Hitler's British Slaves (40 page)

In the chaos many of those with sufficient energy soon began forays into the German countryside to see what was on offer. Food and drink were high on their shopping lists,
as were weapons to deter argumentative civilians. Once fed and watered they found new clothing to replace their ragged uniforms. They entered homes and demanded bath water be heated for them before luxuriating in the water and washing away the accumulated dirt of years of captivity. The baths were more than just a way of getting clean, they were a symbol of freedom, a sign that no one would ever again decide where and when they should be allowed to wash.

With both their guards and their liberators gone Alec Reynolds and his mates went to investigate the local town:

There was this distillery where they made schnapps. So we went in and found these bottles. I looked at them and said ‘That’s not schnapps’. Someone else said ‘Try it’. So we opened the bottle and just touched the top of the bottle. It burned my lips. This other bloke swigged a whole lot down. I think it was neat alcohol. He just passed out. We just took him into this house and asked the people to look after him.
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Released from captivity Bryan Willoughby was among a mixed group of prisoners who were also left to their own devices:

Up to the liberation the Germans fed us – in inverted commas. But after liberation we just looked after ourselves. We went into a factory to look for food, then around the villages and town trying to find food, but it was very difficult. We eventually found odd bits, eggs and what have you. But we were under no one’s authority for two weeks. So we just looked after ourselves. We just hung around.
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For some, freedom did not involve the spectacle of liberation by the advancing armies, rather they just wandered off alone.
Emerging into the chaos of a collapsing nation many found it an ideal opportunity to enjoy the mayhem, yet for others it was a time of danger and uncertainty. In Austria one group of prisoners took shelter in a barn after the flour mill where they worked was evacuated. Hiding up by day, they spent the nights scavenging for food. Australian prisoner, Alexander Mansfield, took his turn to feed his mates but was shot and killed by a civilian. After waiting so long for freedom it was a tragic end to the war. Not all were so unfortunate, such as Robert Hallam and his group of mates who left the column they were marching in and headed towards the front line hoping to link up with the Russians. Stopped by German troops they were made to work for three days. Escaping for a second time they decided to head towards the advancing American army. Once more they were recaptured, this time being returned to the column they had originally escaped from. Upon their return their guards explained that they had not been reported as missing since the guards were afraid of punishment.

D-Day veteran ‘Bill’ Sykes was among those who found themselves alone. Having simply ignored his guards and walked away from captivity the 18-year-old Sykes wandered alone through the German countryside for five days. Ravaged by dysentery and facing bitterly cold rainstorms the youngster was in a desperate situation. Salvation came from an unlikely source:

I was picked up by a German patrol and questioned as to my intentions. The major in charge placed me under the guard of an older Sergeant – who had been a prisoner of war in England during WW1 who spoke a fair amount of north-country English – with instructions to take me down to the local jail. Sergeant Paul Tauber was a man full of surprises – first he took me to the local beer tavern where they fed us with whatever small portions of food were available. We drank dark beer with a chaser, which in my state of health was pretty lethal and it didn’t take much to get us both totally inebriated. I was very grateful for this magnificent old soldier’s hospitality. That was the first of Paul’s surprises – next, he excused himself and came back dressed in civilian clothes and said in a broad north-country accent, ‘I don’t know where you’re going son, but I’m going to make my way back home’. We parted company with many handshakes and Paul went on his way into the evening darkness with the rolling gate of a sailor who had drunk too many rums. I never saw my saviour and new friend ever again. I do hope he made it home safely. As for me, I was in no state to travel and have no idea where I slept that night but in my sublime state of inebriation I slept the sleep of the righteous. Next morning, I awoke with a terrible hangover, which took days to disperse, and I staggered onto what appeared to be the village green and sat under a tree where I succumbed to the after effects of the drinks we had consumed and sank into blissful oblivion. Later I found that I was in the small village of Wermsdorf, and much to my relief a German family apparently saw my plight and provided me with shelter for several nights in a hay loft above their garage and gave me whatever food that they could spare. I am ever grateful to them for their kindness. The moral of these two stories is that not all Germans are bad. To close out the particular hectic few weeks in the life of an ex-prisoner, I ought to mention that one evening I met up with a contingent of Russian soldiers on the village green who were celebrating crossing the river Elbe by drinking bottles of vodka. They insisted that I join them in their celebration and of course it was an invitation that I could not refuse, as I did not want to be exiled to Siberia. After the Russian soldiers went on their merry way I made one of my better decisions and decided that the time had come to surrender myself to the American Armed Forces. I later found myself in a hospital in Nuremberg and a week or so later was homebound to a hospital in Nottingham.
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Not all were so sick they had to rely upon the hospitality of German civilians. Instead many of the ex-POWs decided the time had come to take whatever they needed or wanted. Now free, they began to scour the countryside for souvenirs. Many had already clothed themselves in bits and pieces of German uniforms since these were usually the only clothes they could find that weren’t falling to pieces. Now many began to collect German equipment. They hunted for Nazi daggers, ornamental swords and weapons of all descriptions, in particular the legendary Luger pistols. Musical instruments, ornaments, impressive German beer steins, candlesticks, cameras, watches, fountain pens, razors – anything that was portable was stuffed in haversacks ready to take home.

