A Glider Pilot's Story - continued (23)

CHAPTER 23

Our Journey from Woerden started in the early morning when we had seen the launching of the V2 rocket referred to in the last chapter. Some of the other occupants of our barrack room were to be in transit though we had no idea for how long we would all be together or for how long we would be travelling. Though none of our captors had given any indication the apparent generosity of the rations we were given suggested that it might be for more than one day.

We travelled in what was more or less a northerly direction and at one point in the journey came into the town of Amersfoort. We passed very close to what was obviously a concentration camp. Behind the wire were shaven-headed prisoners whose striped garb was adorned with the Star of David. Not far away was a large barracks and here we took on several sacks of sawn wood for the gas producer. We continued on our way at no great speed and in the early evening the lorry pulled into the forecourt of what appeared to be a cinema. Here we were taken to the rear of the building and remained there all through the night in a large kitchen seated on wooden chairs around the room in the centre of which was a large wooden table. I had persuaded all the others to eat all the rations that we had been given. Some of them were at first reluctant wondering what they would do for the morrow. I pointed out that it was the duty of the Germans to feed us and that if we had no food left they would have to provide more.

In charge of this establishment was a Wehrmacht Veldwebel who greeted us in English on our arrival and from time to time looked in on us in the room where we sat with our guards. He was rather a 'hail fellow well met' type of character having been an 'homme de confidence' in a small P.O.W. camp. When he discovered that I was a senior N.C.O. he went out of his way to be friendly. Somewhat idealistic he was in favour of cease fires on Christmas Day with football matches between the opposing forces. He admired the English, was not too happy about the Canadians, and detested the Poles.

During one of his absences I made my first overtures to the guards for a re-supply of rations pointing out that on other occasions at the end of the day the guards had been responsible for collecting the prisoners' rations from the canteen. The Unter-Officier was having none of this and my fellow prisoners seeing what was going on began to have a somewhat lower opinion of me than hitherto. I didn't pursue the topic but waited for the return of the Veldwebel.

While he was talking to Phil I started on the Unter-Officier with my limited German of "mussens, habens, brengens, essens, gehens and so forth. The opening gambit being "Wir mussen essen haben!" When I was well into my stride with the Unter-Officier persisting that we had been given rations for two days and my equal persistence that we knew nothing of this, the Veldwebel decide to intervene. "What seems to be the trouble Staff-Sergeant ?" he asked. When I had explained my side he questioned the German corporal who was obviously maintaining his position. Then turning to me he told me that we had been given enough food for two days. Smilingly I replied that if this indeed was the case, there had been little enough of it and that more to the point no-one had bothered to tell us where we were going nor for how long we would be on the road. He then apologised for the situation and said that he would see what he could do. There the matter rested and the night wore on with most of us dozing fitfully and uncomfortably on the wooden chairs.

When dawn came and preparations were made for us to continue our journey, my stock in the opinion polls was fairly low since there was no sign of any food coming and there was in prospect a day of foodless travelling. We boarded the lorry and it chugged its way from the forecourt and into the roadway. As it did so, there appeared from the opposite direction some fifty yards away, the Veldwebel accompanied by a Dutch workman carrying a small sack. They were running in our direction, the Veldwebel in the lead calling out as he ran, "Halt! Ein moment!" We banged on the side of the lorry and shouted out. The lorry stopped; the Veldwebel arrived breathlessly and taking the sack from the Dutchman handed it to me. In contained three loaves. My stock rose again in the opinion polls.

Later that day we were to say farewell to Herman and the others who were to continue together into Germany. Phil and I were delivered to a large mill or warehouse in the town of Enschede. This was a transit camp for Air Force prisoners and was staffed by Luftwaffe personnel. There were four other prisoners besides Phil and me. Three were fellow members of an American Fortress crew, shot down on their first mission. Two of them were air gunners called Tex and Shorty and the third, whose name I forget, was the pilot who I recall came from New York. The other was a Spitfire pilot from a Norwegian squadron of the R.A.F.

During the day we were kept in the office of what would have been the gate house to the factory and at night we were taken up to the first floor of the factory and locked up for the night with a toilet bucket in a fairly large galvanised iron cage. We spent a couple of days here, one of which was New Year's Eve. On this occasion we were visited socially by two or three Luftwaffe officers who had brought with them a bottle of Schnapps with which we all drank to the New Year. They were Focke-Wulf 190 pilots from the nearby airfield.

This brief incident was an indication of a certain degree of comradeship between members of similar branches of opposing forces. By this I mean that Vliegers of the Luftwaffe had an affinity with the Fliers of the R.A.F. and similarly members of the Wehrmacht with the Army. Phil and I were fortunate to have a foot in each camp; to the Luftwaffe we were Vliegers and to the Wehrmacht we were Soldaten.

When the next day we were to leave Enschede, we were interviewed by one of our captors. He warned us that we were to be taken into Germany and that we would have to change trains in German cities which had been heavily bombed by the Allied Air Forces. His admonition was to the effect that the ordinary German civilian who may have suffered from the bombing was unlikely to show the same understanding as the Luftwaffe and that we would be well advised not to draw attention to ourselves. This may well have been delivered as a means of making it easier for our guards but there was some force of logic in his argument when he concluded with the words:- "After all, you can hardly expect the guards to defend you against their own people, but they will do their best."

Late in the afternoon of the 2nd January we left Holland and entered Germany. The warehouse in which we were held must have been at the eastern end of Enschede for after walking with our escorts through the rest of the industrial area and the railway sidings we came to the border.

Soon after crossing the border we arrived at the railway station for the German town of Gronau. Here we were taken into the waiting room the walls of which were adorned with anti-Semitic propaganda in the form of a couple of coloured posters. Each of these portrayed a Jew as an almost obscene figure in league with American and British capitalism. The slogans which accompanied these illustrations were designed to leave no doubts in the German mind that Jewry was responsible for all the troubles of the world.

The first train on which we travelled took us to Munster which we reached after dark. Here we changed trains for Essen where another change of train took us to Dusseldorf. This time after some delay, what was obviously a main line express arrived. It was drawn by a monster of a locomotive and included flak cars at each end of its passenger coaches.

The train was very crowded and there were many servicemen among the passengers. Mostly the compartments were occupied by officers and in one I saw a passenger wearing the uniform of a Nazi Party Official. The train thundered on into the night stopping I think at Cologne and Coblenz. When dawn came we were still rushing alongside what was quite obviously the Rhine. We alighted, I think, at what was Mainz, from where we took a local train in the direction of Frankfurt.

As we left this train it began to snow and we walked some distance before arriving at a tram shelter for the last part of our journey. While we waited for the tram we watched a small boy playing in the snow nearby. He was probably about nine years old but I think he was not unused to the sight of prisoners under escort. He returned our glances by sticking out his tongue in our direction. From the tram there was only a short walk to what was our present destination. This was Dulag-Luft, Oberursel, well known to allied airmen who were taken prisoner; the Luftwaffe's interrogation centre for air crew.

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