Hitler's British Slaves (41 page)

Such hostility from the Russians were not isolated cases. When the Red Army liberated entire camps of POWs they often kept them behind the wire, not allowing them access to the longed for freedom. It was not just their freedom that was curtailed. At Stalag IVc the incoming Russians immediately
emptied the remaining parcels from the Red Cross stores, leaving the prisoners to fend for themselves. Some camps were visited by Red Army officers who requested the prisoners volunteer to join them. Some took up the offer, accepting weapons from their liberators and continuing the war they had long thought had passed them by. Fearful of Russian intentions the War Office took action and sent men on secret missions to facilitate the rescue of prisoners. In March a team recruited from among Austrian POWs in Britain were parachuted into their home country to locate former prisoners on the run in the region. However the agents were soon found by the Russians who, though accepting their story, decreed that since they were dressed in civilian clothing they should be shot as spies. They were saved by the sergeant detailed to carry out the execution. After stealing their watches he let them escape, allowing them to go back into hiding in the local villages. In the same region there were further reports of Russian hostility to escaped British prisoners. One group who had teamed up with the Red Army to round up German troops were executed once their work was finished.

Those more fortunate men who had been liberated in the west soon began the journey home. Some followed the ‘stay put’ orders received from London and the instructions of the liberating troops, and awaited the liaison officers who would process them and organise transport home. Yet large numbers of men at work camps had simply never received any orders and so made off into the unknown. All across the Reich liberated POWs began to search for transport home. Many simply stole whatever transport was available and headed in the direction of Brussels. Prisoners working at a quarry in Austria borrowed a car from a local man and ferried the entire contingent of POWs between the camp and the British lines in northern Italy. When their last journey was complete
they returned the car to its owner. Whilst many prisoners were being counted by staff sent to process them others simply headed for the channel ports and cadged lifts on ships heading back to ‘Blighty’. Then they thumbed lifts straight home, never bothering to be officially demobbed from the army.

All across Germany civilian cars, motorcycles and delivery trucks helped to move men homewards. Often drunk, either on beer or emotion, they waved at the Allied troops still advancing into the heart of Germany. Some ‘liberated’ bicycles and mustered up all their reserves of energy to pedal westwards. Others chose tractors or even fire engines to make the journey. Alec Reynolds found a most unusual form of transport, one which would take him right across Germany:

Everybody else stayed at the camp but we went into town. By this time I had a little Beretta pistol and a Luger. I’d got conjunctivitis, so I had a patch over one eye and these pistols – I looked like a pirate. Myself, the Scottish commando and another chap went into town and went into this big house. The French people who worked there fed us. One said to us ‘I’ve got to get wood.’ I asked him what he needed wood for. He said ‘For the truck’. He had a wood burning truck. So we got some wood and we just headed off towards home. All my kit was left behind. I wasn’t bothered. We had no idea where we were going or how far it was.
³⁴

With his POW colleagues, two Frenchmen and a French girl dressed in military uniform, Reynolds headed west. Travelling by day, staying in farms at night, and eating whatever they could beg, borrow or steal, they eventually crossed the entire country before being put into trucks travelling to Liège. Given an American uniform he was then put straight on a
flight back to Great Missenden. From the airfield he made his way straight to his sister’s home in Watford.

Liberated by the Americans, Ken Willats was told to go to the parade ground of a barracks in a nearby town that had recently been captured:

The place was swarming with released prisoners of war. So Freddy and I thought we wouldn’t go in, instead we thought we’d have a look around. The place was in a state of flux so we thought we’d have a bit of an adventure. Then they said there would be an important announcement made on the parade ground. We dawdled around and eventually stood at the back of about a thousand men, all facing this general. He got onto the platform and gave us all the usual spiel about being liberated by the American army. We noticed soldiers behind us erecting these barriers right behind us. Then the general said ‘Gentlemen, I’d like you to know we are going to get you home as quickly as possible, and we are starting right now. About turn!’ So we were at the front of the queue, we went through the barrier went straight to a plane and were home that evening!
³⁵

Few were able to get home quite so swiftly. Converging on towns and cities in Belgium the prisoners began the final leg of their journey home. Bryan Willoughby found himself in Liège where as fortune would have it he was wearing an American uniform given to him by his liberators: ‘I found myself among a group that was 90 per cent Yanks. And the Yanks were paying out! Everyone was getting a big handful of money. So we queued up. While I was in the queue this lad tells me to say I was such and such a number and belonged to the North Carolina Regiment. So when I got to the table I gave them my name and supposed regiment and got the money!’
³⁶
The
uniform that had helped them to fill their pockets in Liège would have a less impressive impact when he and his British comrades reached Brussels:

We were put in a hotel. Every man had a bed! – ‘Look, Sheets!’ So one or two of the lads said ‘Let’s go for a quick drink’. So we went across the road into the first café we saw. We were sitting there drinking and the first thing that happened was that we were set on by Canadians – they thought we were Yanks! One of the lads I was with had a peg leg and he unscrewed it and put it on the bar. The Canadians were horrified, so that put a stop to that.
³⁷

Most ex-prisoners enjoyed their stay in Brussels, making up for lost time in the restaurants, bars and brothels that had become such a feature of the Belgian capital’s nightlife. Recognising them as POWs the MPs ignored the drunken men and merely escorted them back to hotels rather than arresting them for breaking the curfew or being drunk and disorderly. Once their brief stay in the city was complete each group of men were driven out to an airfield to begin the journey home. Bryan Willoughby only just made it back in time to meet the transit:

