1,678 Days and Nights as a POW

Many thanks to members of my family who provided information for this story, particularly my second cousin Joanna Capjon.

When World War II broke out my Grandfather, Henry Deterding, joined up with the Fleet Air Arm to fly Swordfish planes. Although he was really too old (41 years), pilots were desperately needed. However, his active participation was brief as he was taken prisoner in September 1940 and remained a Prisoner of War (POW) until the end of hostilities in 1945.

My Aunt, Betty Throssell, tells us here how my Grandfather was captured. “After some training on Swordfish, he was told that he and his fellow pilots were going off on an aircraft carrier to bomb Trondheim Harbour in Norway. As he had never flown at night nor flown from a carrier, he was granted permission to practise before the mission. After the raid on Trondheim, he had been assured that the carrier would stay and wait for them, but when my Grandfather returned to the carrier’s position, he found it had beetled back to Scotland. So he had to return to Norway as he did not have enough fuel to reach Scotland. He could have landed in Sweden, but remembered that the neutral Swedes had interned combatants in the previous war. As they flew over Norway, the observer could not work out their position so my Grandfather asked for the map. He did not expect to be handed a school atlas! However, they landed in Norway and the Norwegians provided them with a boat and they set out for Scotland. About three days later they saw land, but it was Norway again. The Germans caught them and flew them to Berlin, thinking they were spies, despite the fact they were in uniform. Fortunately my Grandfather could speak German (self taught by the pelman system) and luckily they avoided being put into prison clothes. He sent messages to his step-mother Lotte who was living in Germany and also to Herman Goering who knew my Gt. Grandfather (Sir Henri Deterding) and the result was that my Grandfather and the crew were transferred to a POW camp. During his internment in camp, my Grandfather being the fitness fanatic that he was, used to encourage the younger men to run which kept them fit and the madness of boredom at bay.”

My Grandfather produced a book privately for family and friends called “For You The War Is Over”. The following information has been taken from this book.

My Grandfather and his colleagues were captured off the Norwegian coast in September 1940. He was moved around to several different POW camps, but spent most of the final two years of the war at Stalagluft III. In the final months of the war my Grandfather and his fellow inmates were moved constantly as the Russian offensive progressed. Carrying only absolute essentials, my Grandfather was forced to leave several items behind including his diaries of the past four years. I have set out the list of what he did take on these final marches as I think it makes interesting reading as to what was considered the “bare minimum”. He carried — one shirt, one vest, one pair of pants, six pairs of socks, six hankies, two towels, sleeping bag, air pillow, washing and shaving kit, box of studs, pins and scissors, one pair gym shoes, eight hundred cigarettes and four boxes of matches. They also each received a Red Cross parcel weighing ten pounds. He wore (it was January 1945) two jerseys, airman’s tunic, khaki trousers, greatcoat, scarf, naval cap, two pairs of gloves and two pairs of socks. There was a feeling that the war was coming to an end and they hoped that they would not have to rely on the “bare essentials” for much longer.

During this forced march, aside from the Red Cross parcels, the prisoners food consisted of “Kriegie cake” which two POW cooks had concocted from a mixture of biscuits and margarine. (“Kriegie” is slang German for a POW). German rations only appeared sporadically and were chiefly coarse black bread and margarine. The only way they could obtain hot drinks was from the predominately elderly inhabitants of villages they marched through. These local people “responded nobly” to their needs and “rushed to and fro with cans of hot water”. The German guards were evidently thinking the end was near as they let the “Kriegies” mix freely with the German citizens.

Overnight accommodation during the march ranged from a disused cinema to old barns, and a ragged shed already occupied by “five sorry looking horses”. They were lucky enough to spend three days in the salubrious surrounds of the stud farm of Graf von Arnham. He personally saw to the POWs’ comfort as best he could, and bedded many of them down on straw in the large coach-house. The greatest bonus were the large pipes and radiators lining the walls and the “adjoining bathroom with a real bath and constant hot water. There were long lines of Kriegies all day to use this facility.” Ablutions for the most part of the march were impossible, and calls of nature had to be dealt with on the side of the road. My Grandfather had foreseen this and kept a tissue roll handy in his pocket.

Carrying even the minimal of belongings on their backs became increasingly wearisome. At one brief half hour halt my Grandfather wrote “I sat on my pack quite sure that I was at last at the end of my tether and would not be able to move another step. I miserably ate a crust of bread and a little bully beef mixed with snow.” There were rumours of several men suffering from frostbite and pneumonia. However, my Grandfather who was known for his “iron constitution” was not ready to fold yet. Escape would have been easy because “the guards had lost interest and anyone could leave the column whenever they wished”. But despite one or two trying it, they usually returned because “there did not seem much object in making oneself more uncomfortable in these last days of the war.”

The last part of this trek was a two day journey by train — or rather cattle truck — to the German military depot at Bremen. My Grandfather and “37 other very dirty Kriegies squashed into their truck. A number of people were really seriously ill, suffering from biliousness and disordered stomachs. They lay continually groaning on the floor of the truck and at every stop during our journey the permanent way was ceaselessly being lined by squatting figures”. My Grandfather amazingly stayed “perfectly fit and well”. The men illuminated the truck with one of the “almost world famous Kriegie lamps which was made from a small empty Red Cross tin, filled with melted margarine, in which floated a wick obtained from a piece of pyjama cord”.

