Hitler's British Slaves (3 page)

In the early days of the march there was little food apart from that thrown to them by French and Belgium civilians. One man later wrote home of his experiences: ‘We got nothing for the first 12 days and had to do forced marching right through France and Belgium… At the first peep of dawn we were herded together and made to walk until ten past 11 that night, where we lay in a lane. Then the same the next day for 12 days, living on the charities of the villages we passed.’
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Yet for all the efforts of the civilians, it was the guards who had control over what the prisoners were allowed. When water buckets were left at the roadside by civilians for the prisoners
to drink from, the guards simply kicked them over, leaving the prisoners ever more thirsty.

In their desperation the British prisoners fought for food with their allies and with each other. Fights even broke out between members of rival regiments, each accusing the other of having let them down in battle. It was little wonder that morale dropped as their humiliation on the battlefield was reinforced by the degradation endured on the marches. Ken Willats, marching from Abbeville towards Trier in the Rhineland, remembered the situation: ‘My feelings were dulled by the extreme physical conditions. To be honest with you, the morale was defeatist. There wasn’t too much anger against the Germans – only when they kicked the buckets of water over. I think we all thought we’d been unlucky. Let’s face it, we weren’t trained soldiers, we were just there because we had to be. So we just thought it was hard luck.’
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As the columns continued their journeys prisoners swarmed like locusts through the local kitchens and gardens stealing all the food they could find to fuel them on the march. For Gordon Barber it was a time to learn to survive: ‘They had guards but there were so many of us they couldn’t keep an eye on us all. So the good thing was you could nip off now and again. Not far, but if you saw a farmhouse you could go to get food. I remember we were going through a village and I saw a butchers shop. I had a few francs so I went in this little shop and saw this piece of meat hanging on a hook. I said “How much?” He said “No, no, no”. So I slapped the coin on the counter, ripped the meat off the hook, right handed him – smacked him out of the way a bit sharpish – but he didn’t go down. And I ran back into the crowd.’
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It was not only the civilians who came into conflict with the marching prisoners. There was precious little camaraderie
amongst the defeated Allies. British prisoners watched in amazement at the behaviour of the Dutch soldiers among them. They had fought hard alongside their allies but once they discovered their country had capitulated, they cheered, mounted their bikes and rode off home. As one of the onlookers recalled: ‘We thought that was a little odd. They weren’t exactly in a “Churchillian” frame of mind.’
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The ragged British prisoners were also irritated by the sight of French soldiers who marched into captivity with their kit intact, or the Belgians whose sudden capitulation had left the British flank exposed. The Germans exploited these divisions, humiliating the British in front of the French where circumstances permitted. One small group of British territorials found themselves in a hospital with large numbers of French prisoners; whilst the Frenchmen looked on the British were forced to clear up piles of human excrement, picking it up with their bare hands and throwing it from the windows. Later on, during the journey into Germany, some angry British POWs threw their French counterparts from the moving trains in order to clear space for themselves. Gordon Barber was among those who came into contact with his erstwhile allies: ‘I saw the French getting issued dripping from these big vats. I had a French overcoat I’d pinched, so I could go and get my share. As I came away with mine the French spotted my British jacket and I had to run for it. This Froggie went to grab it, he kicked my arm, so I nutted him hard. So I ran like bleedin’ anything and got back to my mates. But personally I think if it hadn’t have been for the French civilians we would have starved.’
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By night the columns stopped by the roadside. They slept in the open air or occasionally in barns, fighting each other for the best place to sleep. Whilst one column of prisoners was resting for the night in flooded fields the strong men fought for places on the dry ground whilst the weaker men had to
spend the night standing in inches of water. Many of those left standing in the water found themselves plagued by months of rheumatic pain courtesy of their overnight soakings. It was little wonder they fought to stand in the dry areas, as one of the ‘stronger men’ later wrote: ‘The evolutionary clock had been put back to the era of the survival of the fittest. Man’s primitive instincts had taken over. How thin is the veneer of civilization!’
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Fortunately for the soldiers most were young and healthy. They were strong enough to keep going despite the shortages of food, their aching feet and their skin rubbed red raw by the heavy wool of their battledress, as one explained: ‘You’d be surprised how resilient you are at that age. When you know that if you don’t keep going you’re going to die – they’re going to fucking shoot you.’
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One of those shot and killed during the march was a Sapper Singleton who met his end after striking a guard who had been hitting him with a rifle butt for not marching quick enough. Those lucky enough not to face such extreme violence still suffered much. One prisoner later wrote home about how the march affected his health. When he finally sat down on a hard seat he had realised he had used up all his reserves of fat and his buttocks had disappeared: ‘So I’m now just gristle and bone, but as hard as iron and in good health, except for diarrhoea … I’m like Gandhi, with no hope of getting back any fat on my bones on that diet. I’m always hungry.’
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Despite their desperate condition they trudged on and on until, after marches totalling hundreds of miles, they reached holding areas within Germany. Here they were gathered until transport could be arranged to their eventual destinations. From these camps the prisoners were marched to railway stations where they were crammed into railway trucks to continue their journey. At the German border one group
of prisoners cheered when they saw the transport awaiting them – surely anything would be better than marching. Many would soon change their minds. All across Germany prisoners were crammed into closed wagons that bore the legend ‘8 horses or 40 men’. In spite of the notices 60 or more men were crammed inside, seldom able to sit down, never able to lie down. Some groups were even forced into wagons that had recently been used to transport horses, so recently that the floors were still covered in horse manure. In one case at least 80 men were forced into a single wagon. Desperate for a smoke men began pulling pages from their pay books and searching for shreds of tobacco in the depths of their pockets to roll cigarettes that helped them momentarily forget all they were enduring.

