My Place

by Sally Morgan

  It got so bad that, in the end, I couldn’t stand it, I took Sally and moved back in with Mum. She was pleased to have me there, I think she’d been worried about what Bill might do.

  I’d been at Mum’s about ten days and I still hadn’t seen him. I couldn’t help thinking about all the things he’d told me about the war, and I wondered about what he hadn’t told me. I started to worry and felt so sad about what they’d done to him. I still loved him. I’ve never told anyone Bill’s war experiences, but perhaps it will help you to understand if I write it down.

  Bill fought in the desert with the 2/16th Battalion.

  He said he found it so hard to kill other people. I remember him telling me about one time when there were Germans in the sandhills and he could see them, they were outlined like sitting ducks in a shooting gallery. Bill was on the machine-gun and the others called to him, ‘Shoot you bastard while you’ve got the chance!’ He said he couldn’t, it was too easy. Someone shoved him aside, grabbed the gun and mowed them down. It made him feel sick.

  Bill was wounded during a battle for a town and he was placed in the army hospital. That was how he got left behind in the Middle East, because the rest of his battalion was shipped back to fight in New Guinea.

  After he recovered, he was placed in the 2/28th and continued to fight in the desert. I remember asking him about the desert, I thought it would be like the beach, but Bill said that the ground was so hard you could only dig shallow trenches.

  Bill was captured at El Alamein and, along with two thousand other Allied prisoners, was crammed into the hold of the Nino Bixio, an Italian freighter. It was very crowded, you couldn’t stretch out. If you had somewhere to sit, you were lucky. They were only allowed to have the hatch cover open a little bit to allow access to the latrines. A lot of the men had dysentery, so you can imagine what it was like.

  Second day out to sea, they were torpedoed by an Allied submarine.

  Bill said he’d been sitting in his usual pose, legs apart, elbows on knees, having a joke with the bloke next to him, when a torpedo whizzed straight through, hit the other side of the hold, exploded and flung everyone back onto him..

  When he came to, he was covered in blood and bodies, arms and legs, guts, fingers blown off, he didn’t know what belonged to him and what didn’t. The whole hold was covered with bits and pieces of human beings. He thought he’d had it. The ship started taking water, some of the men tried to get out through the hole in the side that the torpedo had made, but the swell washed them back in and they were cut to pieces on the torn edges. The steel ladders leading to the top part of the hold had been destroyed, so there was no way out.

  Survivors from the top part of the hold threw down ropes and the Captain, who was a big, red-headed Italian, shouted, ‘If anyone’s alive down there, climb up!’

  By the time Bill got himself out from underneath all the bodies, he realised he was actually still in one piece. He had bits of shrapnel embedded in his arms, legs and chest, but apart from that, he was all right.

  He picked up the nearest bloke to him who looked like he might be in one piece and climbed the rope. That turned out to be Frank Potter. Bill said the Captain of the ship did the best he could, he ran round screaming and swearing in Italian, trying to help the wounded.

  The next day, an Italian destroyer took them in tow. They beached on the Greek coast and the wounded were taken to shore and laid out along the beach. Bill said there’d been over five hundred men in their hold when they were hit, only seventy survived the torpedo and then a lot of them died on the beach.

  Some of the men were terribly wounded, to make matters worse, there was no food or medical supplies. Orderlies were going along the beach, hacking off arms and legs that were only just hanging on. They were using tomahawks, and digging out shrapnel with daggers. Bill knew if they tried to dig the shrapnel out of him, he’d die for sure, he was a bleeder and he had a rare blood group.

  Those that could walk were marched through the nearest town and put on show like some ruddy great prize. The men spat on them and the women threw their kitchen slops and pots full of excrement onto them.

  They stayed in Corinth for a while, and then they were shipped back to Italy and sent to Campo 57.

  Bill said the commandant there was a real Fascist, he wasn’t like most Italians. He was very hard and liked to see them suffer. He had a sign up which read, The English are cursed, but more cursed are those Italians who treat them well!

