than three months. Standing hour upon hour up to their ankles in water the prisoners’ decrepit boots became waterlogged, their feet grew soft and puffy, the flesh weakened and fell prey to infections.

Hundreds of men also laboured at open iron ore mines, including the forbiddingly named Eisenerz – ‘Iron Mountain’. Such mines were usually vast awe-inspiring complexes, layer upon layer of terracing carved into mountainsides by dynamite and pickaxes, visible for miles around. Here the prisoners stood on the exposed hillsides hewing at the rockfaces that scarred the landscape. They swung their picks for hour upon hour, breaking off the mixtures of rock and ore, loading it into the trucks mounted upon rails that lined each of the terraces. In the rain and wind of autumn the POWs continued swinging their picks, as they had done all summer when many among them collapsed with heat exhaustion. Not only was the work dirty, dusty and exhausting, it was also dangerous. Men were crushed and killed by falling rocks, others lost fingers or had their toes smashed by stones tumbling down the hillsides.

Others laid new rails to carry the ore away from the rock-faces, unloaded machinery, or dug trenches and laid pipes. Once the iron ore had been hewn from the mountainside prisoners worked to sort it, taking it from the wagons and separating the ore from the stones. They stood all day dropping the
ore down a hole into a wagon ready for smelting. As one man described it, the work was: ‘agonizing in the extreme’.
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They stood all day at the benches, their backs grew stiff, their legs ached and their feet went numb.

Those working at quarries found much the same conditions. Men were sent out with sledgehammers that they wielded all day to break rocks. Other prisoners spent hour after hour, shovel in hand, filling wagons with the broken stones. They were ordered to load seven wagons a day, each carrying one-and-a-half tons of stones. Others filled the tubs of suspension railways, the procession of baskets hanging from the overhead cables reminding them of the never-ending nature of their labour. Ken Willats was among a working party sent from Stalag XXa:

I went on the night shift at a gravel quarry. It was cold. It was hard work for me, I wasn’t a labourer. I was a chef, before the war I’d been working in the Savoy. So it was a shock to suddenly find myself in a gravel pit. Physically it was a strain, but it’s amazing what you can work yourself up to. I remember saying to someone ‘I really can’t do this’. But as you have no alternative you have to knuckle down and do the best you can. It toughens you up – mentally and physically. Eventually you gradually get fit. That was despite rations being meagre and Red Cross parcels not having started. Conditions were dire. The pit was open 24 hours, with shifts on all the time. You stood in front of a wall of gravel with a skip behind you. And you shovelled gravel over your shoulder until the skip was full and it was pulled away. Then another one came up. So you worked for eight hours a day, without stopping. It was good for the muscles, but not good for the soul. You just stared at a gravel wall for most of the day. It was boring.
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Throughout these mines and quarries the work was intensive, hour after hour, day after day the routine was the same – work all day, sleep for a few hours then begin again. Come rain or shine most worked outdoors, soaked to the skin or tormented by the sun they had no choice but to keep on. Their bodies covered in openly festering septic sores, their hands blistered, their feet stuffed into clogs they struggled to maintain health and morale. Men collapsed from exhaustion no longer able to hold their sledgehammers, picks or shovels, but as they fell to the ground their mates had to keep working, knowing their guards would tolerate no slacking. Only when the snows of winter came were they offered a respite from the hacking and loading, instead they were sent out to shovel snow. Still their work continued for hour upon weary hour, the cold so great it froze their gloves to the handles of their shovels – if they were lucky enough to have gloves. At one iron ore mine the prisoners could hear the chiming of the local church clock. Every 15 minutes its sound rang out across the mine, making the prisoners aware of how slowly the time was passing – making them realize how as they toiled time was passing them by. But for some among them time stood still for ever – in their first winter at the mine five men would die from a combination of cold, hunger and exhaustion.

AK1231 at Roemhild was used as a Sonderlager, or punishment camp. The German authorities insisted it was not actually a punishment camp, rather it was a centre for ‘reeducation’ where prisoners who had been caught escaping could be sent to learn the error of their ways. They faced all the usual harsh conditions of working parties with a few extra deprivations heaped on top. They were placed in the camp without trial and allowed a warm shower just twice a month. They received no wages for the work and were made to remain in the quarry for 11 hours a day. Unlike conventional
criminals they faced one final hurdle – they had no fixed sentence and thus had no idea when their ordeal might be over. Instead they had to remain at the punishment camp until the commandant was convinced their will had been broken and they had been sufficiently ‘re-educated’.

Among the working prisoners were hundreds of men employed to load or unload trains. Some had volunteered for ‘railway work’ in the mistaken belief they might be detailed to drive locomotives or shunt wagons around goods yards – the dream of every schoolboy who’d ever owned a model railway. Yet few among them were fortunate to get the jobs of riding in engines or switching the points as wagons were shunted around. Instead they were mainly employed for heavy labouring. The POWs hung around the sidings awaiting goods trains, then unloaded the contents before refilling the wagons ready to continue their journey. The work could be light – even for men existing on minimal rations mail sacks were not too great a burden – but it could also be heavy and unpleasant. Some carried sacks of lime, covering their faces with handkerchiefs to prevent the dangerous dust getting into their lungs.

Another important concern for the prisoners was that the railways never closed. Trains ran day and night, seven days a week. As a result the prisoners’ work had to match the timetables and there was no definite day off on Sundays. When one prisoner insisted he should not work Sundays the reaction was immediate – the guard beat him with his rifle butt and stabbed the protester in the arm with his bayonet. The message was clear, there was no point resisting. Other concerns had implications for morale. One of the worst features of the goods yards was that they had to endure the sight of troop trains passing through on their way to the front. Often the German soldiers shouted insults at the toiling prisoners,
comments that were replied to with profanities. One group of POWs, clearing bomb damage at a station, simply waited until the train had began to move off and then started pelting the carriages with bricks.

