They Spread Their Wings (37 page)

Another time we broke off a small piece of metal from the fold-up bed and used it to prise open the window. At last we could see outside. It was August, beautiful, but a guard, peering through the eye hole in the door caught us in the act and ten minutes later the cell door flew open and three or four German soldiers stormed in shouting their heads off. It was impossible to hide anything in that bare cell and they soon found the piece of metal and took it away.

At about eight o’clock one evening, somewhere around the fifth week of being in prison, the door opened and a food parcel was brought in; sent it seems by some French people. We shared it out and had a few fig rolls each – lovely, as we were desperately hungry.

Things turned a bit ugly when, at nine o’clock one evening in the sixth week, a German
unteroffizier
[corporal] came into the cell and with a stern face announced that as we had all been caught in civilian clothes we were classed as spies and were to be shot. One of us replied: ‘Oh well, we expected it,’ at which the German laughed loudly, saying: ‘but you don’t understand me, it is just a joke’ – followed then by the best words I ever heard – he said: ‘tomorrow you are going to a prison camp in Germany.’

Next morning, 21 August, some Luftwaffe guards came and took all of us, except Walter Mullaney, by rail to Oberursel, near Frankfurt, which was where
Dulag Luft
[
Durchgangslager Luftwaffe
– lit. transit camp of the Luftwaffe], the German Air Force main interrogation centre, was located. Walter, poor chap, was not released from Fresnes until early December 1943 and was in pretty bad shape by then. We were nearly lynched while we waited on Frankfurt railway station and a howling mob had to be pushed back by our guards wielding their rifles. We reached
Dulag Luft
on 23 July and a few days later, on 29 July, we left Oberursel bound for Stalag IVB, between Berlin and Dresden and which, as POW No 222506, would be my home until April 1945.

It was almost three months since Arthur had crashed into Holland when he and about 100 airmen left Dulag Luft on board cattle rail trucks en route to Stalag IVB, Mühlburg in Saxony, 30 miles north-west of Dresden.

It was a miserable morning in early September 1943 when I first saddened my eyes and heart with the depressing sight of Stalag IVB. Its barbed wire fencing greeted us coldly as we marched up the road from Neaburdorf, near Mühlburg to the camp near the River Elbe.

One of the largest POW camps in Germany, Stalag IVB was located in the Saxony plain, an agricultural and woodland area about halfway between Dresden and Leipzig. Wheat fields could be seen surrounding the camp while not far to the west was a large area of fir trees. Three miles to the west flowed the River Elbe. A pleasant enough area for a home!

Arthur described how the tall sentry boxes stood dripping and shadow-less in the morning mist and a group of German soldiers regarded the latest batch of prisoners with a mixture of scorn and dislike, for this was the time of the
Terrorflieger
(Terror Flyers) propaganda. The new arrivals soon found that guards here did not call them ‘sergeant’ or bid them ‘good morning’ as they had done at Dulag Luft. No, here the camp’s 75 acres were guarded by men with rifles who would, as later events proved, use them if necessary.

It was not so pleasant inside the wire. Essentially a camp for soldiers, it was divided into numerous compounds that originally separated the various nationalities. One of the compounds housed RAF prisoners, of whom there were about 2,500 in total. The compounds were divided by a double row of barbed wire and the main road. After Italy capitulated, many more prisoners arrived; so many that the compounds were allowed to mix since the majority were now British airmen and soldiers. The barracks were large wooden huts housing, in most cases, about 400 to 500 men each, and Arthur was housed in hut 36B. Invariably the huts were dirty because the Germans did not supply any brushes or cleaning material. The prisoners made their own brushes from bunches of twigs tied together.

Each barrack had a room for washing but water was never turned on until late evening. A single tap provided water for everyday use. Arthur described the sanitary conditions in the wash rooms and in the outside latrines as ‘medieval’. The latrines were designed to seat forty persons in four rows of ten about 2ft apart, with no privacy whatsoever. The single bath house – which was for the whole camp – was, however, a fairly modern building with hot and cold showers and an effective de-lousing unit – but these conveniences could only be used about once every three weeks.