  The Allies began bombing the area near the camp, that’s when Bill escaped. The guards were so frightened they ran off leaving the gates wide open. All the prisoners followed. Bill said to Abercrombe, the bloke that was with him, ‘Not down the middle of the road, the Germans will realise we’re being bombed and come to round us up. Down in the ditch.’

  Sure enough, a few minutes later, along came the Germans and herded everyone back inside, Bill and Abercrombe hid in the ditch till nightfall.

  Abercrombe wanted to head south in the hope of meeting up with the Yanks, but Bill talked him into going north to Switzerland. They travelled mainly at night, stealing food and sleeping in the fields.

  The eventually came to a small town and hung around the well in the centre of the village, hoping someone friendly would notice them. They knew the Germans were around, but, so far, they hadn’t seen any, so they hoped their luck would hold out.

  An old bloke came along and looked them over, Bill had picked up a few Italian words, so he told him who they were. The old man fetched the head man, who took them home to his place and gave them some warm food and vino.

  They thought he was a nice bloke, until he made a pass at them. Bill grabbed him by the collar and told him to put them in touch with the Resistance, or else. He said they’d have to let him make a phone call. Bill listened carefully and realised he was really phoning the Germans. They grabbed him, belted him up, pinched some food and nicked off before the Germans got there.

  They kept travelling north, afraid to enter any town after that. Eventually, they were worn out, desperate. They watched another small town for a few days, it seemed all right. They entered and, once again, hung around the well. When a woman came for water, Bill asked her if she could take them to the head man, it turned out it was her husband.

  This time they were lucky, these Italians hated the war and the Germans. They took Bill and Abercrombe to a safe farm run by Guiseppe and Maria Bosso and their fourteen-year-old daughter, Edmea. Bill said they were wonderful people, full of guts. They treated him like a son. He learnt to speak Italian fluently and, because he looked like a northern Italian, he sometimes passed himself off as one, drinking vino and singing songs with the Germans in the tavern, just like other Italians did They tried to keep friendly with the Germans; that way, the villagers hoped that when they made their periodical trips through, they would not check too carefully.

  During the day, Bill worked in the fields with the other labourers. When they heard that the farms nearby were being searched for escaped POWs, Bill and Abercrombe would hide out down near a small creek. Sometimes, it was days before it was safe; during this time, they lived on frogs, green snakes and berries, it was far too dangerous for even the Italians to sneak food to them.

  Eventually, they’d get word that the coast was clear and the whole village would have a big dance in one of the barns to celebrate the fact that they’d outwitted the Germans again. They’d all laugh and dance and drink too much vino.

  It was too cold to hide down the creek in winter, so Guiseppe built a big haystack with a room inside. The Germans always stuck their bayonets into every haystack and, if they hit a post, or if there was blood on the end of the bayonet, they’d set fire to the haystack and burn whoever was inside.

  One morning, the Bosso family were very upset because they’d had word that the SS had burnt and slaughtered a whole village for sheltering POWs. The town had a meeting to decide what they were going to do. They all decided to continue hiding Allied prisoners, even
if it meant losing the whole village. Bill said he told Guiseppe it was a risk he wouldn’t let them take. All the POWs in the village agreed. They all decided to take their chances and move on.

  Guiseppe got in touch with the Underground, who said it was no use them trying to join up with the Yanks, it would be better if they headed for Switzerland. They sent two members of the Resistance to guide Bill and Abercrombe over the Swiss Alps. Bill had his twenty-first birthday in the mountains. When they reached the border, the Swiss guards gave them hot chocolate and some warm food. They told them if they crossed into Switzerland, they’d be there for the duration of the war, which could be years, but if they went back and joined up with the Yanks, it might only be a few months, because the Americans were making rapid progress at that stage.

  Bill didn’t fancy sitting in Switzerland, he had too much spirit for that, so he asked the guides with them to take him and Abercrombe back to Italy. So they took them back over the mountains and then pointed them in the direction where the Yanks were supposed to be advancing. Bill and Abercrombe headed off.

