Twenty Days in the Reich (6 page)
We drank their brandy, and very nice it tasted, too, as a change from black coffee. But we insisted from the outset, that we could not possibly deal with questions of a military nature. To be fair, they were not particularly persistent. It was quite possible that if the affair was part of the ‘set-up’ (and I can see little reason to doubt that it must have been) then those taking part were only acting on the orders of the
Commandant
. It seemed that as long as they could say they had done their job, they were in no way concerned as to its success or otherwise.
We must have stayed in the room for over two hours, because it was nearly 10 p.m. when we reached it, and nearly 1 a.m. when we were led back to our cell. Our hosts drew us into conversation on all manner of innocent subjects, such as sport, music, literature and the like. They all seemed thoroughly good fellows, fed up with the war and anxious to be our firm friends when it was all over. Meanwhile, they couldn’t resist the odd little question, which, as in the case of our earlier visitor to the cell, so served to give the game away.
‘You came down in the daylight?’ said one, who admitted he was an intelligence officer.
As any number of Germans had seen us come down in the daytime, there seemed little point in denying this.
‘Well then,’ he went on, ‘if you came down in the daylight and there were at least four of you in the crew, for you have no pilot here with you, you must have been flying in a Lancaster?’
Politely I pointed out that the question was one that could not be answered. With a shrug, this officer, whom we liked the least of all, gave up the argument.
They all knew that we were going to Frankfurt, and told us that it was a very fine camp, and that we should meet many of our comrades there. We remembered vaguely having been told this before!
At last the party broke up, we were led back to the ignominy of our cell, and crawled on to our beds to snatch the final hour of sleep before it was time to go. I didn’t sleep anymore and it seemed an awfully long time before our old corporal came in. He was cursing pretty freely as though something had gone wrong with the arrangements, as indeed did appear to be the case, as it was now after 3 a.m. Hurriedly, we were made to collect our rations, and without further ado, were bundled out into the dim moonlight of the early March morning.
T
he morning was bitterly cold, and we all felt very stiff and shivery as we made our way down to the now familiar main roadway towards the gate at which we had entered on Monday evening. There was a sentry on duty at the gate and standing beside him was a little old man in the uniform of the German civil police, who we soon learnt was to act as yet another guard for us.
There was a brief exchange of formalities and then the old man made us fall in in two ranks, and we were marched off down the street. Hardly a word was spoken as we strode along, but I do remember thinking how ridiculously easy it would be to overpower the old man. Without doing anything beyond rendering him ineffective for a few hours, we could have made off into the night. We had the full advantage then, over our other projected escapes, in that we were now equipped with enough food to last several days, but against that was the problem of Diffy’s physical condition. The poor chap was obviously in no state to cope with the hardship and strain
that must inevitably ensue. It was equally futile to suppose that we could ‘fix’ our guard and leave Diffy roaming around all night while we made good our departure.
Another good chance of escape therefore had to be turned down. It was not very long before we were back in the town of Werl and had made our way to the railway station. We were taken into the entrance hall, but although there were several people waiting around, the place was in complete and total darkness. The policeman did the only thing possible, and led us outside again. For all he knew we could have wandered off, one at a time in the inky blackness within, and he would have been none the wiser!
Whilst we were standing outside, our guard started to make a little conversation. We discovered that he had a passable knowledge of English, a fact which was to make things easier in the days that we spent in his company. He told us that he was not a Nazi, and that as long as we behaved ourselves, he would look after us (and by this time we were well aware that we should need looking after) and we should be well treated. In response to our enquiry, he told us that the distance to Frankfurt was about 150 miles, and that it would take about two days. We were still innocent enough to wonder how it could possibly take as long as that!
Our walk had warmed us up, but we were beginning to get awfully cold again. As soon as a
thin shaft of light coming from under the door indicated that someone at last had organised a bit of illumination within, we were allowed to return indoors. The waiting room had been bombed, we learnt, and we resigned ourselves to what developed into a long and weary wait. We made ourselves as comfortable as possible leaning against the walls or sitting on the floor of the entrance hall. During our wait the party was reinforced by what appeared to be the very much overdue arrival of a second guard, a particularly dirty and uncouth-looking airman.
Dawn was breaking before the train at last drew in, and then our ride only proved to be of about half an hour’s duration. To our considerable surprise, we travelled in a westerly direction, as was evidenced by the glow of the dawn behind us. There was hardly a window left in any of the compartments, and as it was a corridor train, the draught was terrible, to say nothing of the temperature, which must have been well below freezing level.