Some among them filled their packs and pockets with jewellery that they stole from local houses. Corporal David Robb of the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders was among them. Released from a work camp he went looting with some Russians. His haul included a gold cigarette case, diamond brooches, gold earrings set with rubies, bracelets, platinum brooches, amethyst cuff links and a gold compact. When he returned home he attempted to sell his loot and the jeweller estimated the total value of the goods at £1,020 – a small fortune in 1945. The problem was that the jeweller believed them to be stolen and reported him to the police. Although following an investigation the police accepted no crime had been committed and let the matter drop, local Customs Officers were less understanding. They decided that since import
duty had not been paid the goods should be confiscated until the corporal was able to pay. With Robb in hospital recovering from TB there was no way he could raise sufficient money and his loot was lost forever.

Bryan Willoughby also went hunting for ‘souvenirs’ that would never reach home:

I kept an eye out for stuff worth looting. I filled two kit bags of things I thought I could sell. Lugers had a price of £10 a time. So I had Lugers and knives. That was the feeling at the time, you didn’t keep things as souvenirs you kept them to make a bit of money. Unfortunately when the RAF came to pick us up they weren’t as easygoing as the Yanks. They said ‘You can’t have that or that, only the bare essentials’ so I lost all my loot. Every bit of it. I should have sold it first but I didn’t have the market.
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Once free, many had one other thing on their mind – women. In the words of one prisoner they spent their new found freedom: ‘scooping up any stray crumpet’.
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James Witte was among them. Having had a sexual relationship with a Belgian woman whilst employed in a German factory, Witte was eager to continue his physical life. He soon befriended a German war widow who initially rebuffed his amorous advances. Eventually she responded:

This time she allowed me to play with her breasts. Greatly heartened by this, and somewhat hardened, I put my hand up her skirt and let it stray to the flesh above her stocking top, but when I slid my eager fingers up her suspenders and towards her knickers she stopped me. By this time I had a great erection which she couldn’t fail to notice. I mentioned this to her, whereupon she undid my trousers taking my penis out. I ejaculated right away much to her amusement.
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Whilst the men who had reached the safety of central Germany were already beginning to rebuild their lives, others were not so fortunate. For those who had not been evacuated westwards, or had chosen to remain behind to await the arrival of the Red Army, a very different fate awaited them. As the camps were evacuated many of the inmates of camp hospitals were raised from their beds to begin the march westwards. The bedridden were often left behind, as were enclosures full of Russian prisoners. At Stalag XXa the bed-bound prisoners and medical staff found the hospitals besieged by Russian POWs who attacked the cookhouse and stole food. The starving Russians were growing increasingly desperate and with no guards left to control them they were free to raid the hospital and surrounding villages.

Another group of 50 British prisoners were left behind in a Russian camp. Too sick to be moved the men – many with pneumonia, diphtheria or frost bite – were simply left on a straw-covered floor with no one to tend to them. At Stalag XXb a group of POWs were forced to remain behind to bake bread for the German army. They worked on even whilst Russian shells were whistling over the camp or exploding around them. All across Poland and Czechoslovakia hundreds of POWs of all nationalities disappeared into the countryside. Their intentions were many and varied. Some could not face the prospect of marching for weeks across the frozen countryside and simply went into hiding. Their knowledge of the local surroundings gained during the years of working in the countryside proved invaluable – many found hiding places on the farms where they had once laboured for the enemy. With the German population fleeing the Red Army the local farmers were free to take over their lands. Many prisoners joined
them, settling down in the farmhouses. As late as September 1945 British officials were still finding pockets of prisoners living in villages across eastern Europe, with many making brides of the local girls who had long been their lovers. One of those who stayed behind was Corporal Albert Heafield of the Gordon Highlanders. Captured in 1940 he had worked on a farm at Katzke near Danzig from August 1941 until February 1945. At the farm he had started a relationship with a woman, Eva Schulz, whose husband had been killed in action in 1941. The following year she gave birth to Heafeld’s child. On 3 February he left the westward bound column and returned to Frau Schulz and their child, remaining there until the Red Army reached the area. He eventually returned home and began the process of applying for permission for his family to be allowed to join him in England.