It was too early to go back to the hotel so we went from café to café. Then we picked up this woman and her daughter and they insisted on coming along with us. So we went into more cafes and did a bit of dancing, then had some more booze – I spent all the money the Yanks had given me. I didn’t get back to the hotel until six o’clock in the faming morning. When I got there they were marching out of the gate! So I just fell in with them. I was not anywhere near sober. Then we flew back.
³⁸

As they left the barracks some were struck by the significance of the moment – their war was finally over. One of them, Ken Clarke, captured during the retreat to Dunkirk, later wrote of his emotions: ‘Bewilderment, I think, is the best way to describe my feelings, at being free to walk about without a gun hovering behind me, not having to wonder when the next meal would come and not needing to collect butt ends from cigarettes so that I could re-roll them for a few puffs later.’ He also explained why he walked out to the plane with just the clothes he stood up in, leaving behind his treasured clarinet which had brought him so much comfort during the long years of captivity: ‘I suppose that with the excitement of the war being over, the years of sweated labour and imprisonment ended, the long dreadful march finished, thoughts of being back in England now took over. Nothing else really mattered at that moment.’
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Liberated by the Americans, Gordon Barber was put into an ambulance to take him to an airfield ready for the return journey to England. Despite medical treatment he remained weak from the exertions of the long march:

They thought I had something wrong with me, ’cause I was still making such a mess. They kept me in hospital for a couple of days then they took me by ambulance. It was a rough ride, I was still shitting myself all the time. I asked the driver for toilet roll but he didn’t have any. I still remember what I used to clean myself up – I used my
lagergeld
, the old camp money. It was worthless. Then they loaded me on a Dakota full of wounded men, to go home.
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As they lined up on the runways of airfields, the released prisoners were counted and recounted – just like in the old days of the seemingly ceaseless
Appels
– then were given numbers
and told to await their homeward-bound flight. As they waited they were informed that much of their luggage would have to be left behind, since space restrictions would allow for no more than 30 kilos per man. Anxious not to leave behind much of the loot they had acquired since liberation they began sorting out what they really needed to take home with them. Lightweight items like Nazi memorabilia – hats, helmets, swords, medals, badges – were kept, whilst heavier goods often including items of furniture made by some of them whilst in captivity, were abandoned.

It was not the separation from such possessions that had an emotional impact on the returning men. What concerned many was that they were separated from their friends at the last moment. After years of ‘mucking in’ together, and sharing the privations of the long march, men were split up as they were counted off into the waiting aircraft. Those men who lost their mates at the last minute were sent into a whirl of conflicting emotions, excitement that they were finally going home and deflation that they were without their companions. It was simply a matter of space, when the correct number of men were aboard, the plane would take off. Speed and efficiency were the order of the day, worrying about the separation of friends was an irrelevance.

For many the flight home was their first time in an aeroplane. Others looked back on their previous flights, such as the ill-fated trip to Arnhem. Yet few were frightened by the experience, they were simply overjoyed to be going home. Some perched in the bomb bays or fuselages of bombers more used to destruction than salvation. Others sat inside transport aircraft or occupied the seats most commonly used for paratroopers. As they approached the coast of England pilots called men forward in turn to get their first glimpse of the land they had spent years dreaming of, and which some had
once given up hope of ever seeing again. As the pilots finally announced they were once more flying above English soil the ex-POWs were hit by a wave of emotion. Some cheered whilst others sat deep in thought. Some clapped, sang or hugged the men beside them whilst others sat in tears, their thoughts on all those who would never be returning home. It was a time of rejoicing and remembering, for both celebration and contemplation.

Then finally the wheels touched down, they were safe and free. Yet there were still a few more formalities to go through. Most were deloused, some had all their body hair shaved off and were scrubbed down with lotions and potions to kill the vermin. Others were simply dusted with powder and declared safe. Many of their uniforms were gathered together and incinerated, although some men desperately attempted to save their kit from the flames. It would provide a permanent reminder of their condition in those final weeks and months of war.

Baths, showers, shaves and haircuts were the order of the day, with men who had worn shoulder length hair once more appearing as soldiers. They collected brand new uniforms, with unit badges, stripes and medal ribbons sewn on by the Women’s Institute, then collected leave passes, travel warrants and pay. Then they were free to go.

Clad in their new uniforms, shod in polished boots that had replaced their clogs, the former prisoners began their journeys home. Some sent telegrams or made telephone calls to alert their anxious families. Others simply set off in the direction of home wanting to save the hallowed meeting until they were once more face to face with their families. Ken Willats was among those who chose not to send word of his arrival:

I thought I’d surprise them. I got the train to London, then got on the train to Balham at platform 9 of Victoria Station. I walked from the station to my home and my parents were out at the pub. My brother was at home. He had only been a young lad when I left to go to war – so he didn’t really recognise me. I said ‘I’m Ken’ and he couldn’t believe it. Then my parents came back and they were very tearful – emotional and delighted. That was the end of the story.
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However, not all were able to head home quite so quickly. The lean months of winter had left many too sick to face the trials of reintegrating into society. Their weakened bodies fell victim to all manner of sickness and disease. Many were admitted to military hospitals and treatment prevented rapid reunion with their families. When families did visit many walked through the wards unable to find their husbands or sons. They simply failed to recognise them. They had gone off to war in the prime of their lives, as strong, fit young soldiers but had returned as shadows of their former selves. The poor diet had weakened their teeth, left their skin drawn tight over fleshless skulls, and given them stoops. Likewise, their hair had lost its lustre, fallen out or turned grey. These were young men inhabiting the bodies of the middle-aged. In this condition some implored their families not to visit them, preferring to save their reunions for the day they could walk confidently into the family home.