Imprisonment and Slave Labour 1940 - 1945 -Part l

EDWARD HOULT

EAST SURREYS - no. 6144980

CAPTURE, IMPRISONMENT AND SLAVE LABOUR - 1940 TO 1945

I was wounded in France in l940, my regiment the 2/6 East Surreys was well behind enemy lines and there were ambushes everywhere. It all began when tanks suddenly burst through our position at Conteville where we were in fox holes. We were with four 2 pounder anti-tank guns which sprang to life as the tanks roared up. I was awoken by the banging and pinging going on. Two minutes later we were behind enemy lines as the tanks went on past us.

Being lorried infantry we had been mobile so far when one evening we were driving towards the South of where we were and a machine gun opened up and set all our lorries on fire. Bullets were chopping leaves off the tree branches a foot above my head. We left the lorries quickly and about twenty of us found ourselves quite a large hut with double doors, each one at least 4’0” wide. The doorway was set back into the hut like in an alcove with a window each side. In the morning there was a knocking on the door and we heard ‘raus raus’ so one of us at the window fired off a bren gun into the offending gentleman who had nothing more to say !

We then got the order to burst out of the doors which we did. The poor chap’s body was on the right of the hut. I had reached about six feet from the door when a burst of machine gun fire hit me and my rifle which had a hole bored neatly in the stock about 6” from the muzzle. All the wood was stripped off and I was sent flying. Anyway we did get away and the heavy machine gun was captured.

Again we found ourselves outside a farmhouse in a small walled enclosed area. The farmer gave us all a bowl of something. Coffee I suppose. Then we had an alarm and scarpered. We found ourselves in a corn field and there were only 5 of us left at this point. A column of Jerry tanks came along a road in front and there were also some on the road at the back so we had to wait for nightfall to creep across the road full of tanks. This as you may remember was when Hitler told his tank men to stop the advance.

While we had no idea where were going, North, South East or West we had to get past the tanks so the next night after the tanks had appeared we crept to the road. It was bocaged, that is the road was sunk away from the field height so we had to get through the hedge quietly, climb on to a tank top and ease down to the road. We presumed there was no-one in the tank as it was covered with tarpaulin. However, the next road was full of tanks as well and it was close to sunrise and dispatch riders were racing up and down the roads so we went to the middle of the cereal field we were in, wheat I suppose, which was about 3 ft high. It smelt very strange but I suppose it was the wheat. Night fell and suddenly we were surrounded by armed Germans who had thought we were rabbits as we raised our heads to spy out the land. We were taken to a big white marquee which had a long trestle table covered with white cloths inside it. Outside was the General and a corporal. ‘Anyone wounded? they asked. ‘Yes, me’ The corporal examined the wound. ‘Already dressed sir’ he said. He was told what I told the tank man, we hadn’t eaten for four days although it was actually a lot longer than that. The General of the 7th Panzer Division ordered the chef who was all dressed in chefs’ clothes, to make us a sandwich. He did so with very thick slices of bread with the German equivalent of bully feef.

After this we were transported in the General’s half track to Front Stalag l7l where we came by rice and beef which was good. After this I passed out and found myself with a French army doctor who had given me a tetanus jab and put me on a ‘no marching’ category. I and others were then lorried to Forges les Aux, a spa, which by then was an Anglo-French military hospital. After some weeks I was sent to Hopital D’Ernemout in Rouen. This had been a convent and we all had a bed and a cell each. When some of us had recovered sufficiently we were walked to the Rouen camp, a big ex British IBD (Infantry Base Depot) of Nissen huts. As we walked through the streets French civilians stood at the kerb, hats removed and heads bowed in tribute to us.The camp was on Champ de Courses, a race course.

After several weeks our time of convalescence was up and we were transported to Trier, near Saarbrucken and Kaiserslautern. We were in a camp on top of a big hill close to another big hill. We had to work on coal trucks on the railway siding. This was Christmas l940 - l94l. I had to empty dust filled coal wagons but into what I can’t remember. Our sole diet was cabbage soaked in vinegar out of barrels once a day, nothing else whatever, not even a Red Cross parcel.

One night we had an air raid, not much, one plane I expect. It was a nuisance raid and between two hills ack ack was coming up and turned out to be flaming onions, the first and only time I saw them.

At Christmas the Levenbrau sent us a bottle of lager each, ten Junos (fags) and a packet of carraway biscuits, so good luck to Trier and malhereuse to all the rest.

The road up to the camp was a long way and very steep. Going up wasn’t too bad but coming down in the morning was something else. It was frozen in the morning but had thawed by the evenings. So in the mornings as the road was tree lined we had to aim at a tree and let go. If we missed our tree we would have landed in Trier with a wallop. When Trier was finished with us we were packed on a cattle truck and trained to Lamsdorf Stalag 8B, the Auschwitz one.

Before we were consigned to the pits about twenty of us all veterans of the same hospitals at Forges les Eaux and Rouen were marched to a field at Quellengrund, Kreis Gross Strehlitz with picks and shovels. Big green field with nothing on it beside a busy truck road. We wondered what was on ! We were told to dig so we did and hit stone at about l8”. There was a softish thin layer and the digging area became wider and as we went down the stone layers became thicker till we eventually reached a layer about 2 ft thick. We had been leaving ledges behind us so as to to be able to pass up the stone as we went down. It snowed now and again to add to our immense pleasure. The men at the bottom used a large steel bar 6 ft long and two inches thick with a large knob on the top and managed to break through the bottom layer so the bits became much larger to pass up.