For what seemed like an eternity they travelled further into the heart of the newly expanded Reich. None knew where they were heading nor that their final destination would shape how they would live for the next five years. All thought of what lay ahead was submerged beneath the desperate desire to leave their transport and finally be allowed some peace. In wagons without toilet facilities, and without even a bucket provided for them to use, the POWs were forced to improvise. Desperate men used their boots or tin helmets as toilets and poured the contents out of the slits running along the sides of the wagons. Where excrement stained the floors they had nothing to wash it away with except their own urine and when they needed to wipe their backsides they simply tore pages from books or ripped the pockets from their uniforms. Gordon Barber recalled his journey:

They loaded us into cattle trucks – like the ones they put the Jews in – and slammed the door. All you had were small slits either side of the door. Heaven forbid if you sat beside them, ’cause anybody who wanted the toilet would do it in their tin helmet and throw it out. Then you got the blowback. We were in them for about two or three days and that was the only time I remember falling asleep – sitting back to back with another bloke – and hearing the constant drum of the train wheels turning. I thought it was going to drive me mad. But deep down you knew it had to stop somewhere. They used to let us out, take the straw out ’cause that was a mess, so all you wanted to do was stretch your legs.
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Others were packed into barges where, deep in the dark recesses of the holds they travelled for days, sweating in the heat, the floor running with watery faeces courtesy of the men with diarrhoea. Few cared where they were heading, they simply wanted to be get out into the fresh air, away from the filth and the stench of shit, dirty uniforms and unwashed bodies.

For all the trials of their journey the morale of the prisoners remained relatively high. Many thought the war would be over quickly, expecting the British to reach a deal with the Germans – a deal that would see them soon heading home. Some of the younger men were buoyed by the words of old ‘regulars’ some of whom had already experienced captivity back in the Great War. Those maudlin souls, who despaired for the future, often attempted to ‘pal up’ with stronger men, men who they thought they would be able to rely on in the uncertain times ahead.

