Hitler's British Slaves (31 page)

Sims and his fellow prisoners were lucky, they escaped the attentions of both the fighters and the bombers. Others were not so fortunate. One hundred and seventeen POWs died when Allied aircraft attacked a column of prisoners evacuated from Stalag VIIIc. Among the dead were 13 Britons.

Worst of all, some prisoners were detailed to work on clearing unexploded bombs. New Zealand prisoners held in Greece were sent on bomb disposal details and in the early war years Americans living in Berlin reported seeing British prisoners carrying bombs with delayed action fuses, taking them to explode away from built up areas. As the bombing grew increasingly heavy this type of labour increased. In the aftermath of a raid in January 1945, which had destroyed the accommodation for 300 POWs at Brux, killing nine men and severely wounding 12 more, a group of 50 POWs were sent to clear a bomb-damaged area. When they arrived they were turned back by civilians who told them there were unexploded bombs in the area, insisting it was unsafe to work. Despite the pleas the guards forced them into the area and when they refused to work they were threatened with machine guns. The message was clear, work or die. They worked. As the camp commandant later admitted, the guards were serious and would have carried out their threats.

It was not just the dangers from the guards, civilian workers and bombing that was putting a strain upon the prisoners. As early as October 1942 the Red Cross noted how prisoners’ rations needed an additional 2-and-a-half kilograms of fats and milk a month to make up the required calories – and that was just for men within Stalags, those on work detachments would require even more. As the German economic resources were stretched to the limit so too were their supplies of food. With the infrastructure under constant air attack and the lands of the Reich continually shrinking, the supply of food to POWs was not a primary concern for the authorities – something the prisoners did not take long to notice. Increasingly, many prisoners found the Red Cross parcels, so vital for providing sustenance, were ‘irregular and spasmodic’,
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and their arrival was never a foregone conclusion. Then as the Allies
advanced through France the parcels, which had previously arrived via neutral Portugal, began to dry up. At a mine in Bourecit it was reported that no parcels were available for a period of three months over the winter of 1944-45 – instead the prisoners had to work 12 hours a day surviving solely on weak stews provided by their employers. Even as early as October 1944 the lack of Red Cross parcels at Stalag XIIa left many prisoners too weak to stand. Undernourished and starved of hope, all activity became a strain and the prisoners started fainting from hunger, with an ever-increasing number being carried off to hospital by their starving mates.

By September 1944 the Swiss government informed the British of the visit by its representatives to work detachments from Stalag IVa:

The effects of long working hours over the past three or four years are becoming evident among British prisoners in this area. In many cases low grade fever persisting for several days with listlessness, lack of appetite and headache is seen. Boils are very prevalent. During the recent hot weather many men suffered from heat exhaustion. Gastric complaints, abdominal pains, diarrhoea and vomiting are common. It must be borne in mind that the men of this area were in A1 category when they were captured.
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Even colds and chills were a major feature of life in many camps since they had to keep windows open in all weathers to counteract the overcrowding within the barrack rooms. Ironically when some German doctors saw the boils suffered by working prisoners who reported sick they had a simple explanation. They blamed rich food contained within Red Cross parcels and as a result the sick men were denied the contents.

By Christmas 1944 prisoners were recording growing arguments among them over how food should be distributed. Some men simply swapped the contents of parcels for cigarettes without giving a choice to those they shared with. In these conditions the prisoners had to work hard to prevent relationships worsening between them. It was little wonder friendships were strained during this period. In March 1945 Eric Laker, working beneath the surface of a Silesian mine recorded how low the daily rations for the miners had fallen. Each day they received just 285 grammes of bread, with no margarine to spread upon it. There were few potatoes in their soup, which seemed to consist of just flour and water. Occasionally a sausage would appear in the soup. On these pitiful rations the prisoners continued to toil below ground for over 10 hours each day. At another mine it was recorded that the daily bread ration had fallen as low as one loaf between 17 men.