A Two foot guage railway was built and V shaped wagons, the sideways tipping kind, so the stones were loaded up to get the stone away from the quarry site. That is what it became, a full blown quarry. Then we had to break up the stone to cobble size The village main road was a dirt road about 12 ft wide and this had to be covered with a thick layer of sand and then of all things we had to lay a cobbled road.

To awaken our interest a main line railway to Poland was close by and long train loads of tanks, lorries with guns behind them were streaming up to Poland, day and night. We were told matter of factly that Adolf had asked Joe for permission to push his forces through Russia in order to get at ‘us’ in North Africa. This is possible but seems to have been called off, or was it ?

While at Sosnavitz in Poland, not a long way from Hindenburg, where I was a ‘guest’ worker in the Konigen Louise mine, I was ‘invited’ to work in the Preutzag mine known as Graf Renouf, Stein Kohl und Bergwerk, A.G. I lost a lot of teeth here. At first they were filled two at a time then a civil dentist decided to extract them two at a time. This seemed to me a way of extending the number of my visits.

There were a few accidents at this mine, one of which involved me in a hair breadth escape. I was supplying the wagons at a coal face and withdrawing the full ones, at a part of the mine where the pit props were the tallest I had seen and they were all creaking. The entrance was about 7’ high, opening out into a vast cave of a place. One of the fillers of the wagons suddenly grabbed his acetylene lamp and jumped back saying the prop he was working near seemed to have sunk a bit in the sand. The whole mine in Silesia was operated by taking the bottom layer of coal and then filling the gap by building wooden dams with a large guage pipe going into the gap and pumping sand and water till the gap was filled, the water running out. The coal seam was quite huge in thickness. When the sand settled the process began again, working on top of the sand, hence the plausibility of the sinking prop. It was decided it was a false alarm and work began again. Josek suddenly grabbed his lamp again and shouted ‘everybody out’ We all fled and with only seconds to spare as the whole cave collapsed and by the next day the entrance had been sealed by props six inches apart. The props inside were mostly gone and in the middle was a lump rock as big as a house and an enormous hole in the roof where it had fallen from.

At another time a long coal face worked by Poles suddenly fell in and all the Poles died. It took weeks to tunnel into this coal face and we saw remains taken out in wheel barrows daily. On another occasion we had an earthquake. Mild of course as otherwise I would not be here. I was in a section alone when the whole place jumped, knocking me over, turning over the wagon I was handling and completely wrecking my local environment though nothing caved in. I was shortly on my feet again looking around at the mess, stunned by it all when a shout told me to get out. When I arrived at the main tunnel everybody was making for the shaft but there was no panic. There was sand everywhere, one of the dams, still wet, had burst due to the quake and we went ‘home’.

At this camp we had a ‘fair’ Christmas which was helped by a few who knew how to make a brew with prunes, yeast and sugar in a large barrel, all of which they managed to obtain. We had a stage on which there was a revue with sketches, comics etc. a band and the ‘brew’.

Next day we went to another section of the mine. Foggia airdromes had been taken and USAAF Flying Fortresses used them. They soon came streaming over us. By this time I had decided this mine was a good place to get out of. I applied for transfer on account of lack of teeth causing stomach problems and by a miracle it was granted. So I was taken to Teschen, Stalag 344, where a medic chased round the camp after me with tri-silicate of magnesia twice a day. The diet there was of a very coarse type of runner bean. Nothing else that I can remember.

I was rather surprised to find the Vistula River was close, if not in the camp. There was a vast barack there full of Russians. They never seemed to come out. As I had a guitar I was invited into the band but only had two sessessions with them before I had to go back to Lamsdorf Stalag VIIIB the main base. After a short spell there out I went again to a shoe factory in the Odertal (Oder Valley). It was not bad there but what food there was started running out till there was nothing.

We got a new commandant who was a screamer, a strategy calculated to terrify everyone. However, we trained him over weeks and I think he respected us eventually.

The word came after a few months for us all to return to Lamsdorf. The heat was on. The Yanks were over us every day and when they looked threatening we were allowed to go into the surrounding woods. I remember the manager saying to me ‘another ten minutes of terror’, which indeed it was.

One day a large flight of Bl7’s (Flying Fortresses) came over us, lower than usual and another large flight of Liberators crossed them underneath. The noise was paralysing. However, they had other targets, lucky for us.

I met Nina there and I actually walked with her, hand in hand back from the woods, but not for long of course as if caught she would have had her hair shaved off !

One day we we had a string of bombs across the camp. Fortunately we were in the air raid shelter, the only camp I was in that had one. While we were too close to hear the explosions we could hear the blast swishing through the trees and when we went to our work we only saw one crater 6’ x 6’ only a couple of feet away from 3 or 4 wooden sheds, newly erected probably for potato gatherers at a nearby field. There were three steps to each shed and laying up the steps was a jagged piece of bomb 2 ft long. The sheds were warped about 6” out of true. The factory wasn’t hit ! Nor was the camp.

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