Ken Bush's War Part 4 - Guarding German POW's

The actual camp itself consisted of 3 large cages, the left and the right hand side ones being normal type Germans, but the middle one was kept separate, the nazified Germans so obviously that one had to have more attention. And to make matters worse of course the war was now over and these prisoners were agitating to get back home. Some more then others because those whose home fell in the Russian section of Germany was more agitated cause of what was happening to their homes and their families. The others, younger ones and normal Germans are not in any way disrupted by the Russian occupation. One of the duties consisted of only looking after the guards of the camp. Administration, contact with the Germans, you know, I didn’t have that at all. I had on parade 16 odd men each tower, each corner of the cage had a tower, man manning it changing him every two hours and a guard outside the guard house and I’d have to be awake to change these fellows every two hours, The reason I could keep that going was that the guard outside the guard house would come in and wake me up at two-hour intervals so that we could change guard. I had to walk right round the cages and wait until one guard climbed up the tower, the other one would come down we’d go back, march back to the guardroom. It got a bit weary as well, a bloke nudging your shoulder, come on its time. I arrived in October and the weather was already beginning to deteriorate and it wasn’t very pleasant atall. We carried on and we never had to shoot anybody. While I was there they didn’t have anybody actually escape because like I say the war was over and they could see an end to the whole situation It was not a question of waiting years and years and years, they could see an end, It didn’t pay them to escape another year 18 months and then gets you back home anyway.

During the January of 1946 there was very bad blizzards in England, towns froze up, Rugeley itself was cut off by snow from the outside world and so I had to take a party of Germans down to the road with shovels and clear the roads. So that not only would there be food for our camp but for the whole town of Rugeley apparently I heard afterwards that the cinema manager found a horse and rode to Henesford, the next town to borrow a film from them and came galloping back to cheers of the towns people and it turned out the film he got was Old Mother Riley. Anyway the Germans very efficient at clearing snow, We got them into columns jump up and down and then just dig the snow off in slabs, on to the side of the road. I had a narrow escape while this was on cause I was standing by the side of the road watching all this work going on and one of our lorries came towards me at full pelt and I just managed to jump clear and these tyre tracks had covered where my feet had been. I got him later he didn’t get away with it. It put the wind up me though.

We never had any trouble with the POW’s ever, quite a good bunch, course we used to have to take them right almost into Birmingham on the rail to help dig out the coal trains and they all had a sort of a cape mac the army had presented them with a shape or a space at the back for the kit bag to go, but that was quite convenient, they used to fill that up with coal to take back to fill there own huts and we got some aswell and we used to have, I mean I’ve seen corrugated roof of a Nissan hut actually glowing red with the fire. Course we had to be on our toes a bit with the going into residential places in Birmingham and Walsall because the people would come down in their back garden and hand out hot drinks, didn’t want too much fraternization here, keep them on their toes and the Christmas. Well they celebrate Christmas, New Year far more robustly than we do and new years eve the noise coming from the main hut in the compound was terrific, I thought at first there was a fight going on, it was raucous, rowdy, singing away, and I took a chap with me and we went in and peered around to see there was only good humored fun. They humour was a bit weird, I mean chaps dressing up as women, very queer. That was their humour, thoroughly enjoying themselves, and we had a pipsqueak of an officer who came round, whose’ in charge here, I am sir, Guard commander keep that racket down sir, any suggestions sir, I've only two men spare, can I have your permission to fire some shots over their heads, don’t talk ridiculous Said the officer, any other suggestions then sir and of course the suggestion was let them get on with it until midnight and they got tired same as everybody else and it gradually died down. It was a bit hair-raising at the time.

One of the POW’s made me a cigarette case of wood, which I’ve still got, and one side it depicted a picture of Norwood paragon cycling club colours, green black and yellow and on the other side was the regimental badge and he only made this with hand tools, there was no machinery atall it was all hand made and I was very pleased with it, I'm very proud of it.

In April 1947, the 27th of April 1947 I went to the Red Lion Public House in Rugeley, there were about 16 of us I suppose, practically all the hut and a few extras coming. And we were buying, first round they brought individually and come the next round I said just a minute lads, today is my 21st Birthday and I’ll buy the next round. I never brought a drink at all, and I'd never seen so much drink flowing, or I hadn't seen so much drink flowing as I had before. And I got really merry, only to be expected on your 21st birthday trying to drink two glasses of beer at once sort of thing, Aspidistra plant being well watered a chap called Fred Cleaver came into the room and said Corporal he said that girl you were going out with she’s in the next room. I said oh is she so I’ll have a look Hilda was sitting there with a gang of girls and 1 or 2 soldiers. So I pushed my way in and sat next to her and decided that we would finish up my party and meet in the dance hall. So I staggered over to the dance floor I wasn’t to bad, I was a bit merry but I knew what I was doing and we met up and I said look I'm going downstairs to sober up then a bit go to the funfair afterwards and that was agreed. I went downstairs to the washroom and soaked my head in cold water and I passed out and consequently I found myself locked into the public toilets, gates had been pulled across and locked me in, not deliberately the chap was closing up for the night but he didn’t look for any soldiers laying around then Hilda came down tried to find me and one of the lads said oh I saw him go home ages ago and all that business. And that was my 21st birthday and I thoroughly enjoyed a good time.

