We had been reminded and warned of complacency by our Wing Commander at the briefing for our raid. When referring to the general details he said, ‘And you wireless operators take note◦– you might think you will always be snug and warm in your position, but if you get a bit of Perspex knocked out, you will know all about it. At least take your white sweater with you…’ which I did, ‘…even if you do not wear it, take it with you and stow it where you can get at it quickly’.
Immediately upon being attacked, when the cockpit roof was badly damaged, the wisdom of his words was brought home to me. Even in all the panic and shock I was very much aware of the unbelievably instant and severe drop in temperature. If our aircraft had survived that attack, would I have survived the return flight of three or four hours? At best, I think I would have suffered badly from frostbite.
The white sweater was a popular issue of flying clothing that, being heavily knitted in pure wool, was very warm and had an added quality. Because it was not obviously military in appearance, and even when worn with uniform trousers, it might help an airman shot down in enemy territory look less conspicuous when trying to evade capture.
Resistance groups in France, Belgium and Holland were aware of the white sweater. RAF Intelligence had told us that if contact was made with a Resistance Group, one of the tests they might carry out to make sure that you were genuine RAF and not an enemy agent planted in the chain, was to pluck a strand of the yarn from the sweater and offer it to a flame. If it only smouldered, this would show that the garment was made of pure wool and probably genuine. If the sample flared up, it was a synthetic material and the garment not a genuine RAF issue. No doubt the Resistance would soon be made aware that the Germans were now confiscating the genuine article, so the test would be of no value.
While walking the circuit one afternoon, two guards armed with rifles and fixed bayonets could be seen escorting a boy, dressed in knickerbocker trousers and a tweed jacket, through the main gate into our lager. The boy wore a foreign looking peaked cap and was grinning in an arrogant and defiant way. He looked far too young to be joining us but was marched straight into one of the American huts. It was a week or so before I learned the story behind this boy’s arrival.
It turned out that the boy really was an American airman. During a raid on Germany several months before, his aircraft, a B29, was shot down over France. He managed to evade immediate capture and was given shelter by a French family, at great risk to themselves. He was not passed on to a resistance group, as we had always been told would happen, but kept by the family as one of them. He lived quite openly it seemed, even occasionally doing a newspaper delivery job in full daylight, going to the barber’s shop for a haircut several times and generally living a normal life. His ability to do this would have been down to, firstly, the support given by a very brave family (I was not told what happened to them but they could have been shot) and, secondly, his remarkable physical appearance. It came as no surprise to find that the new prisoner was a ball man, which meant that he would have manned the ball-shaped gun turret protruding below the belly of the B29; to be able to even get into one, a man needs to be short in stature and slim.
Another interesting character, who came to join our ranks, was a Frenchman called Maurice who arrived two or three days after David and I. He could speak English very well and gradually, bit by bit, we heard the most incredible story. At the outbreak of the war, in 1939, Maurice was too young for military service, but after the fall of France, in 1940, he became involved with the Resistance Movement. He was mainly tasked with helping Allied soldiers and airmen evade capture and get to Britain, where they could join up with their old units. He then escaped to Britain himself, in a very small boat, where he joined the RAF and became a fighter pilot. On an offensive sweep over France he was shot down but survived uninjured to re-join the Resistance. Some time later he was arrested during a Gestapo raid but was able to prove, because he had time to put on his uniform and was already wearing his identity discs, that he was RAF and, therefore, a prisoner of war according to the Geneva Convention.
Our hut soon reached capacity and we had to get used to the way of life inside a prisoner of war camp. The most common type of huts, I was never in any other, were built together, rather like a row of terraced houses, but they only had a ground floor. To maximise space the beds were either two or three tier bunks, lined up on each of the side walls, and placed so close together it was a tight squeeze to get into them. This arrangement allowed around sixty prisoners to be penned up in each hut, but left little floor space for eating, cooking or any other domestic task. Fresh air was basically inadequate because there were only two small windows in the back wall and two more and the door at the front. Before darkness fell, the windows were shuttered up and the door securely bolted from the outside. I shudder to think what the air quality must have been at the end of a long winter night. In very warm weather there was a concession, the windows were left uncluttered allowing a bit more ventilation, but any attempt to even lean out of them would be risking a fierce attack by a guard dog or being shot by a patrolling guard.
There were no washing facilities in the huts and the lavatory for night use was a large metal drum which had to be emptied each morning into a pit near to the main latrine block, some distance away. The transporting of it, and it was quite heavy, was made possible by the provision of two wooden poles, which could be passed through a bracket on each side of the drum, with a man front and rear. I suppose it was like carrying a Sedan Chair with a different sort of passenger. The task was done on a rota basis with the two-man team excused all other hut fatigues, so it had its good side.
There was never any running water provided in the huts. In the place where we washed, water had to be pumped up by a semi-rotary hand pump. This was done on a rota system, each hut in turn, providing a succession of pumpers on its pumping days.
Red Cross food parcels were regularly available when we first arrived at Stalag Luft VI, and I cannot emphasise enough what a lifesaver they were. Even with them, we always felt hungry, but we were not starving. They were issued based on one parcel per man per week. Each one was opened under the scrutiny of the Germans, which was understandable, and any tins of food were not allowed to be taken away without first being punctured, as they would be very useful for escape purposes.
Our staple diet consisted of a meagre potato ration which was cooked in a communal kitchen. These were never peeled, in order to maintain what little nutritional value they had, and, psychologically, this was comforting as the skin took a little longer to chew. The contents of Red Cross tins were added to the potato ration to make corned beef hash or salmon clop, which was popular because it added a bit of bulk which was sorely needed.
There was only one small stove in each hut, and even that had a totally inadequate fuel supply, so individual cooking was limited to making toast with one of the precious slices of bread, if you had enough patience, and even then this was not recommended by the British Medical Officer, warning that the toasting of bread destroyed some of its nutritional value.
After a week or so in the prison camp the German bread, previously despised, took on a new image as hunger really set in, and it became craved.
The daily ration was issued firstly to the communal kitchen on the strict basis of one loaf to seven men, and from there to the huts, and it was here that the unenviable task of cutting each loaf into seven equal parts, before an audience of very hungry Krieges (an abbreviation of the long German name, Kriegsgefangene, meaning prisoner of war), was undertaken. It was carried out by a volunteer who had been a grocer and provision merchant in civilian life; although I am ashamed to admit I did not appreciate the value of his work at the time. The loaf was not uniform in shape and although of a standard weight, we had no scales to help decide what was a fair seventh, so it all depended on his skilled hand and eye coordination. During the cutting process if a crumb of the bread fell from the table it never reached the floor◦– there were too many hungry bystanders with eye and hand finely tuned to snap up this rare minute treat.