We did the same work every day, breaking up endless rocks and shifting them to the trucks, so we couldn’t do anything obvious like stopping work or slowing down even. There were targets to meet for the work: so many trucks filled per day and then taken off down the line to be replaced by another lot to fill. Our great plan for a bit of sabotage was to ignore the weight limits on the trucks and start loading them with more or less the same amount of stones up to the top. While the guards weren’t looking we continued filling the trucks with as many stones as we could beyond the markers on the side, ignoring the weight restrictions. That felt good. It gave you back a bit of control and a feeling of power. The trucks would then go off down the line. We watched them disappearing, wondering what would happen next, if anything.
A few weeks’ later the Bahnpolizei – Railway Police, turned up at our farm to check us out. It was another sunny day, hot already in the early morning and we were all in the yard at the back, some washing under the tap, others hanging around waiting their turn or sitting on a wall drinking the black ersatz coffee brought out to us by the farmer – his attempt at providing us with breakfast. I always wondered if he was paid for putting us up or whether he had been told to do it. You didn’t refuse orders like that. I think whole families were threatened with deportation if they didn’t obey the German authorities. We hadn’t heard a vehicle arrive but two men suddenly appeared, marching purposefully towards us in their crisp uniform, shiny boots and eagle and swastika insignia on their braided caps. This looked serious.
They lined us up and took a roll call. One policeman spoke quite good English and he announced that one of their trains carrying stones from the quarry had derailed. One of the axles had buckled under the weight of some overloaded trucks. He said, ‘Incorrect weight’ and that the overloading of these was ‘a deliberate act of sabotage,’ and there would be serious consequences for all of us. What was he going to do? Arrest us all and put us in prison? Stop us breaking up rocks? Wasn’t this punishment enough? He said that this was to stop immediately. He couldn’t prove anything, luckily.
Maybe we were too valuable as workers to get rid of us or waste good manpower by locking us up. I like to think that we did our bit to delay some of the construction work. We heard no more about it and it looked as though we had got away with it but we had understood the message.
6
Potatoes
We carried on working there until Christmas in rain and shine, wind and snow. If it was sunny we worked without protection and suffered dehydration. If it rained we got wet and our clothes never dried out properly and we caught colds. If it snowed we had to dig our way out first before we even got there and nearly collapsed from exhaustion. Some men fell ill or got injured and were sent back to the camp to be replaced by more prisoners. I didn’t know the meaning of hard work until I went to that quarry.
Hard physical labour is exhausting and soul-destroying but somehow you survive; it toughens you up. You didn’t complain, you just got on with it. So I suppose I was lucky that I didn’t go under. A 5ft 7¼”, 130 lbs (according to my army records) greengrocer’s assistant from Barking, not big and burly or tough, I had never lifted anything heavier than a sack of potatoes. But here I was still in one piece, having no choice but to carry on, to face whatever my captors had in store for me. To keep on going, for myself and for those left behind at home.
I suppose I was lucky not to be sent to another quarry to break up more bloody boulders or to be sent down the mines to be killed by an explosion or tunnel collapse. Our fate was completely in the hands of our enemies. The longer we were imprisoned and got further into the war, we learned more about the cruelty of the Germans and, of course, I was to witness myself some of the atrocities inflicted on other human beings.
I remained at the next camp I was sent to for the rest of the war, along with the four friends I made. Fortunately I’ve always got on with people and there’s something about me that they like. So when I met Laurie, Sid, Hebby and Jimmy we all got on straightaway. We gradually formed a friendship which lasted long after the war.
If you have one good friend you are lucky but to have four is a miracle. How truly blessed to be surrounded by people who care about you, look out for you and stick by you. You get strength from being with people like that. I felt the same, of course. You give as much as you take with true friends. Up until then I had only had one real friend, Tommy Harrington, but that didn’t last. He went off to another camp. I remember that he carried a picture of his sweetheart which he was always showing us. She was a real cracker, looked like a film star. I don’t think he had any family to speak of so I gave him my sister’s address before he left and when I next wrote to Winnie I asked her to keep in touch with him. Winnie wrote regularly and sent him cigarettes. I’ve got some copies of the letters he sent to my sister.
The strangest thing is that I met him again briefly on The Long March in 1945. Fantastic coincidence, out on the road, among the thousands of people there were on the move across Germany.
You get strength from having friends and together in a group you are better than being on your own. I would have gone mad I think without my pals. Five of us together felt like a family again; reminded me of my brothers and what I was missing. We stayed together for the next 4½ years and I know we helped each other to survive throughout those war years.
One morning at roll call, the Unteroffizier – under officer, announced that we were leaving and moving to another camp. We were told to pack and be ready outside as soon as possible. I was pleased not be going out to break up more bloody boulders for twelve hours and glad to see the back of the cowshed. On the other hand, we didn’t know where we were going next or what the Germans had lined up for us. We got onto the carts accompanied by some of the guards and set off in the direction of Freystadt. Just outside the town we stopped at a place which looked like an abandoned school, got off and were split into two groups. I went off with one lot of seven, marching a few more kilometres to another spot where I joined another larger group waiting with some guards.
There were now forty-five of us and we all marched off out into the countryside to a farm in the middle of this remote area. Our new camp was housed in a former farmhouse which had presumably been owned by a local German family. It was now run by the German authorities and we were the new labour force, to be put to work on the land to produce food for the Fatherland. They had built an extension onto the main building for the Unteroffizieren and about thirty guards who changed regularly. The whole place was surrounded by two lots of chicken wire fencing with a gap between and rolls of barbed wire along the top. There were two sets of gates, which were locked at night.
Our accommodation was in a large farmhouse which had about seven rooms although we were only allowed to use a few. We slept in dormitories on the ground floor, with ten to a room in double bunk beds. We had the use of a room at the back which had a wood burning stove for cooking and a copper for heating water for washing and laundry. What luxury! And toilets, or latrines I should say, which were in a wooden outhouse. A trench had been dug in the earth floor and you stood or squatted over it to do your business and when you finished you shovelled over some lime from a bucket kept at the side. We could only use them during daylight hours.
