One week into the march some of the men weakened immensely. The guards threatened to shoot anyone who fell behind. It was not clear at the time and has never been satisfactorily explained to this day, why exactly the German command decided to haul along the prisoners as they abandoned Poland. Surely it would have made more sense to leave them behind, maybe to slow up the Russians a little but certainly it would have enabled them to escape back to Germany faster. As the march continued most of the younger guards were sent to bolster the retreating Russian front and were replaced by SS. This meant that the panic was on the one hand replaced by ruthless thuggery and on the other by the increase in the older guards’ panic, increased because they were now afraid of both the Russians and the SS. The rifle butts became more frequent.
Brown snow or white snow, what’s the difference? White snow is as it falls naturally and can be heated and melted to provide drinking water. Brown snow is where another group have slept the night before and takes its colour from the diarrhoea and dysentery of the less fortunate members of the group. Brown snow is not recommended for melting and drinking. If it hasn’t been properly boiled it guarantees the contagion of the recipient. Unfortunately tired, thirsty, hungry and fumbling in the dark, it was difficult for prisoners to distinguish these sensibilities. Stomach disorder became rampant and pneumonia and other chest complaints became frequent. The cure was simple. For the minor cases a solid rifle butt in the shoulders ensured that normal speed was resumed. For more serious cases the other end of the rifle was more effective. When someone fell too far behind a guard fell back with him. The shot was gently muffled in the snow and the guard returned to take his place in the trek westwards.
The original route of ordered withdrawal was completely changed and the objective of Stettin was abandoned. It could be seen clearly that the Russians were beating a path straight for Berlin to get there before the British or Americans and Stettin was in a direct line between Torun and Berlin. So, Stalag XXA tramped north towards the Baltic arriving at the beginning of February in the Pomeranian Gulf at the port of Swinemunde. Perhaps the plan by now was to make an escape to Denmark. Who knows? As they moved north they crossed paths with prisoners from Stalag XXB in Gdansk. The groups were supposed to stay apart but their coherence diminished as British, American, Australian, French and Russian prisoners joined the long straggling column as it entered Germany at the most northerly point possible.
The winter was one of the coldest in memory and one that was to be printed indelibly in the memory of every soldier or airman who walked from Poland to Germany. More nights were spent outside than in. The nights inside were in overcrowded sheds, barns, schoolrooms or anywhere that shelter could be found. Always, there was the putrid smell of human excrement and putrefying frostbitten wounds. Always the rifle butt to hurry things along. Always the trigger-happy zealot waiting to ease someone out of his misery. But the potato soup had stopped. In fact all food had stopped. As January gave way to February there were still some boiled potatoes and the odd piece of bread but as the march disintegrated into a scramble for survival the provision of food disintegrated too.
More than half of the prisoners had bowel disorder; everybody had lice; many had pneumonia, pleurisy or chronic coughs. Nobody now had spare clothes in their bag; they had every possible garment on their bodies. Many died. How many? There is no way of knowing. Dead and dying alike were left by the roadside or curled up in the corner of the last barn. Nobody was taking any account of who lived or who died, who marched on or who escaped. Nobody cared. They just tramped on and on hoping that the sun would come up one morning and it would all be over. However, it seemed to be the younger men who perished first. Most of the men from Dunkirk and St. Valery were now in their late thirties and had been prisoners for nearly five years. They had learned to take what life dealt up, had learned just to plod on.
“Keep right on to the end of the road,
Keep right on to the end
Though you’re tired and weary, still journey on”
They all knew the Harry Lauder song well. Nobody had much compulsion to sing but the spirit remained alive even as the strength sapped from the body.
They kept on, into Germany, but this wasn’t the end. They still had to face Dante’s Inferno.
The bitter icy wind blew in from the Baltic as the endless train of foot traffic marched on through Swinemunde and into Germany. Ian’s birthday came and went but he didn’t notice. With each step that they escaped the oncoming Russians they moved nearer to the hailstorm of Allied bombing. Now they were marching day by day and receiving nothing to eat or drink. Everything was scavenged, begged or stolen. By mid-February 1945 nearly all prisoners who had been held in the northern part of Poland had now passed through Swinemunde. Most, like Ian, walked. Some came by ship from Gdansk. Some came in the ever-popular horse-box-train. From the South of Poland the others went west via Czechoslovakia, Austria or by the bombed out city of Dresden.