Arthur also noted:

Discipline is not as strict as I expected it to be. Our day starts at 06.30 with a roll-call, from then until 20.00 when the second and last roll-call is made, the day is ours. Occasionally we have inspections but they are too rare to be classed as discipline. Most of the Camp work is done by other nationalities and the British are, outwardly at least, the most favoured and I came to realise there were far worse places to be.

Time was always the other enemy but prisoners had much scope to create ways of occupying themselves. There was no lack of space for sport in the Stalag. This suited Arthur and he recalled there was some form of sport, competitive or otherwise, played pretty well every day, with football, rugby and volleyball being the most popular. The British and French constructed theatres and during the winter several concert parties toured the huts and were considered good entertainment. British POWs could occupy themselves with a wide choice of lectures on all manner of educational subjects, too – ranging from big game hunting to the cost of dry cleaning and everything in between. Lectures would keep a hut quiet for an hour or so and as an alternative, there was imitation horse racing and indoor and outdoor concerts by the several good bands that were formed.

Arthur’s favourite card game was bridge and he and his playing partner, another Stirling rear gunner named Frank Elliot (twenty-eight ops with No 214 Squadron), won lots of cigarettes that way. His hut also ran a bridge league. Occasionally there were parcels from home and even some from No 15 Squadron which had formed a POW Fund and sent such things as a book and an LP record (Arthur could not recall what the title of the record was), but cigarettes remained popular gifts that could also be turned into a form of currency.

Sometimes a new contingent of prisoners would shuffle through the main gate and a crowd would always gather, eagerly searching for faces from the past. Arthur remembered one of those days:

In late 1944 a party of new arrivals turned up and I was among those peering at their faces. I spotted Taff Davies, a bomb aimer from ‘Pop’ Regus’s crew in 15 Squadron. He looked real downcast. I shouted to him: ‘cheer up, Taff’ and as he looked over at me his face lit up. I told him Maxie and I had been here for fifteen months. When he settled in we met and mulled over the old days and he brought us up to date on what had happened in England since May’ 43.

Things were enlivened a little by attempts to escape. In Stalag IVB the recreation hut was located in the RAF compound and it fulfilled many uses: the barber shop, sports store and table tennis were all housed in the building. At one point the Germans closed it down when a tunnel was discovered running from the hut to about 6ft outside the wire. It only needed the escapers to break the surface and the way would be clear, but it was discovered before that could happen. The guards filled the tunnel with human refuse then reopened the hut. Not a particularly hygienic way to discourage tunnel diggers – but very effective. Arthur recalled another attempt:

One very cold night in the winter of 1944 my ‘mucker’ Les Ellingham informed me he was going through the wire with several others. I said I hoped he would make it. They went out at about seven o’clock at night. About nine o’clock he staggered back into the barracks saying it was so bloody cold that they would not survive out there. A brave attempt.

In December 1944 Arthur received a letter notifying him that he had been promoted to flight sergeant, backdated for several months. By March 1945 the biggest issue was that everyone in the camp was so very, very hungry. One of its effects was to make a person liable to black out if they rose off their bed too quickly and other movements had to be made slowly otherwise you might fall down.

Nevertheless, towards the end of March 1945 there were many signs that the war was almost over. Arthur recalled hearing bombers go over the camp and seeing the night sky lit up in the direction of Dresden. There were lots of aircraft about during daylight, too. On 21 March three P–51 Mustangs machine-gunned the camp, putting several holes through huts 47A, 47B and 49B and knocking the searchlights off one of the German guard towers. From the beginning of April, American fighters came over the camp daily, machine-gunning anything that moved outside the wire and one day they hit a woodcutting party, killing and wounding eleven Russians, British and Germans. Six American P–47 Thunderbolts pounced on an ammunition train about three-quarters of a mile from the camp and left it blazing merrily until it disappeared in a string of thirty to forty violent explosions. USAAF P–38 Lightnings with long-range tanks strafed enemy positions and formations of B–17 Flying Fortresses attacked nearby rail centres. The end seemed to be close.