Eventually the trains and barges stopped and the final march into captivity began. Many found themselves in East Prussia or areas of Poland and Czechoslovakia annexed by the Reich. Their humiliation began in front of a cowed population:

They marched us into a town. It was Danzig. There were young Jerry soldiers in the streets flicking their fag ends to our blokes and some of our blokes were grabbing them. The Jerries were laughing. Some of them flicked the fags then trod on them when our blokes went to grab them. I said to my mate ‘The bastards, I won’t pick ’em up. I’ll never let them see they’ve got the upper hand.’ And we were both smokers.
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This final humiliation was the perfect preparation for what they were soon to suffer in the German Stalags. The shock defeat of the BEF and its allies had left the Germans unprepared for such a vast influx of prisoners and there were seldom enough facilities to house them all. Some were sent to temporary accommodation in tented camps whilst others found themselves without beds and were forced to sleep on the cold concrete or wooden floors of their huts. Others were sent to former Polish army forts where they spent their days enclosed within thick concrete walls. Toilet facilities in some camps consisted of open tubs kept in the middle of huts which had to be carried outside to be emptied. Although for many of the prisoners the conditions would improve, for others their life was hardly to change until the long-awaited return to Europe of the Allied armies.

But before this could happen many more men would join the remnants of the BEF behind the barbed wire fences of the Stalags. The defeats suffered during the dark years of the war, up until the defeat of the Afrika Korps at El Alamein in October 1942, had seen waves of prisoners make their way into captivity. Norway, Greece, Crete and North Africa all saw thousands of men captured. Britons, Canadians, Indians, South Africans, New Zealanders, Australians, Cypriots and Palestinians were all destined for captivity.

Each defeat brought more men into the clutches of the enemy. Many were embittered by the defeats, blaming their officers for battlefield failures, feeling their defeats were the cause of somebody’s ineptitude rather than any military failing on their behalf. Some vented their anger by booing officers trying to address them in the POW enclosures. Many of those captured in North Africa or Greece experienced even worse conditions in their first days of captivity than those taken prisoner in France. Just as prisoners in France had been forced to spend the night in flooded fields, some in North Africa were made to stand for hours in swamps. They too paid the price with months of rheumatic pain following them through their incarceration. If that was not burden enough the extreme heat left them dry-mouthed and exhausted. Flies swarmed over what little food they had – the same flies that were feasting on the pools of excrement filling the festering open latrines within the concentration areas. Worse came as mosquitoes fed on their sun ravaged skin, leaving many to suffer the inevitable effects of malaria. Even when moved into indoor accommodation they seldom had beds, instead sleeping on bare floors or rush mats. One group of men were kept in a warehouse, the floor of which was already soiled with the excrement of the previous batch of prisoners who had passed through. Such were the extreme conditions endured by one group of South African prisoners that it reached the point where 14 men a day were being admitted to hospital.

In face of such conditions it was little wonder that tempers grew short as the men divided themselves along national grounds. Whereas in France the British had been hostile towards the French, in North Africa there were many fights against prisoners from South Africa. In the aftermath of such fights, some of the offenders were publicly flogged by their Italian captors. In particular the British blamed the South
Africans for the fall of Tobruk – it was an argument that would follow the prisoners through the POW camps of Italy and on into the Stalags and work camps of Germany.

Even when they had been transferred from North Africa to Italy, conditions didn’t improve much with prisoners crowded into tented transit camps for weeks on end, still suffering the extremes of weather. Not all even reached Italy in safety. One Italian transport ship was torpedoed on its journey from Tripoli. Of the 500 British and Indian prisoners on board just 57 were saved. When another ship was torpedoed the crew abandoned ship leaving the prisoners to their fate. The ship stayed afloat for long enough to allow most of the prisoners to escape from the hold, but with no lifeboats available there was nowhere for them to go. After two uncertain hours the stricken ship finally slid beneath the waters, taking with it 160 of the 300 POWs on board.