The men I met along the way over the next few weeks told stories about mistakes and accidents, bungled attacks, poor defences and dead and injured left where they had fallen. I heard about a massacre not far away where hand grenades were thrown by German soldiers into a barn full of British soldiers who had surrendered and been locked in for the night. I was afraid something like that would happen to us.
My war was over as far as I could see. I was completely in the hands of the enemy. As long as I could keep going for the next few months (and I still believed it would be over by Christmas) stay out of danger, cope with whatever lay ahead then I would get back home safely. But you don’t know what lies ahead do you. And you don’t know what inner resources you have to draw upon to survive because you have never really been tested.
I know that somehow I got from Abbeville to Trier, a distance of over 350km. I marched to that dreadful city, the place where thousands of prisoners were being processed to be sent on to camps all across Germany and Poland. They had to wait for transport, which for many, including me, meant by train in a cattle truck. But to be honest, my memories of the 1940 march have merged with those of the second march in 1945 – the much longer and much worse one. Not surprising that I forget the details of that summer of 1940. It was only a taste of what was to come during that second march: walking all day with little food or water; sleeping in the open air or finding shelter in barns or under hedges; and abused by German guards. It was hot weather and I was still wearing my greatcoat but I was in good physical shape. But in 1945, we had the additional challenges of one of the coldest winters on record that January, of having suffered years of misery, fear, exhaustion and starvation and of watching fellow men die and helping to bury them by the roadside. Those are things you never forget.
So I know I walked with other prisoners, the group growing as more and more men joined us along the route. We were accompanied by armed German guards, as we made our way across France and Belgium to the Luxembourg border with Germany. I remember that as we went through villages, French women were putting buckets of water out for us at the side of the road and as fast as they did that, the Germans guards kicked them over. The cruelty of that stuck with me, and I remember thinking that this was only the start of something terrible.
We arrived at the outskirts of Trier where there were twenty or thirty fellows all dressed in black, lining the road. They were holding sticks and shouting, ‘Sons of English bitches!’ over and over again. They started beating the legs of the weakest ones, who could hardly stand anyway, as we passed. Could things get any worse?
I couldn’t have imagined the horror that awaited us on the next leg of our journey, travelling a further 1000km deeper into unknown territory, somewhere far over in the East.
When we eventually reached the railway station, we were not alone. I saw hundreds of British soldiers, those recently captured in Belgium, who had just arrived from holding camps. They were grouped on the platforms and down on the tracks while armed guards patrolled. There was an engine being shunted along a track until it made contact and was attached to a row of cattle trucks standing in the sidings.
Suddenly there was a terrific banging sound as guards marched along the tracks unbolting and sliding back the doors of the trucks which gaped open like monstrous mouths, ready to swallow us up. The guards were in a hurry to get the job done, to get rid of all these unwanted, useless prisoners. They started rounding up groups, pushing them at gun point towards the doors like livestock going to market, perhaps to be slaughtered. I could see that when one truck was full they slammed and bolted the doors and then moved on to the next empty one. We were helpless to do anything except wait our turn.
We were marched down to the tracks and herded towards the waiting men. Guards tried to line us up, but we were all in a heap, pushing forward, not because we were keen to board the train but the sheer pressure of the numbers and the panic got us in a mess. A sudden noise of gunshot. One of the guards fired in the air, thank heavens, only as a warning, and everyone stopped dead where they were. When it was our turn we were all pushing forward so we had to scramble up and into one of these trucks. There was a sergeant with us who had torn his stripes off; you could see where they had been. He tapped each of us on the head, almost as if he was blessing us as he counted us in: fifty-seven men reduced to the status of animals.
Inside it was as bad as you imagined. There was dirty straw on the floor and a dreadful smell of excrement and urine, left behind by recently transported livestock or another human cargo. Before the doors were shut some pails of water were put in and someone threw in some loaves of bread (which turned out to be stale already when they were shared out) and a couple of round cheeses. Luckily some of the fellows still had their army jack knives, which had escaped the guards’ previous searches.
We were packed in tightly and you had to stand or you could just about sit down with your knees drawn up to your chest. When the guards shut the doors, most of the light disappeared and we were left with what came through gaps in the wooden slats of the sides. When night fell it was pitch black. We had no idea where we were going or how long we would be in there. It was a shocking experience. Some were wearing their greatcoats like me, others just their basic uniform but you can imagine how hot it got with us all crammed together with no proper ventilation. Add to that, the stink of unwashed bodies and our filthy, shitty, lice-infested uniforms; it was unbearable but I had to bear it. To survive and not give in was the only way to beat the bastard Germans.
We were all severely dehydrated and some of the weaker ones were suffering from heatstroke. Nothing you could do. You couldn’t move to give them more space – there was none. The train stopped a couple of times, just long enough for guards to open the doors, refill the pails and put them back in. I never got a drink. Most of the water slopped out of the pails anyway, as our truck bumped and lurched along at speed or it was drunk by those nearest to the pails. Every man for himself, I was learning.
It was a rough time, even for the fittest men and many were in a sorry state, already ill with a fever and the runs from their weeks of marching across France and Belgium. Obviously there was no toilet, and no room to move to a corner out of the way in order to do your business. The soldiers who still had their steel helmets ripped out the linings and padding from inside and used them as chamber pots, passing them over for somebody to use and then passing them back with their contents over to somebody on the side. They tried to get rid of what they could through cracks or holes in the floor or emptied them in a corner out of the way. Some men couldn’t get a helmet in time and had to shit in their pants where they stood.
God knows how I escaped catching dysentery. Perhaps it was just as well that I didn’t drink any of the water or eat the bread or cheese which had been passed around by hands which had been holding helmets of shit and piss. When we arrived at the field camp I remember seeing hundreds of discarded steel helmets all over the ground. Nobody could wear their helmet again, even if they had wanted to, with no padded lining.
How could one human being treat another in this way? I was brought up to believe ‘Do no harm’ and ‘Do as you would be done by.’ How could they do this to us? We cursed Hitler, the German people, the war, even the British Army for sending us here. Some men were so exhausted or demoralised they never said a word the whole journey. Others talked a bit about what had happened to them, but not for long. Afraid. We were all terribly afraid and talking made things worse. Nobody had any words of comfort. How could they? ‘It’ll be all right.’ We couldn’t say that, not after what we had experienced since being captured. Silence was our refuge.