The treatment experienced by the growing numbers of sick varied. At work camps where a British doctor was available a simple system evolved to make life as comfortable as possible for the prisoners. The ever efficient Germans informed the doctors that only a certain percentage of men would ever be allowed to report sick. Ever ingenious the British ensured the quota was always full, regardless of whether men were really sick. Men with minor complaints were thus admitted to hospitals or confined to their beds with official backing. The only concern for the doctors was to make sure there were always beds available for the truly sick. Such systems, usually based around a rota, allowed vital periods of rest. However, as time went on prisoners were increasingly denied the luxury of avoiding work in such a manner – even if they were genuinely sick.

As the arduous work and decreasing rations took their
toll, plenty of genuinely sick men were forced to keep working. Even those unfortunate men who had never fully recovered from their wounds were selected to go on work parties. One prisoner was forced down a coal mine despite having a bullet lodged in his back and another man with both shrapnel wounds and arthritis was unable to avoid labouring underground. In a work camp on the Austrian railways an Unteroffzer Lins held a revolver to the head of sick prisoners to force them out of bed and back to work. At Bad Lausick – ironically a spa town where German civilians went to recuperate – a prisoner with a badly swollen foot was punched by a guard for refusing to work. The general rule was that if a man didn’t have a high temperature then he was fit enough to continue work. Such decisions were arbitrary since few had thermometers to record their temperatures and it was left to the whim of guards or foremen as to whether a man could report sick. When one prisoner with a heart condition was seen by a doctor he simply had his throat examined and was sent back to work. The commandant then put him under arrest for malingering. When the prisoner requested to see a heart specialist he was threatened with a month’s imprisonment if he was found to be faking his condition. Another man who even the Germans admitted had heart disease, was put on ‘light duties’ only to find that meant carrying heavy machine parts around a factory.

Even with broken fingers POWs were expected to report for work, strapping their injured digits together with whatever was available. Some found their fingers becoming permanently disfigured after receiving no treatment. When one POW’s hand was trapped beneath a railway sleeper he was refused treatment for hours. When finally excused from work the unfortunate soldier was taken to hospital. Even then he was unable to seek treatment since the doctors refused to see
him. As a result of their obstruction the soldier lost two of his fingertips. South African prisoners at the E579 work camp reported that civilian workers interfered with the work of the medical staff. They claimed they had the right to decide who could go sick and who was fit for work. Some of those men who still attempted to report sick were punished with beatings by pistol-wielding civilians whilst others were forced to work shifts of up to 17 hours. In one case a prisoner died two days after the owner of a quarry, Herr Dumling, refused him permission to report sick.

The seriously wounded were expected to work, despite having clear evidence of their conditions. Even showing X-rays revealing lung infections and spinal damage was not enough to get one man excused, instead he was given 14 days’ detention on a diet of bread and water for refusing to work. When Private Thomas Barclay fractured his spine in a fall in a coal mine he received full treatment but despite the severity of the damage he failed to pass a medical board for repatriation and remained at work until he was liberated in 1945. Even those whose wounds meant they were passed for repatriation were not always excused from labour. One group of 67 men who had been approved for repatriation to Britain were sent on a work detachment to a tobacco factory in Nordhausen, with the Germans claiming they had volunteered.

By forcing the sick to work it was little wonder the numbers of dead began to grow. Even those allowed to report sick were not always afforded suitable attention. When Sergeant Leslie Hudson reported sick with a stomach infection that made him unable to eat or relieve himself he was told the doctor would not come to him. Instead the prisoner, hardly able to walk, was forced to leave his bed and visit the doctor. When he was finally seen it was too late and he died in hospital. At many work camps medical orderlies had to carry
bed-ridden prisoners for miles to visit doctors, whilst more mobile men were forced to make the journey unaided. One prisoner with a temperature of 40°C was made to walk 20 kilometres to visit a doctor and a man with pneumonia reported a march of 11 kilometres. A Private Tallis died after contracting pneumonia and pleurisy. In his weakened condition he was taken to hospital by horse and cart, a journey that lasted 5 hours. The freezing weather of January 1945 was too much for him and by the end of the journey he was dead. At an iron ore mine one prisoner showed his toes to the German doctor. He looked down at the prisoner’s feet, the nails were loose and pus was seeping from beneath them, then without a word of warning he ripped the nail from the toe. When the prisoner passed out he continued his work and ripped off the remaining nail. Others reported being held down in dentists’ chairs by their guards and given no anaesthetic except a spray of iced water, whilst dentists tore out their teeth. For New Zealander Stuart Cunningham the price of poor treatment was even higher. He died whilst being treated for peritonitis, the failure of the operation being blamed on the carelessness of the German doctor.

