Hitler's British Slaves (11 page)

If the prisoners thought working conditions in coal mines were bad it was soon discovered there were even worse places they could be sent to. Many discovered that copper mining involved working in even more cramped conditions. At the huge Eisleben complex prisoners were called for the early morning shift at 3.50 a.m., which was followed by a second call at midday for the next shift to get ready. They soon collected their equipment and entered the cage, a cold draught whistling past them as the lift slowly made its way underground. Among them a few of the lucky ones were issued kneepads, but most worked with no protection. Nor were they issued helmets to protect themselves from falling rocks. Instead they simply fixed their lamps to their army caps, the weight often pulling the caps over their eyes, and the heat of the lamps burning their foreheads. From the base of the lifts they had to walk as far as 2 kilometres to reach a second lift which descended even further into the bowels of the earth. Then they began a nightmare walk downhill over rough paths. Hardly able to see through the gloom, and bent double in the tiny passages, they bumped their heads on the low ceilings, often arriving at their workplace with bloodstained faces. It would not take long for the sweat of their exertions to wash away the blood.

In the depths of the mine there was a main roadway with seams leading off from each side. The prisoners looked around themselves to see pit props straining under the weight
of the rocks above them. All knew if these were to give way there would be no escape. At the end of each side tunnel were the workfaces where miners blasted and bored into the rock, pushing it behind them to be loaded into the wagons. Rails were laid in the side tunnels along which the miners had to push carts laden with copper ore. These tunnels were sometimes no taller than 39 inches and the prisoners shuffled along on their knees, pushing the heavy carts. In these conditions they worked for as much as 12 hours a day. For those at the face there was seldom an opportunity to stand up for hours upon end. Alongside the German miners and French or Russian prisoners, they lay down to eat their meagre lunches.

Though an experienced coal miner, Alec Reynolds found himself sent from Stalag IVb to a copper mine. Familiar as he was with life beneath ground, the conditions there were far from what he had known:

A copper mine and a coal mine are two very different places. In a copper mine they only work at very shallow faces, just three or so foot. You only find copper in thin strips in the rock. So you sit down at the face with a hydraulic drill and just work the thin seam. They keep it as low as possible. Though I was a miner it was still hard work. I had this long handled shovel. My job was to lay on my back where they were working and shovel the ore into these wagons. Then we pushed them down the incline on rails. I wore shoes made from pulp. You could ride the wagons down the slopes. You could judge the corners and turn the wagons. But at speed it would blow your lamp out and leave you in darkness. Then blokes would push the wagons along to where they were tipped out. We didn’t have knee pads or any protective clothing. No helmets. We worked anything up to 12 hours a day. It was heavy going. It was hard work for me, so what must it have been like for the other blokes? I found one bloke sitting there crying in the mine. The Germans were all laughing at him, so I told him not to cry in front of the Germans. That time I walked off the job.
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Within any mine the worst place was the face. These were usually narrow galleries little more than 6 feet high and running for as much as 100 yards. At the face teams of men cut, drilled and blasted into the seams of coal, then shovelled the ore into tubs on conveyor belts or the wagons of the small underground railways. In many locations gases built up causing men to collapse from carbon monoxide poisoning. Some also worked in mines where iron pit props were used. Though supposedly stronger than wooden props they gave no warning when they were under pressure and a roof fall was likely. As the prisoners learnt about life within a mine they learnt to recognize the signs that a collapse was due. Alec Reynolds spotted the familiar sounds:

When you’re down a mine you hear thumping, and that’s rocks falling down from the ceiling. That’s alright, you know it’s holding. But when you’re in a place and you hear the thin fall of dust you know it’s all coming down and you get out of the way. One time we were working – it was just a few feet high – I felt the dust coming down on me. I said ‘Out!’ so we sat outside. Along came the foreman and he asked me what we were doing. I told him. So he must have guessed I was a miner. And that night, after we’d finished, the roof caved in. So the other chaps down there were very frightened, but they got used to it. Most learnt to cope with it. A few people got downhearted, they’d come back from the mine and just lay on their bed. They’d never wash, you couldn’t help them. But one thing that made us feel better was that we lived downstairs and the Ruskies lived upstairs. And they had everything worse than us.
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One of the most terrifying experiences came when the coalface had to be moved forward. To prevent too large an area of supported roof in one area the overhead rock would be deliberately collapsed. This entailed new supports being put in place at the foremost parts of the face and then pulling the supports out from the previously worked area. This had to be done carefully and quickly to avoid the inevitable rockfall. It was a tense moment as miners pulled away the supports and then jumped aside into the supported area – it was also a moment accompanied by an almost inevitable number of casualties.

Conditions may have varied from mine to mine but they were, more often than not, appalling and even experienced miners found them intolerable. As Frederick Williams, who had been an insurance clerk when called up for service, later wrote: ‘Had we been adequately fed it would have been, in the most cases, heavy and unpleasant, however in the circumstances it was deadly.’
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In the words of another man, the conditions were such that it took just one shift to realize the mine was being worked: ‘with a complete disregard for human life’.
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After their first day’s work underground some men were found prostrate and had to be carried to the surface, their exhausted bodies too weak to move. In time their finger joints grew permanently stiff from gripping picks and shovels for hours on end. Cuts and bruises became a part of life, something that could not be avoided, but which had to be kept clean in an attempt to ward off infection. In time most displayed the dark scars where coal dust had got into their wounds leaving a permanent black mark on their skin. Since few could really keep themselves clean blood poisoning
grew increasingly common among the injured miners. Shuffling along over the sharp rocks in tiny tunnels, whose depth was measured in inches, left many prisoners with cut knees. If these became infected they were simply transferred to ‘light duties’, which in a mine could mean pushing wagons full of copper ore and tipping them into larger wagons by hand. The only benefit was that at least they were working standing up. When wagons came off the rails the prisoners would have to lift them back by hand. They soon learned to line up with their backs against the wagons and use what little strength they had to force them back onto the rails. Many found themselves losing fingernails to the clips that held the wagons to the cables that pulled them along the tunnels. More injuries followed when the prisoners found themselves slipping on the rails, their hobnailed army boots unable to grip on the shiny surface.