The overall objective was to place all prisoners in the area just west of Berlin probably as a negotiating pawn in the final armistice agreement with the Allies. The reality was that the prisoners marched between columns of active troops and the further west they walked the greater the danger from their own planes. Ian and his friends trudged on. As they left Swinemunde the snow swirled in once again. They ploughed on some twenty miles each day, sometimes forward, sometimes back a few miles, sometimes stopped for hours while the guards argued about which way to go. They crossed the River Peene at Anklam and experienced their first buzz by Allied aeroplanes. The guards with families insisted that the prisoners take their children and carry them across the bridges.
They crossed the Peene again twice at Demmin as the guards misread their maps. They turned south to Neubrandenberg only to swing back north again then west heading for Schwerin at the north of Luneburg Heath. They didn’t speak much now. Speech, like all movement, was painful. But the tight little groups remained basically intact. Ian Black and Bob Potter battled on, helping each other, encouraging each other, just being there as a recognisable balaclava in the sea of walking balaclavas. Then came the first day warm enough to remove the balaclavas, quite difficult and painful, intertwined as they were with their long hair. Nobody had shaved for weeks so they double-checked that they had the right person. Unshaven, filthy, pockmarked, gaunt faces. Faces of ghosts still walking, refusing to lie down and die.
They arrived at a large army camp in Zarrentin in Meklenburg on Luneburg Heath on the last day of February. They were now back in the control and command of the Stalag administration. They stayed here a week, slept on the bare earth but rested a little and received a few meagre rations. The Red Cross had access here so some supplementary parcels were received. Here at Zarrentin the entity of Stalag XXA finally ended and the prisoners were handed over to the control of the SS. The march then continued via Domitz on the Elbe where the old camp guards went into frontline service and the prisoners went further south for new work opportunities.
In a giant swathe across middle Germany the Allies were now bombing daily and heavily, smashing up production facilities, transport and military installations. The prisoners were destined for work in the repair of railway tracks and marshalling yards that had been destroyed. This was a flagrant violation of the Geneva Convention but the command was now SS and the guards mostly fanatical Hitler Youth. From Domitz they plodded south about one hundred miles and then spread out around Hanover, Hamlin, Brunswick and Magdeburg. Some went into railyards to work, some into over crowded prison camps and some went round in circles. Ian Black had no idea where he was. He only knew that as the British and American planes screamed down, bombing and strafing anything that looked military, it was not a good idea to stand and wave them “good luck”. Best get down and move as far from the column as possible hoping that the next bullet missed him and got the “little shit in the brown shirt”.
At the beginning of April they were at Hamlin, city of pied pipers and fairy tales. They never
repaired any railway tracks but the rail yard where they slept was bombed twice and several prisoners were killed. The sweeps of bombing were incessant followed always by a hail of bullets as the same planes swept back in for a second run with .50 calibre machine guns blazing, twelve per plane laying down a carpet of death. This was kept up for two days and on the third a new sound was heard: artillery fire and tank cannon. White flags began to sprout from the windows and balconies of the city and the guards went into grade five hysteria.
22. I’D WALK A MILLION MILES
Germany, April-May 1945
The bridges were always the worst. So many people and so many vehicles trying to cross at the same time. The advancing Allied forces needed the bridges in order to push quickly into Germany and the retreating Germans destroyed the bridges to stop them. Ahead of each advancing column US and British aircraft attacked each bridge spraying it with bullets and enveloping it in “surround sound” bombing. The fanatical SS demolition squads were not deterred, neither by this bombardment nor by the thought of killing innocent people on the bridges that they blew up.
The main player in this push towards Berlin was the US 3 Army and in particular the US 5 Armored Division. This unit was activated on October 1 1941 at Fort Knox in the state of Kentucky. Two years earlier at the start of the war when Rommel forced the Scottish 51 Highland Division into surrender at St. Valery his was known as the “ghost division”. He had a ticket to move freely and fast so nobody knew where he would appear next. By 1945 the name of “Patton’s Ghosts” became attached to the US 5 Armored, firstly because the unit came together and was trained in secrecy but mostly because like Rommel they moved fast and appeared unexpectedly several miles ahead of where they ought to be. They came ashore on the beaches of Normandy twenty days after D-day. They didn’t fight their way up the beaches; that wasn’t their purpose.
