Yet instead of using us to the limit, we were antagonised to the limit. For over two years, expert workers in every possible field of science and production, as well as young fighting-fit men, wasted their time behind barbed wire fences or in digging holes in the Pioneer Corps.
Much later, of course, we were allowed to do our share and not one single case became known which might have justified the ill-advised ‘caution’ that had been applied, and the lack of understanding and generosity continued even after we had become fully-fledged members of the British Armed Forces. We could not apply for British citizenship during the war, yet officers and men in some of the finest regiments in the British Army had earlier been classified as enemy aliens. Germans were running the risk of being taken prisoners by Germans. British medals were pinned on German chests.
Finally, at the end of the war, those who joined the armed forces were given priority for naturalisation. However, they first had to be approved by an ‘Inter Service Naturalisation Board’ – men who had fought in the front line for the British Army were vetted by a panel of staff officers to see if they were suitable to become British Citizens.
Seething as I was that day in June 1940 I had been re-assured by my friendly police escort that my discomfort would be all over in just a few days. My dismay only increased however as more internees began to arrive and eventually some fifteen of us were transferred to the army barracks at Reading where preparations for our arrival had not been well planned. Each man was issued with two trestles, three boards and some blankets – to be used as a bed – and it soon became clear that the Army personnel had no idea who we were, nor did they have any instructions regarding our treatment. They did not know whether we could write or receive mail or even notify family or friends as to our whereabouts.
I looked closely at the other men in the group, which had grown to over a hundred. It included all ages, from eighteen to sixty-five years. Some of the older men were sitting on their beds, head in hand, unable to grasp what had happened. Many were former inmates of Nazi concentration camps and they were unable to remain rational in the face of this renewed imprisonment after what they had already suffered.
We sat about dejectedly for the rest of the day and I eventually managed to persuade a young Private to take some of our money to the camp canteen, where he bought essentials for those who had brought none with them. The night was spent, rather uncomfortably, on wooden boards without mattresses.
Early the next morning I was called out. Humphrey Sykes, who had come back to England at the outbreak of war and had been through the Dunkirk evacuation, was waiting for me. The owner of the White Hart Hotel had kindly called our company office to tell them what had happened to me and Sykes had traced me to Reading. He knew the Commandant of the camp who gave his permission for us to meet. However, Humphrey had only bad news. He had contacted everybody he knew in an attempt to get me out but had been told ‘all aliens were IN and they would stay IN.’ We were given just half an hour to settle our affairs. I gave Sykes authority to process my resignation from the boards of our two companies and he left, looking dejected and guilty, uttering the most unbelievable platitude I had ever heard. ‘The darkest hours,’ declared Humphrey, looking every inch the priest in cavalry officer’s clothing, ‘are always those before the dawn’, thus providing me with the first good laugh since the chicken head egg warmer incident.
That afternoon, we were transferred to a school in Southampton that had been turned into a ‘Prisoner of War Camp’.[2] There were boos and hisses from the crowd as we marched into Reading Station. At Southampton our group was joined by other groups and our overall number grew to about 250.
The officers in charge of the camp were extremely kind and courteous. In a brief speech the Commandant expressed regret at our ‘temporary predicament’, which he indicated he felt certain would not last long. He then asked us to choose a ‘camp leader’ and to make our own arrangements for the carrying out of essential services such as cooking and cleaning. I volunteered to take over the kitchen since I was anxious to keep busy. During my time at that camp I started cooking breakfast at 04.30 hours and kept cooking until 18.00 hours. My helpers were detailed by the internee camp leader and changed daily.
There was nothing particularly unpleasant about that camp, except that one had to get used to being locked into a room at night with a toilet bucket and taking shelter from the occasional air attacks by the Luftwaffe. After ten days we were ordered to prepare to move. We clambered aboard a train at Southampton and immediately noticed a change of atmosphere.
From that point on we were heavily guarded. Soldiers with rifles and fixed bayonets stood on duty at each compartment door and they started fiddling with the safety catches of their weapons as soon as one of us moved. They treated us as very dangerous people and refused to tell us where we were going. In fact, whoever was commanding had read the book on rules for the transportation of ‘prisoners of war.’
The train took us to the town of Bury in Lancashire where, carrying a motley collection of luggage, we were shepherded towards a tall chimney belonging to a disused factory that had been entirely surrounded with barbed wire.
Further carriages had been added to the train along its route and about 1,000 of us ‘marched’ through the gates of the compound, which was a disused cotton mill, that had been condemned as being unfit for production by the Ministry of Labour.
Carrying my suitcase, I began to look for a suitable place to park myself. The floors in all the factory halls were covered in grease and the glass roof with many panes missing had been painted black, presumably as an air-raid precaution. At this point, we were herded together and lined up for ‘search and registration.’ This entailed being taken to one of several tables manned by an NCO who took down our name, assigned us an internee number and then passed us on to a private soldier who went through our belongings and pockets with a degree of thoroughness that would put any of to-day’s airport checks to shame.
Our cash, cheque books, cigarettes, cigars, drinks, medicines – in fact everything except clothing and toiletries – were impounded. (Most of our belongings were never seen again and some years after the war, the Commandant of the camp was kicked out of the Army and jailed for the theft of our belongings.)
I grabbed some boards and trestles and staked a claim to a bed space in one of the halls. There were no lights at any time during the three weeks I spent at Warth Mill Internment Camp.[3]
Opposite me, about twenty Catholic priests were setting up home. I walked over to them and found them wonderfully calm and confident. Some of these ‘highly learned, dangerous holy enemy aliens’ stayed with me throughout my internment and I don’t know what I would have done without them. Their unshakeable trust in the ways of the Lord was certainly preferable to our resentment of the treatment we were given. One of the priests, Father Aschenauer, an Austrian, provided proof of the flexibility of the Jesuit education in the form of the following limerick, which he whispered to me during one of our endless walks around the camp:
Perhaps the Lord objected, as one night, during a terrific thunderstorm, a blocked drainpipe on the roof snapped and a large jet of water poured directly onto the group of priests. They were soaked through in seconds and the water began to rise in their section of the hall. In pitch darkness everybody was trying to help them move to a drier place. The priests took it all in excellent humour.
2
Officially numbered 402a or C19, the PoW Camp at Southampton was one of hundreds set up throughout the UK during the Second World War.
3
Warth Mill Internment Camp, Bury, Lancashire, eventually became a PoW camp. However, it was originally a camp for enemy aliens where the conditions were every bit as harsh as Wolfe Frank describes them.