Such seemingly brutal treatment was not uncommon. The prisoners often faced doctors and dentists who had little concern for their welfare. That was not to say there were not plenty of German doctors who treated them with the utmost regard, it was just the memories of painful encounters made a lasting impression on those who suffered. When one South African showed a large, multi-headed boil to a doctor, he was forced to help with the lancing. The doctor produced a kidney dish for the unfortunate man to hold. He then proceeded to prod around with a blunt instrument until the boil finally burst, leaving the man to collect the stream of his own pus.

Rather than allow prisoners to report sick some commandants
instructed prisoners to keep working and the local doctor would pay them a visit. However doctors were not always reliable with some taking up to two weeks to bother to attend sick prisoners. The delays caused by obstinate guards and doctors meant that many eventually found their health deteriorating in a manner that could have been prevented. Hospital staff noticed how patients arrived for treatment with wounds that would have easily cleared up with rapid treatment but which had instead become infected. The lack of attention soon caused a growing list of names of POWs who fell victim to disease. Among them was Robert Metcalf who died at Stalag VIIIb after contracting diphtheria and receiving no medical attention. Alongside Metcalf were men such as Private Young, an Australian who died of pneumonia whilst working as a coal miner and Privates Botfield and Mackintosh, both victims of medical neglect.

Despite the Germans forcing the POWs to keep working, the camp
lazaretts
– or hospitals – were constantly full. At the POW infirmary in Bad Lausick bedsheets were left unchanged for six weeks, whilst conditions at the ‘Kopernikus Lager’ of Stalag XXa were such that only surgical cases were allowed sheets on their beds. Most patients slept in bunks, had to use a pump to collect their water, and were forced to walk a hundred yards to reach the latrine, where they had to squat over an open pit. Another POW hospital was without a supply of fresh drinking water and the patients were instead forced to purchase bottles of mineral water to ensure they didn’t contract illnesses from water-borne viruses. At one hospital even the operating theatre had no running water, and bandages remained in short supply despite the efforts of the Red Cross to provide them. In extreme cases conditions were so poor that rats were seen scurrying over the beds of the patients at night.

Paratrooper Bryan Willoughby was taken from the comfort of a hospital in the Netherlands to the
lazarett
at Stalag VIIa at Moosburg. He arrived in the winter of 1944 – for Willoughby and his fellow POWs it was not a season of goodwill:

There were all sorts of nationalities in this hospital. We were in a hut next door to where they did the operations. There were a mixture of French, Yanks, Poles, Russians – you name it. The Ruskies didn’t get Red Cross parcels. They used to make things like bellows and sell those for about twenty cigarettes – that was wealth! American cigarettes were currency. It was very boring but it wasn’t uncomfortable. I used to make the point of going out of the hut every morning and trying to exercise because I wanted to get on my feet as quickly as possible. I didn’t want to stay in there, I wanted to get in on the rackets. I used to walk about a hundred yards up and back, and talk to the Russians – all dressed in rags and trying to pick up cigarette butts. Mostly they were in there with open TB. It was very boring, we used to play cut throat games of Monopoly just for a sweet from a Red Cross parcel, but the parcels were few and far between. If they did come you’d probably get one between 12 for two weeks. You couldn’t exist on German rations, they were very poor. You’d have a piece of bread and be very careful of how it was distributed. I remember one morning thirty Russians came in and they were doing amputations next door. I shouldn’t say this but the only time we had meat in the pot was the day after they did all these amputations. It made me think. I thought about it, I must admit, but we were always so hungry we just ate anything.
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