  That night, they came to a road and were about to cross, when Bill said, ‘Don’t, there’s something wrong.’ There was nothing in sight, but Bill had a premonition it was dangerous. He hid down in the ditch and told Abercrombe to do the same.

  Abercrombe was fed up by this stage, so he said, ‘Listen ya stupid bastard, there’s nothing there, I’m going.’ He ran onto the road, but halfway across, a searchlight spotted him and he was gunned down by a machine-gun. Bill said he was so shocked he just froze. He knew that he had to move, but he couldn’t.

  Finally, he forced himself to get going. He walked all night until he came to a large river. He sat down amongst the reeds and pulled out a butt left over from the fags the Swiss guards had given him. He lay down and was half asleep when he heard the sound of barking dogs coming closer and closer. Germans, he thought. He started to run, a bullet whizzed past his head, missing him by only a few inches. He stopped and turned with his hands in the air.

  To his relief, it was only the Italian police. He spoke swiftly and told them he was a labourer on his way to work at a nearby farm. They said, ‘You’re no labourer, you’re a rapist and a murderer. You’re wanted in Rome for killing many women.’ They showed him a poster with the rapist’s picture. Bill said he couldn’t believe it, it was his double. He was forced, then, to tell them who he really was, he showed them his dog tags.

  ‘You shouldn’t have run,’ they said, ‘we would have let you go. We can’t now, because we have to account to the Germans for every bullet we use. If we let you go, they’ll know. We have to think of our families, we’re sorry.’

  Bill was taken and handed over to the SS. They questioned and tortured him for days on end, asking where he had been, who had helped him, where had he hidden. Bill said he would rather have died than tell them a bloody thing. He was like that. He was a very proud man and very stubborn.

  Every day he heard the firing squad in operation, and every day he wondered if he would be next. They always walked past his cell with their victims, if they turned left past his cell, he knew it was an execution, right and they were transferring the prisoner to somewhere else.

  One morning, they came for him. He thought, this is it, I’m going to die. They’d been really brutal to him the day before and got nothing out of him, so he thought they must have decided to give up and shoot him instead.

  At the end of the corridor, the guard said, ‘You know which way.’ Bill turned left and the guard butted him in the back with his rifle, knocking him to the floor. When Bill went to get up, he kicked him hard in the ribs with army boots. Bill rose and felt the guard’s rifle hard in his back. ‘Turn right! You are being transferred to Germany.’

  He was taken to the office, where he was handed over to another guard.

  On the way to the train, the guard said, ‘Don’t try to escape and we’ll get along fine.’ Bill was surprised that this chap spoke in English. He had boarded the train in the company of this guard and two SS officers.

  The German guard gave him a cigarette and said quietly, ‘Speak in English, the SS can’t understand.’ He confided to Bill that he had been educated in England and had fought in the First World War as well. He said he hated the SS, he called them animals. He warned Bill to watch out for the youngest officer. ‘Don’t try and escape,’ he said, ‘he’ll use any excuse to shoot you.’

  This guard was the one who accompanied Bill to the POW camp. Before he handed him over, he gave Bill a heavy overcoat and some good boots.

  ‘Never barter these,’ he said, ‘you won’t survive without them.’ Bill said he was sorry they hadn’t met under different circumstances, he was a really nice bloke.

  Bill was taken to Stalag 7A in Moosburg, but was only there a few weeks when they transferred him to Stalag 8C in Sagan. I’m not sure which of the camps he was in was near a Jewish concentration camp, one of them, anyway, because Bill ended up being in several camps on and off. He said it was terrible, being near the Jewish camp, because of the smell and sounds that could be heard day and night. He knew they were people, but they sounded like tortured animals. It was really eerie. He said even though conditions were bad in the POW camps, he hated to think what they were doing to the Jews.

  Bill palled up with another bloke who was half Jewish. The Germans treated him badly, they whipped him all the time. Bill tried to stick up for him and they said, ‘You want to stick up for a Jew, we’ll treat you like a Jew.’ It was really bad for him after that.