Even in salt mines, which in peacetime were used as cure centres for the sick, there was no respite for the prisoners. The salt may have prevented their wounds getting infected but it was of little benefit – they still faced much discomfort. One of the worst jobs endured by those working at salt mines was the cleaning of the drying machine. This was a barrellike container into which wet salt was fed and then dried by having coal dust ignited within the drum. All day long hammers pounded the sides of the drum to loosen the dried salt. Periodically the prisoners had to enter the drum to hack away at the compacted salt. They had to wait for the drum to cool before they could enter, although the temperature was never allowed to drop far enough for them to remain within the drum for more than a few minutes. There was little respite for the workers. For 12 hours a day they toiled deep inside these mountains, where salt icicles hung from the rock walls, their mouths getting uncomfortably dry and unbearably
thirsty courtesy of the salty dust that hung in the air. Travelling to and from work on miniature trains passing along narrow rock tunnels, they spent nearly all the daylight hours far below ground, breaking the salt walls with pick axes, then shovelling the salt into a truck. Unseen by sunshine, their skin turned white and they found their fat falling off them, until all weighed less than 10 stone.

In some areas men were forced down the mines with just one day off in three weeks – one such group endured this relentless work inside a mine that was constantly flooded. At Klausberg the prisoners found themselves working seams just 2 feet deep. Yet in other mines ex-miners among the prisoners were shocked to see seams twice the depth of the ones they had been used to back home. This complicated their work since though they were used to listening out for the coal ‘working’ above them, with ceilings at such heights, their ears couldn’t pick out the sound of movement, making it difficult to predict falls. Furthermore, many Silesian mines were found to have steep seams which made work difficult. In these steeply sloping areas they were at increased danger since when coal or rock fell from the ceiling it bounced and rolled towards the unsuspecting miners, often causing serious injury. Even worse were the seams within the Pfeiler mine. Here the coal seam, worked by the prisoners, was vertical. As they drilled and dug into the coalface they were working with the ceiling up to 20 feet above them. The risks from falling rocks were great but still they worked on, knowing that their exposed skulls would be crushed by any major fall.

The conditions meant that wherever possible the miners contrived to ensure they worked in the safest places within the mines, although of course this was not always possible and many found themselves working the coalface. Most tried to make sure they could work on the underground railways,
pushing or pulling carts full of rock through areas least likely to see falls. The easiest way to ensure they got the safest jobs was to show a complete inability to do the dangerous jobs, to the extent that local workers didn’t want them on their teams. This was not a major concern where the prisoners worked alongside Germans, who were, at least in theory, the enemy. The problems arose when the prisoners worked alongside Poles. With the prisoners avoiding work it was the Poles who suffered causing an antagonism between the supposed allies – a difficult situation when the same Poles were also the source of black market food enjoyed by the POWs.

At the Brandfeld mine conditions were so bad that even the commandant of Stalag VIIIb complained to the German High Command that the managers ‘abuse and exploit’ the prisoners and even forced them to buy their own Red Cross parcels. Regardless of what was contained within the parcels the POWs were forbidden to purchase more than three bars of soap a month, and even when they had a chance to wash few had towels to dry themselves with. Those that did found the Germans charged the prisoners to get the towels laundered. Additionally they had to pay for any repairs to their lamps and claimed that on the weekend double shift there seemed to be higher levels of prisoners working compared to civilians. But that was not the worst of it. The mine was situated alongside a disused mine that was burning. Such was the heat that spread into the Brandfeld mine that the civilian miners did just 15 minutes work and then rested for 15 minutes. For the prisoners no such breaks were allowed, instead they had to keep working through.

It was not just the breaks that separated civilian workers from the prisoners. At one mine the prisoners recorded how at the end of their day’s labours they were forced to remain
underground for up to an hour until all the civilians had returned to the surface. For men already spending as much as 12 hours a day working the loss of what little leisure time remained was a serious blow.

Recognising these concerns the Foreign Office made attempts, via the Swiss government, to ensure the Germans were careful over those men employed underground. In July they wrote:

the employment in a mine of a man who is without previous experience in mine working is likely to be injurious to the health of any but those of above average fitness and physique … I am accordingly to request that enquiries may be instituted as to the manner in which, if at all, prisoners are medically examined in Germany before being sent into the mines and in particular to what extent enquiry is made into the past medical history of those whom the Germans intend to employ upon this work.
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Their protestations had little effect and the Red Cross continued to report ‘clerks, students and professional men’
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working down the mines.

Undergound mines were not the only places where the prisoners were to face the prospect of unceasing toil in exhausting conditions. At the Grube Erika work camp the prisoners mined lignite, a soft brown coal similar to peat, used for fuel. The men worked in open cast pits:

in immense wide excavations of several hundred metres. The beds of lignite are found at a level which varies from 30 to 80 metres below the level of the ground. Dredger buckets remove the sandy soil which carries the lignite and the latter is loaded into panniers on trams which transport it to the neighbouring briquette factory. The lignite is impregnated with water and the men who work at the loading and unloading of the panniers work practically in the water. The work is done under the open sky and is very laborious because the lignite, being full of water, is very heavy. The workmen are not provided with rubber boots.
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