Each POW nationality in Stalag IVB – and there were believed to be soldiers and airmen of thirty-three different nationalities in the camp – had its own head person, known as the ‘man of confidence’:

On Sunday 22 April 1945, these men were called to a meeting with the German Commandant. He asked if any of them wished to take their contingent over to the west side of the River Elbe via the bridge at Mühlburg. Only the Poles went.

The Germans also left the camp that same night. Most of the camp just turned in and went to bed, although not many slept as heavy guns seemed to be firing all round us. At 07.00 next morning we paraded for roll-call and while the count was taking place, to our great delight we saw hundreds of Russian Cossacks on the south side of the camp. We were free at last!

An estimated 30,000 prisoners were in the camp by this time, of which 7,250 were British. Orders were given that prisoners must remain in camp and there was to be no looting, but within two hours hunger got the better of everyone and most of the camp inmates – Arthur and his mates among them – were wandering outside searching for food. Potatoes, onions, wheat, pigs, cows, bullocks – almost everything edible was brought into the camp. Arthur and two pals returned with a huge hulk of beef that the Russians had given them:

What a feed we had, but having been starved for over three months, the rich food gave many of the POWs diarrhoea and some became quite ill. Next day we went into the local village, which was almost deserted, and discovered such luxuries as porridge, tinned and powdered milk, bottled fruit, white flour, sugar, all of which were liberated in a frenzy of eating.

This spree continued until 30 April when the Russians moved all the British prisoners to the town of Riesa but our liberators were clearly in no hurry to repatriate the British and Americans to their homelands. We crossed the Elbe and were herded into large brick houses that had been occupied by the German army. Life seemed much brighter now particularly when other luxuries such as wireless sets, sheets, pillows and so on, began arriving having been commandeered from deserted German homes.

We listened to the VE-day broadcasts on the radio. How much longer must we wait to go home? A few more days passed and we became restless, so five of us went for a look around for food. We found some pigs and since I had worked on a farm it fell to me to lead the process of turning the pig into food! One of them was man-handled to a deserted house; a fire lit under the washing copper, water brought to the boil and we did what was necessary to make the beast edible. That pig was killed, cooked and eaten within five hours!

Nothing seemed to be happening in Riesa so three of us decided to try to reach the American lines. Percy Brett, a Stirling pilot from RAF Witchford; Eric Weare, a navigator on Lancasters with No 156 Squadron at Warboys; and myself gave the Russians the slip one morning about 07.30. We waited until the guards couldn’t see us and made a bolt for it, heading west towards Leipzig, which was about 60 km from Riesa. Nightfall found us tired out and wondering where to sleep. An elderly German approached us and took us to his home where we spent the night in real beds. Next morning he asked us to write our names down on a piece of paper and each to sign it. This enabled him to obtain for us bread, butter and meat from the village
burgermeister
[mayor]. General Eisenhower had made a radio broadcast in which he promised that any German citizen who helped POWs would be rewarded for their efforts, so the ‘chitty’ was very valuable to this particular German, too.

Setting out after a hearty meal, by midday we reached the town of Wurzen. More Russian soldiers were guarding the bridge over the smallest of two rivers that ran near the town but we told them we were Americans, so they let us pass. Crossing the main river, the Mulde, was far more difficult as the bridge was completely down. The railway bridge, however, was only half collapsed and on nearing it we spotted several American soldiers. They helped us climb on to the bridge then we inched our way over very slowly until we reached the other side – which was American-held territory.

Now in high spirits, walking the next seven kilometres didn’t seem quite so bad. Then an American lorry pulled up. It was full of soldiers and equipment and the driver said he was sorry but there was no room for us, but not to miss out on this chance to relieve our weary legs, my two pals squeezed in and I rode outside on the front wing, holding on to the small side light for all I was worth. The driver by-passed Leipzig and took us on a marvellous autobahn to Halle. At a prisoner reception centre in Halle the Americans took down our particulars, gave us cigarettes, chocolate and a good meal and we were given a bed for the night. Next morning we found we were not alone and several hundred ex-POWs were taken to Halle airfield to await transport – HOME. Two hours passed then the wondrous sight of thirty-three C–47s [Skytrain] landed, we embarked and were flown to Belgium.