  In the Sagan camp he was in, he had to work in the local coalmines. It was long hours and damp, dangerous work. He developed a bad chest infection, so they said he could do easier work, they sent him to dig potatoes out of the frozen fields. Bill said it was easier down the mines. The only advantage to working in the fields was if you could pinch a potato and use it in camp for bargaining. Bill said they were fed on vegetable soup which was just water. Once a month, the soup had meat in it, a horse’s head. The big thing was to get the eyes, otherwise you ended up with a bowl full of wet hair.

  Some of the guards at Sagan were really brutal. They loved to burst in in the middle of the night, tell the men to strip and then stand them at attention in the snow. The worse the war went, the meaner they became.

  One day, they assembled the men and told them they were going to hand out Red Cross packages. They tipped out Nestles milk, jam, tea, cigarettes all into a pile and then mashed it up together. ‘Now,’ they said, ‘you can’t complain you didn’t get your Red Cross parcels!’ After that, they told the prisoners they had to eat it, it was a big joke to the guards.

  One day, towards the end of the war in Europe, they informed the prisoners that they were going to march to another camp. There had been rumours in the camp that the Russians were advancing, so that was probably why they were moving them. They were marched fifty miles to Spremberg, where they thought they would stop, but, instead, they were forced to march another three hundred miles to Duderstadt. It was very cold and they had to sleep out in the open snow. There was no food, they had to find what they could by the side of the road. Bill said even the German people were starving by then. They stopped near one village and an old German peasant woman ran up to him and shoved a stale piece of black bread into his hand, a guard shot her in the back. Bill said that guard was a real bastard. He was always belting someone and would use any excuse to use his rifle.

  On that march a lot of prisoners died of cold and were just left by the side of the road. I think Bill was really glad that he hadn’t traded his heavy overcoat, because he really needed it, then.

  When they reached Duderstadt, the conditions were terrible. The camp was infested with lice and there was excrement everywhere. There was only one rough latrine for over a thousand men. Prisoners were dying like flies from dysentery and pneumonia. There was nowhere to put the dead, so they just piled them on top of one another near the gate.

  After he’d been there another f
ew days, there was another rumour that the Yanks were close. That scared the Germans and they cut down the torture a bit.

  Early one morning, a tank broke down the gates of the camp and a sandy-headed Yank popped up and said, ‘Any of you guys want some ginger cake and ice-cream?!’

  Bill said the men that had any energy left just cried and cried. The Yanks gave out food, but some of the prisoners had been without for so long that it made them violently ill and they died.

  The Yank in charge couldn’t believe the state they were all in. He said, ‘Is there any one of these German bastards you’d like to kill?’ An English soldier lying on a mat raised his hand. He was so weak he couldn’t stand, so two of the Yanks supported him, they held the gun in his hand and helped him point it at the German guard who’d given him a really bad time. ‘Help me,’ the Englishman whispered, and the Yanks pulled the trigger for him. Later that day, the Englishman died. Bill said there was no one there he’d kill, but if he ever met up with a certain SS officer, he would have shot him.

  They were all taken by trucks to American transport planes and airlifted to France, where they were given medical treatment before being transferred to England. Bill spent six months in hospital in England before he was fit to sail home.

  I thought about everything Bill told me after I had returned to live with my mother. I knew that was just the tip of the iceberg, he hadn’t told me the real story.

  By the time I’d been with Mum three weeks, he’d sobered himself up and come around to beg me to come back to him. I knew then that if I did, it was for ever, I couldn’t leave him again. I had to go back. He had no one. I still loved him. I thought maybe I could help make up for what he’d been through.

  It turned out I was wrong. I couldn’t heal his mind, it was too damaged, they hadn’t broken his spirit or his will to live, but they’d broken his mind. He had a sensitive side to him, they’d destroyed that, degraded him. He couldn’t get away from what was inside of him. He couldn’t escape from his own memories.