In Czechoslovakia many of the remaining prisoners gravitated towards Prague where the Foreign Office reported ‘considerable numbers’ of them living in civilian homes with no immediate intention of moving out. In the words of the diplomats they had ‘gone native’.
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They chose to avoid the official reception centres since they distrusted the Russians and whenever they heard of trains heading westwards they converged on railway stations, jumping on board in the hope of reaching the Allied lines. Most were unlucky, instead of passing into freedom the Soviets refused them passage through the front lines and they were forced to make their way back to Prague. By the end of September 1945 6,000 British former prisoners of war had passed through the Czech capital.

Some had more martial intentions. Rather than going into hiding they joined up with bands of partisans, helping to clear up pockets of German troops. When a group of former POWs were found by a team of British agents sent into Austria to find prisoners, they didn’t await transport home. Instead they
asked for weapons and civilian clothes and headed south to team up with Tito’s partisans. In Poland and Czechoslovakia the local fighters also found recruits from among former prisoners. Some among the POWs who had originally been held in camps in Italy already had links with partisan groups, having joined up with them following the surrender of Italy in 1943. Now released from camps in Austria and Germany, a few headed south to rejoin the fight or merely to thank the Italian civilians whose generosity had sustained them in their struggle to evade the Germans. One South African had a particularly good reason to head back to Italy. When he had been recaptured he had left his brother still fighting with the partisans. Now free he headed south in an attempt to make contact.

This free-spirited sense of adventure – hardly surprising in men who had been imprisoned for so long – was a dangerous game, especially with the Red Army controlling eastern Europe and parts of Austria and Germany. Amidst the anarchy of spring 1945 the former prisoners had every reason to be suspicious of the Red Army. Most prisoners had seen the behaviour of the Russians in the Stalags and knew how ruthless they could be. They also knew how much the Poles they had worked alongside feared the Russians and had heard German reports of the brutal treatment meted out by the advancing army. As early as April 1945 the Foreign Office had reported they feared the Russians would not release the prisoners westwards, rather they would hold them in eastern Europe and send them home via the Black Sea. But before such evacuations could take place the prisoners had to survive the arrival of the Red Army. Countless POWs may have lost their lives in the battles that raged across eastern Europe in early 1945. No one was on hand to count the dead or mark their graves. Marching prisoners were targeted in mistake for
German columns and lone men were simply shot down by Russians uncertain as to their identity. Even as late as summer 1945 those former prisoners still at large faced immense danger. One of them, Gunner Pritchard, was shot and killed by the Russians in August 1945, a full three months after hostilities had ceased. More fortunate was Royal Engineer Alan Edwards, who also came into conflict with his erstwhile allies. Captured in 1940 Edwards had served five terms of imprisonment for refusing to work. In early 1945 he was one of the thousands marching westwards through the Polish winter. Whilst on the march he escaped and went into hiding. When the Russians arrived he was put into a camp alongside other refugees, including freed slave labourers of all nationalities and other wandering ex-POWs. Escaping from the camp, he was first robbed of all his documents and possessions by Red Army soldiers and was then put into a ‘concentration camp’ since he was unable to prove his identity. After two weeks of trying to convince the guards as to his identity, he was finally released. Heading home by bicycle he once more came into conflict with the occupation forces when two Russian MPs tried to steal his transport. Edwards argued with them and received a bullet in his leg for his trouble. Now in desperate straits – wounded, alone in a war ravaged country and without any identification – he was saved by the intervention of a local woman. Wanda Skryzpkowska took him in and dressed his wounds, nursing him back to health. Whilst still in hiding they married and eventually in November 1945 Edwards received permission to return to England with his new bride.