Imprisonment and Slave Labour 1940 - 1945 -Part 3 of 3

After Freunbeiewtzen we dithered round the Belzig and Beelitz area and finally landed in Luckenwald (not Backenwald) in a camp on a hill overlooking the town. I think it was called Siednitz or similar. It was a fairly good camp and it dawned on us that this was the end of the road. We managed to get a bit cleaned up. I was at the begining of 8 a dysentery attack, fortunately it had held off all through the ‘march’. Luckily there were toilets opposite our barrack and the British MD’s office. He could do nothing for me but gave me a bottle of halibut oil capsules. Twice a day after the Russians came somebody dumped an insulated container of a thick pea soup.

The other occupants of the camp were Italians and Jugoslavs. All were very friendly towards us. They used to go on foraging parties and came back with sacks of farm produce. They gave us a sack of millet and we were brewing up millet when we felt the need until one day there was an increasing rumble, the ground seemed to shake and suddenly I saw a tank driving along our barbed wire mowing it down and following were other tanks with Russian soldiers sitting on top of them. They took over the camp. That was when the pea soup started and it was more than enough.

Rumour had it that the German ex commandant had bunked but the Russians had caught up with him and ended his days.

We were at this camp for a few weeks and one day a column of open trucks, US army lined up outside the camp, if there was an outside with the barbed wire flattened. The Russians wouldn’t let us go and chased off the lorries. They said we would all have to be identified and registered first which was of course quite in order. Registration began the next day.

One day there was an air raid and as Zossen, a massive German army HQ and Berlin were not far away I am not sure which was getting the treatment. There must have been a massive surrender and as were were on a bit of a hill above Luckenwald we saw what looked like a flood of black oil came from the direction of the bombing seeping along the lower ground. It was the Germans, masses of them, about ten deep and there were thousands of them. I supppose they were all headed for the way they had made us come.

A day or two after that was VE day and the Russians celebrated by firing everything they had into the air from places we didn’t even know there were Russians. We couldn’t see anybody.

I should mention that when the Yanks came first, and most of us were on their lorries, we got chased off them and further down the line there was tommy-gun fire. I heard of no-one getting hurt though and after VE day the Yanks came for us again and we all boarded the lorries with the approval of the Russians.

I got into the leading American jeep next to the driver. He didn’t say a word to me all the way to Halle aerodrome, a l09 fighter drome,. I expect he was glad to be shot of me as if I didn’t smell like a pole cat I don’t know why !

We stayed the night at Halle, on the way we could see Dakotas circling and taking off after landing for another load, 24 at a time. While at Halle we all had a good meal. I had the job of slicing dozens of snowy white fluffy loaves. I reckon I ate as much as I sliced or so it seemed. I was lucky I had no after effects.

There was no hassle for a place in an American Air Force Dakota. I read that they were favouring their own chaps first but that is not true. The plane had bucket seats, aluminium each side, for paratroopers and they were cold. We couldn’t go above l0,000 feet as the planes weren’t pressurised.

We landed at Brussels for the start of operation Exodus and spent the next day re-kitting with new uniforms etc, and had baths and slept on a sprung bunk bed for the first time since we left England 6 years before. So back in the army proper.

We had a couple of days and had a chance to wander round. They had given us some money so I was able to buy a few presents and then we were driven to the aerodrome. We were put into the bomb bay of a Lancaster which, with gun turrets on full alert took us to Ford aerodrme near Worthing. This full alert of course was wise as there may have been a nutter or two bent on revenge. While we are at Luckenwald after VE day a plane went over the camp and dropped a bomb on the far end. I didn’t hear of any damage or casualties though.

After driving in lorries over what seemed to me to be over toy hills after the plains etc. of Germany, we arrived at a camp at Sompting where we had regular food for the first time since we left home. We were brought back into service life then given 3 months leave. We were then called back and went to a retraining camp near Amersham for assessment. The march had lasted abour four months through the German winter. Our daily rations were a loaf and a piece of Tilsitor cheese between l0 men - enough to keep a rat alive ! A German guard who was a lance corporal had his own warped sense of humour used to ride up and down the ranks on a bicycle with a long loaf strapped to his carrier at the back hoping one of us would try to grab it, presumably so he could shoot him for attacking him. I hope the Russians gave him his deserts.

There was no water available to us, except once, when we went through a town. The advance guards asked the locals to put out buckets of water for us to help ourselves which they did, making us a little less dehydrated. By the time we arrived at Schweidnitz barracks my hands were going blue and I thought I wasn’t long for this world. Luckily at this point we were sent down the hill to the barracks with our billy-cans and were given a marvellous thick hot barley soup. I went up twice and got away with it.

We had got to the state where we would steal food at any opportunity. Once we passed a cart full of red onions and just jumped and pinched one or whatever we could. I remember finding myself in a field pinching brussel sprouts. I had never seen them growing before. Another time I spotted a clamp by the road about five feet high, like a tiny Nissen hut , covered in earth and straw. Before any one knew it I was in it as the end was open. I found it wasn’t full of potatoes but mangel worzels. Anyway I loosened one when a bullet whipped by my left ear and then another by my right one. The guard must have been a crack shot as we had already learned of their firing procedure, one to the left and one to the right, probably tracer bullets. The third would have put me out of my misery so I hurried out with my prize mangel worzel. Strangely nothing else happened and I regained the column.

Another time I was caught in a cellar on a farm nicking potatoes and was dragged up before the guard commander. He looked at me and said ‘Ach! let him go’. I must have been a pitiful sight brought about by their lack of care for us but I did feel after that incident that someone was watching over us otherwise where were we getting the stamina to keep going ? I often wonder why I never noticed the noise of the bombing of Dresden as we were so close. Even from Bautzen I would have thought we should have heard it but with the Russian guns ‘rolling’ in the distance I suppose we had become inured to noise.

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