We reached the town of Unna, and although the permanent way had suffered a good bit of bomb damage, we were pleased to see that the
bahnhof
itself appeared to be intact. Moreover, the waiting room into which we were taken was actually warm, and there was room for us to sit down. Many of the passengers had obviously spent the night there, and although we did not know it then, it is likely that some of them were not even
passengers. As we learnt later, in most towns a
bahnhof
that was not ‘kaput’ was just about the only place that anyone passing through could find to rest his bones during the hours of darkness.
We did not wait very long, but as soon as the sun had begun to show its first yellow streaks through the window (it would then be around 6.30 a.m.), we made our way out of the station and up into the centre of the town. We were at once struck by the bustle and activity at this time, which at home we would have described as ‘the middle of the night’. When we reached the market square, we found that a policeman with his baton was already quite busy. The crowds waiting for lifts on the street corners were considerable, and being augmented every minute by fresh arrivals.
We took good care not to stray from our guards, for quite a few ugly looks and muttered curses were flung our way. Whether it was because of this or that lifts to where we wanted to go were unobtainable, I do not know, but it was not long before our policeman guard told us that we were going back to the
bahnhof
again.
The crowd in the waiting room had cleared considerably. The bar was now open, although as was the case in Fredeberg, it did not have much in the way of refreshment to dispense. On a signal being given we commenced to make our first meal of bread, margarine and cheese, but we were unduly optimistic in thinking that there might be coffee to wash it down. In fact, we did not even
get a drink of water. Still, the food was good and wholesome, although very plain, and I suppose we all enjoyed it, our first repast on a self-supporting basis!
At around 9 a.m. came the inevitable shout, we presumed, ‘No more trains today’. This was the signal for the waiting room to empty immediately, and so in a few minutes we found ourselves once again in the market square. ‘Things will have to speed up a bit if we are to do it in two days,’ I remarked with a much greater hint at the truth than I realised.
About another hour passed before the efforts of the airman to secure a lift were successful. (We were to learn that it was always he who did the negotiating in any matter concerning our travel. We presumed that this was because he appeared to have done the journey before and therefore was acquainted with all the short cuts necessary to get to our particular destination.) By a miracle, we managed to get as far as the town of Iserlohn without any change of transport, although our route lay through the town of Menden, which added about 10 kilometres to the direct distance of 18 kilometres.
Iserlohn is about 20 miles south-east of Dortmund and was the largest in which we had been so far. There was a good deal of evidence of action by our aircraft, and when we left the wagon and walked through the main streets, we were once again the recipients of many sour glances
from the civilians. Our guards did their best to hurry us through the busy parts, but there seemed to be frequent halts to enquire the way. We all, especially Diffy, made sure that we did not wander far away from them.
It was during one of these halts that we met a civilian who showed our guards (in what to us appeared to be a defiant manner) a leaflet, obviously dropped from one of our aircraft. It was signed by General Eisenhower and told all members of the German Armed Forces exactly how they should proceed in order to save their lives, by peaceable surrender. The leaflet was printed in both English and German, and it assured the possessor a safe conduct through our lines, if presented to a member of our forces in the proper manner. Altogether, it was a most interesting document and we wondered if the civilian in possession of it was actually a German soldier who intended to take advantage of the scheme at the earliest opportunity.
We left the town, following a road that seemed to go gradually downhill for a long way. Running alongside the route was a single-track electric tramway. Our guards indicated that we might possibly proceed part of the way by tram. However, after waiting a full half hour at a stop, the tram, when it eventually came, was so packed that it seemed impossible to squeeze another living person into it. Nevertheless, quite a few did get on, although it was not to be expected that we
should, whilst there were Germans left behind. After seeing the tram leave with its sides almost bulging, we proceeded on foot.
We seemed to walk an awful long way down that hill without getting any nearer to the bottom. As it was our first really long stretch of walking for several days, we wondered how poor old Diffy was coping. We asked him from time to time how he was getting along, but he said that he felt quite alright, although his wounds were obviously giving him a great deal of pain.
There was another ugly incident when at last we reached the bottom of the hill and found a road branching off to the left with a signpost indicating that the distance to Siegen was 100 kilometres. The siren had just sounded and several Thunderbolts were buzzing about overhead, when a group of angry men came rushing up to us armed with sticks, staves and some of them with their revolvers drawn. I am bound to say that the way in which our guards held the situation in hand was admirable. We all felt that if it had not been for them on this and on subsequent occasions, we might have been severely injured, or even lost our lives.