The story I'm gonna tell at the moment is robbing the bank. I read company orders and saw that I was down to accompany the officer collecting the money from the bank in Rugeley and he had got to have an armed guard so reading these instructions properly I went to the stores and drew out five rounds of ammunition from my rifle. When we got to the bank, by the way the officer in charge, I think from memory his name was henry, but he was an absolute double of Captain Mannering, he was first, Captain Mannering came afterwards, but he was an absolutely double, I mean he could have been Mannering rehearsing a part for all I know. Anyway we went into the bank and as we got through the door I said to him I’ve slipped the safety catch on sir. What, you mean that’s loaded? Yes sir. You idiot, what have you got that for? Company regulations sir, says you must be escorted by an armed guard. A man with an empty rifle is not armed. I’ll talk to you later, and off he went and you stay there. So anyway I got him going so I stayed outside and my future sister in law came along and we had a brief chat cause I put on my sentry attitude anyway out comes the officer he’s boiling he is and he said you don’t mean you’ve put a bullet up the spout, it says you must have an armed escort and you have an armed escort. Oh dear. And I think it must have got round the officers mess because they never picked me for that job again.

Eventually there came a time for the Germans to be returned to their fatherland. It was heading now towards Autumn, I didn’t, hadn't made a record of the actual dates, but of course the German soldiers, POW’s that we were guarding eventually got to be returned to Germany because the war in Europe was over and they had to get rid of them. Now you’d think that would be a simple task but not so when beaurocracy gets it heads up, oh no you’ve got the rules, you’ve got the regulations. Only on the fringe of it I don’t really know the ins and outs of what was going on, but the Red Cross stipulate that prisoner of war can only carry so much weight. I don’t know what the weight was but he could only carry so much weight. To me it seems if can carry it, all well and good not sort of you will carry that from there to there this is all sort of what you can take home. I’ve never worked out yet how they got so much stuff. I know before I went to Rugeley there had been lots of shifts around with the Germans, different camps, and I think some of them had actually got married Bert Trautman the Manchester city goalkeeper, so there was money there and they’d collected a load of stuff and so first time out they took them to a football field, there was a platform weighing machine and course everybody failed, they were way way over the regulation Red Cross limit. Why they couldn’t let the soldiers get on with it, they said if they want to carry that amount, you know let them carry it. Anyway he said no you can’t have that, that weight, better take some stuff out. Anybody who has saved up stuff to carry home, there not just gonna part wit it on the spot but that’s what they wanted them to do. So the RSM said tell them to take two items out of their bag, ridiculous, I mean obviously there gonna take the two lightest items and the weight hardly altered how they ought to. So then they said, another cruel, sadistic idea, lay it all out and we, we the soldiers will go along and take five items out their load to lighten the load. Not only was it cruel it was heartless, it was a job we didn’t want to do. Anyway we had to do it so their stuff was laid out and you advance towards the bed and the POW’s looking at you, pleading in his eyes and your hand goes towards an object and ok, I wont take that I’ll take this, I weren’t gonna take anything, and i hadnt got the heart to really. So that failed so then it hit upon we found out aswell that while we were trying to take stuff to lighten the load they were taking stuff and hiding it in the hedge on the edge of the football field, and also unbeknown to us and the POW’s the Whitehall had sent down a gang of toffee nose blokes to search their huts to see what they’d left and concealed which obviously once they got back into that they could put back into their kit bag They were shattered with the amount of stuff being left so that they could take later. The sort of things they were I mean they were no idiots, they were setting themselves up for civilian street especially those going to the Russian occupied no idea what they were going into and they’d sort of make plans got hundreds of needles, threads, cottons he was going into the haberdashery business and he was organised a whole range of knitting needles and a whole range of cotton, start taking that stuff spoils the whole plan. So they were in 6 & 7’s. It was the red cross that were sticking their heels in they were carrying voluntary, if they want to carry it surely that’s not cruel and if it’s two heavy for them they can kick it outside the boat and into the water we took that sort of attitude. And so a compromise was reached in the normal civil service fashion, nothing sorted really, they were, carrying their stuff, up to them, we were not forcing them to do it, we pleaded with them not to do it and so the red cross decided to turn a blind eye then. And so in due time two or three days all these negotiation was going on and lined up onto a train taking us straight to Harwich. We had to go six of us went as guard The RSM said to me if they want to run let them run, don’t get yourself excited about it and if they don’t want to go back to Germany its up to them. We can guard them no longer and so I commandeered a luggage rack in a compartment, which was my bed and we had a trip to Harwich. When we got there there was a POW boat already in but they had been in North America, Canada, North America and they were bronzed, brown and not only that their uniforms were brand new, sort of brownish colour which matched the shades of suntan and they looked the absolute picture of health, they were returning from a holiday in America. Our poor devils still got ragged old clothes and dirty grey and got the same power as us. They nearly rioted then, they were so angry with themselves and with us and eventually they counted them and they reckoned they’d got enough and it was the right number and I watched them struggle up the plank with these packages, they could see others helping, holding, carrying their packages or someone else’s, they got them on board It was no longer our problem they signed for them like right away you go lads, shook hand’s with a few, you know there was no tears but some were a bit sorry to lose us and away they went.

During the whole of 1947 people were gradually being demobbed from the forces, they had various ways of doing it, obviously length of service and age and all these things came into it and there was a steady trickle of people leaving. We all was on tenterhooks that some government announcement would say stop, we’d stop for three months or something like that but gradually as your day got nearer the worry began to tell.

Finally I left the POW camp 175 on the 3rd November 1947 and was discharged from Aldershot on the same day. We were given paid leave until the 29th December 1947 and then I returned to my employers Brown Brothers and couldn’t exactly pick up where I left off but things were going well I was quite all right. I obviously went back to Rugeley several times to see Hilda who I eventually married in 1948.

© Copyright of content contributed to this Archive rests with the author. Find out how you can use this.