The most successful method of allowing all the men a chance to lie down and sleep was by employing a head to tail system, “with rows overlapping and fitting into each other like sardines in a tin which worked quite well but felt like sleeping in a vice”.

Nevertheless, the prisoners were very relieved when they arrived at Westertimke prison camp. The train journey had been infinitely worse than the march. Their Red Cross parcels had proved invaluable, especially the American ones with their tins of coffee powder. Westerminke camp was very sparse: “No furniture of any kind, neither bed, chair, table nor stove nor light. With the greatest of difficulty we managed to obtain a quantity of wood-shavings on which to sleep”. Many of the men continued to be very sick with severe stomach disorders and most were exhausted.

Gradually, life improved as furniture appeared but beds had to be shared. When a stove arrived, the Germans allowed forty men at a time to go out daily to cut wood to fuel it. The only water container was a little tin jug which 12 to 16 men “used for fetching hot water for washing up, shaving and laundry purposes”. It also had to be shared with men in the opposite room. There was a shower hose half a mile outside the camp and visits were limited. My Grandfather had only one shower in 16 days and washed his clothes once in that time under a cold tap.

The black market operated through the wire between the German guards and the Kriegies; the former exchanging bread and eggs for American cigarettes. Food was scarce, everyone being on half Red Cross rations as they had been at the other camp for the previous five months. Nobody was able to send letters; the German excuse being that they did not know the camp’s official address.

25th February 1945 - “we have seen quite a number of British and US aircraft flying over the camp. They seem to have it all their own way. The Luftwaffe are conspicuous by their absence.”

4th March - “Woke up with a swollen face and very bad toothache. I visited Hooper our dentist and he pulled it out in his usual efficient manner. I’m afraid I shall not have many teeth left by the end of the war.”

5th April - My grandfather tries to be repatriated when two of them go before the medical repatriation commission and are examined by an English doctor. But he is turned down, his only ailments being that of one and a half stone underweight and being old and tired. But it was worth a try. However everyone was aware that the end of the war was very near. “As in all camps and even on the march we got the latest BBC news by means of our secret wireless set which, in spite of repeated searches, the Germans never discovered.”

On April 9th the prisoners were ordered to march again. They marched all day and slept in fields at night. “On the second day the RAF shot up our column, two killed and several injured.” The last night of the march was spent by a marsh. My Grandfather “cut a quantity of reeds with nail scissors to make a bed”.

Another two horrible nights on cattle trucks and they eventually arrived at Lubeck artillery barracks. “Good accommodation, no wire, practically free.” There were many POWs of all nationalities and a separate French camp. My Grandfather was invited to spend a day and night there by two young Rothschilds. “I got in by disguising myself as a Polish orderly carrying a soup container and passed out by the same method the next day.”

A week later: “The news continues to be marvellous. Most of Germany seems to be already occupied except for our small corner. The Americans and Russians have joined up south of Berlin and there is fighting in the Berlin suburbs. The war can hardly last much longer but that the end should, at last, really come, seems too good to be true and difficult to realise.”

“The suspense and anxiety are most unsettling. Are we about to be liberated or will the Germans have time to move us again, perhaps to Norway? I’ve had no letters for months. My last letter was dated 11th November 1944. British aircraft often fly over. We are very nervous of being shot up again or perhaps bombed by mistake. We have marked out in large letters on the parade ground the inscription “RAF” and under it “POW”.”

2nd May - “Big parade of Germans outside our block. The senior officer starts to make a speech. His words were music to our ears - HITLER WAS DEAD, fallen at his post in deadly combat with the Russians, but they must remember that the war would go on and they must continue to fight for their country.”

“Later in the day there seemed to be some fighting going on in the town of Lubeck. We kept hearing loud explosions and seeing columns of smoke. About two hundred yards from the camp wall a sunken road runs under a road bridge and at about five o’clock a tank or an armoured vehicle passed along it and halted under the bridge. People rushed about wildly and said British troops had come. I saw only the heads of the crew over the top of the bank as the vehicle passed and they certainly did not look like German heads. Presently, more vehicles arrived and halted behind the one under the bridge."

"WE ALL WENT MAD WITH EXCITEMENT and lined the wall of the camp. Some daring spirits jumped over the wall and ran towards the waiting armoured column, which was still partly hidden by the high bank of the road. I thought it a bit risky to leave the wall, as there were still some German guards about with rifles. After a time, most of the Kriegies came back with a man in British uniform. He spoke with an American accent and said he was a reporter. He wanted to know who we were. Most of the men crowded round me were Belgians and Poles who he couldn’t understand, so I talked to him and he went back. Soon afterwards the column moved up the road and from then on the continuous stream of armoured vehicles passed the camp. A few minutes later a jeep turned into the main gate of the camp followed by a couple of British lorries."

"THE BRITISH ARMY HAD AT LAST ARRIVED. The German guards all fell in with their luggage, which they had been packing all day and were quietly marched away under the watchful eyes of a couple of British soldiers and we were FREE! I was free at last after 1,678 days and nights of captivity.”

One of the first people my Grandfather met sitting behind a desk processing the POWs was his brother-in-law Beaumont Reynolds.

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