However ‘railway work’ could also include heavy maintenance work. Gangs of labourers carried lengths of track by hand, each man clutching an oversized pair of tongs as they struggled to move the rails into place. Once they had been carried to the correct spot the prisoners had to lay them in place and fix them to the sleepers. They then hammered ballast stones beneath the rails. Others used hand drills to bore holes into the rails to fix them together, each hole taking at least an hour to drill. Even in heavy frost, when the cold made the naked flesh of their hands stick to the metal, they kept working. Many of the track labourers found themselves working through every hour of daylight as the Germans desperately tried to keep the railways running in face of almost constant Allied air attacks. One group of prisoners even spent two days jacking up a derailed locomotive, forcing it back onto the tracks – all without the assistance of machinery. They were also sent to repair or construct sheds alongside civilian workers and prisoners from across the occupied countries of Europe. Men were given files and shown how to file down sheets of metal ready to be used to make the boilers for the locomotives. Others hammered rivets into place, or were detailed to work as welders, where they operated the equipment without gloves or safety goggles. Much of the railway work could be dangerous, with many fingers and toes being crushed by falling sleepers or tracks. Even those on loading duties found themselves in danger, working as they did in goods yards where giant steel engines rolled past them, often under the control of people with no concern for the well-being of prisoners. At a working camp near Klagenfurt,
Colin Brodie from Wandsworth was killed when he fell from a train the controller had moved without warning. As the train lurched forward Brodie tumbled from the wagon, falling to his death under the rolling wheels.

All across the Reich small detachments of men were sent out to maintain the railways. They worked in cities, towns and villages – even down to the smallest country stations. In the winter their job was to sweep snow from platforms or scrape ice from the points to stop them freezing. They often spent hours hanging around waiting for major snowfalls then trudged along miles of track clearing the rails. In the spring and summer they searched mile after mile looking for any damage caused during the winter, then replaced damaged rails or decayed sleepers and reinforced eroded embankments. In the summer and autumn they cut back trees from beside the tracks and cleared paths through the undergrowth alongside the railways.

Work on other major transport construction projects could be even more onerous. The men detailed to construct the autobahn between Berlin and Danzig, a project that remains incomplete even 60 years later, faced harsh working conditions. They worked all year round in all weather, with frostbitten POWs continuing to toil with their toes sticking through their boots. Despite the frozen ground they slaved under the direction of their guards, breaking the solid ground with their picks. Whilst they worked inland, other POWs were employed on the Baltic coast laying paths along the shore. With the wind whipping across a frozen sea the prisoners endured freezing temperatures as they walked along the beaches collecting pebbles to be laid on the paths.

Of course, there were a few industrial work details that were popular with the prisoners. Since they knew they had to
work they just hoped their labour would have some benefits. In particular the men sent to breweries and distilleries realized they would be able to sample the fruits of their labour. Although much of the work involved shovelling hops and barley, or piling up barrels, there was always the hope that a few bottles could be pinched or traded with civilian workers. For all the benefits of the work, the prisoners always got the worst jobs, as one remembered:

It was a three story building. On the top floor you had the hops and barley, we had to go up there and keep turning it over. When you did that all the husks and the dry bits would filter down through the floorboards and eventually landed up in the cellar. Every week the maintenance man and one of the prisoners would go down to check the machines and sweep the floor. The husks were a wonderful food for the rats. They had the finest colony in the world! They were huge. But in that cellar they also had a colony of wild cats. The prisoner was given a hammer to bang on the pipes as soon as the rats got too curious. Bang! Away they went. Then you would sweep up around the machines. Then when you saw their eyes shining and getting close you’d bang the pipe again to scare them off. When I tell people they have a laugh about it, but it was serious stuff.
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The onerous conditions led to much conflict between prisoners and their guards. For many of the POWs the notion that they should withdraw their labour in extreme conditions was obvious – many had experienced industrial strife through the lean years of the 1920s and 1930s and wondered if the same tactics could be used. For most their defiance of the authorities was nothing more than a refusal to carry out certain tasks, or simply staring blankly at their overseers
when ordered to do a job. Playing dumb was a simple tactic, pretending not to understand could buy the prisoners a few minutes’ rest, a chance to recuperate before restarting work. When faced by small groups of strikers the solution was simple. Guards unslung their rifles or drew their pistols and told the men what would happen if they refused to keep working – seldom did the POWs ignore such threats. With bigger groups of men the reaction tended to be different. Few guards wanted to open fire on a large group of men for fear of being lynched. Though few prisoners would have dared to react violently the guards could never be certain. Instead the usual German reaction to large groups of strikers was to threaten them with violence, promise to cut their rations and deny all privileges. Even the vital Red Cross parcels could be stopped. If that didn’t work the guards had a simple solution – the ringleaders were separated and returned to the Stalags. Without the leaders it was easy to force the rest of the men back to work.

Though an extreme and dangerous course of action, the men at the Eisenerz mine dared to organize a strike. They had seen wagons leaving the yard with the name ‘Krupps’ emblazoned on the side. These were destined for the infamous German industrial plant in the Ruhr known for its production of heavy weapons. To the prisoners this was forbidden war work, something they were not obliged to continue with, and they simply downed tools. When the striking prisoners were hauled before the commandant they reiterated their position. However he presented them with his version of reality – all the iron ore would be used for making civilian goods such as forks and spoons. Inevitably one joker piped up: ‘Tell him to get his shit plaited, we believe they are making knives as well.’
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For all the attempts at making light of the situation the prisoners were trapped, knowing if they did not work
they would not be fed. Facing the stark reality of starvation they had no choice – they returned to work.