We walked a little further along the road to Siegen and when we were well clear of all the built-up areas, we were told that we could rest in a small wood at the side of the road and partake of our midday meal. Water was obtained from a nearby cottage and served to wash down the
bread and cheese that was to become so familiar before the journey was over.
During that stop for lunch, we got to know quite a lot about our guards, with whom we realised it would pay to keep on the best possible terms. The little policeman was called Karl Kremer and he formerly kept a dairy shop in Aachen. He told us that he had no interest whatsoever in the war and that all he really wanted was to get back to his wife and business. We even got as far as suggesting that nobody would be any the wiser if he accomplished this end by the simple means of turning his back for a few moments and letting us disappear into the woods. We had already seen enough of the German system of communications to know that there was not the smallest chance of our being expected by the people in Frankfurt, and as Karl himself explained, if he was taken prisoner by the Allied Forces, he would, as a policeman, merely be sent back to do police duty in his home town.
The whole idea seemed to tempt him somewhat and there were times when we thought he might succumb. However, he told us that if it was found out, he would be shot, and, of course, we did not doubt his word for a moment. The other man, whose name was Adolf, could not speak a single word of English and all we learnt about him was that he had a wife and family in Frankfurt, which explained quite a lot of things that had been
puzzling us. How otherwise could such a disreptuable-looking ‘erk’ have been entrusted with a reasonably responsible job such as this, unless it had been ‘wangled’ by Karl. We laughed heartily when Karl told us that whilst the journey outwards might take two days, they would spend at least seven on the return trip. We recalled that there might have been times in our service careers when we would have done the same things ourselves, had the opportunity presented itself. We also began to have grave doubts as to whether the two days, which we had at one time thought such a generous allowance, would prove to be anything like enough.
The afternoon wore on and we still lay on the grassy slope, nobody apparently being in the slightest hurry to proceed. Karl did not have any objection to our making ourselves comfortable and snatching a short sleep. Children from the nearby village came and played around us: the view from the wooded slope was exquisite and but for the frequent wail of the sirens and the drone of our own aircraft overhead, we might easily have been lulled into the false impression that we were merely out on a picnic.
At length we pushed on. Siegen, which at one time had been declared our day’s objective, was still at least 99 kilometres away. We only walked as far as the nearest railway station, which was less than 5 miles out of Iserlohn and there we waited whilst Adolf made enquiries about trains.
It seemed that there would be one about 6.15 p.m. and as this seemed satisfactory, we all sat down in the waiting room, which at that time was quite warm and sunny.
We pulled out our food once again and I suggested that as it looked like being a good deal more than two days before we reached our destination, it was about time that we introduced some sort of rationing system. Accordingly, we decided that any one meal should not consist of both cheese and margarine in addition to the bread and that the size of the piece of cheese per man should be severely curtailed.
We had been cutting off slices of cheese at least half an inch thick and so we reduced this by half, which, when divided into four, gave us each a piece of cheese per alternate meal, measuring approximately the size of a very small India rubber!
Karl, at this stage, had become so concerned with our welfare, that he even volunteered to go out and buy us some beer. However, although he was gone quite a long time, when he returned he was empty-handed and we were not able to gather the reason why he had not got any. I would say that under the rules governing POWs, the drinking of beer (especially with their guards) would be definitely forbidden.
It grew dark and cold and at about 8 p.m., as the train had still not come, we were taken into the station master’s office, where two or three other
would-be passengers waited beside a comfortable fire. We were even offered the facility of a wash (our first since Sunday) and, altogether, we felt that the ‘proprietor’ of this particular station, left no stone unturned to secure our every comfort!
At about 9 p.m., the train puffed slowly into the station and we were bundled into the guard’s van, as every inch of sitting and standing room in the coaches seemed to be occupied. The doors would not shut, and our journey, which must have lasted for about two hours, was even colder that the one we had taken that morning. In the van we were sitting on top of some boxes of ammunition destined for Berlin (Heaven only knows how long it would take them to get there by the route they were going). More than once, as we passed through very dark tunnels, we were tempted to pitch the boxes out on to the permanent way, thus satisfying our legitimate rights as POWs, to commit if possible, a little undetected sabotage. I suppose we were deterred chiefly by the fact that the boxes were very hard to shift and in any case would have been missed as soon as we came out of a tunnel, because the moon was very bright and was shining in right through the open doors.