Their mission was to sweep far into France and later Germany, split up the enemy, cut communications by road, rail and cable, attempt to spread hysteria everywhere, capture all the military equipment they could, and if possible, get back home to Mom. This unit was so far removed in concept from the 51 Highland Division of 1939 that comparison is impossible. They took the German Blitzkrieg concept and honed it to merciless perfection.
The unit comprised three heavily armoured infantry battalions, three artillery battalions, three tank battalions, a tank destroyer battalion, two massive quartermaster truck battalions to maintain upfront supplies, a battalion responsible for the maintenance of the ordnance equipment and even its own specialist POW interrogation team. They had their own battalion of sappers to rebuild the bridges that blew up in their faces. On top of this they had integrated air support with constant radio contact. Each commander had radio contact with each piece of rolling stock. They could pull up infantry or artillery support to the front within minutes, pull back again within seconds, call in and direct close aerial bombardment more or less on demand, ask for aerial reconnaissance then punch through mile after mile into hostile territory knowing that behind them was co-ordinated support.
They were the first division to reach the River Seine in France in August 1944.
They were the first division to enter Belgium
They were the first division to reach Luxemburg.
They were the first division to fight on German soil.
They were the first division to break through the Siegfried Line.
In February and March 1945 they spearheaded Patton’s 3 Army as they thrashed a route from the Ruhr to the Rhine.
They learned the hard way that the fight was hard. They lost a lot of young men along the way. A lot of bridges blew up before their eyes leaving cement dust in their hair but they picked out a new route and moved on. They plunged forward scattering panic and hysteria before them as they went. The Division was made up of three Combat Commands, each of which combined tank, artillery and infantry strength with superb lines of command. On the 31st of March they were poised to go again, 260 miles in 13 days, fast forward with a few side steps they had to cross the River Weser and then the Elbe and they would be on the Autobahn into Berlin.
Patton’s Fifth Armored Division thundered forward 50 miles the first day, 200 tanks, 3000 heavily armed infantrymen and three battalions of mobile artillery. The second day they blasted through and around mile after mile of roadblocks, booby traps and tank columns. The division ploughed on leaving in its wake by the roadside, burnt out tanks and trucks, dead German soldiers, dead horses and dead cows. It was a moving island crashing through a hostile landscape; seen from a distance it was a swirling cloud of dust and smoke. At the end of the second day they had moved forward twenty miles more and come night crawled forward yet some more, the lead tanker straining his eyes to find the road and those behind straining their eyes to follow the pin-point lights of the tank in front.
In the morning of the third day they stopped to await refuelling. Behind them lay the city of Munster. Tank crews spread out on the wet grass and grabbed some sleep. They slumbered through the rattle and clang of refuelling and the rumble of artillery hitting Munster. The noise that woke them was the sound of the tanks revving, ready to go again. The nearest crossing of the Weser was at the city of Hereford. They side stepped the town and went for the bridges. They split in two task forces, one for the bridge at Hereford and the other a few miles north at Minden. Both bridges were blown by the Germans just as they approached and on the third day they stood clicking their heels on the south side of the Weser. At Minden the British had already arrived earlier and like so many times before the German forces pulled all they could across the bridge and as the attackers approached they blew the bridge in their faces. At Hereford it was the Americans who got cement dust in their hair. The 5 Armored Division had to wait. Waiting made them nervous. Three days seemed like a year but they got some badly needed sleep.
Unknown to the advancing liberators a new complication lay ahead. From south of the Weser to north of the Elbe about two hundred thousand prisoners of war were spread across the length and breadth of Luneburg Heath, an area not unlike the lowlands of Scotland. To capture a bridge the advancing forces had to put down horrific covering fire, lateral bombing, strafing from the air, artillery air bursts above the bridge in the hope of creating panic among those preparing to blow the bridge. So while escaping troops, civilians and prisoners were still crossing, the would be liberators had to risk innocent lives and in the meantime the SS demolition teams laid their charges with total disregard for who was on the bridge. Terror and panic intensified.
Hereford lies on the elbow of a sharp bend in the River Weser. Ten miles to the north lies Minden and ten miles east lies the city of Hamlin. Here at Hamlin the straggling column of POWs were crossing the bridge in a never-ending stream, pushed aside by Panzer columns and marching infantry as everyone scrambled to get over before the SS blew the old bridge. Bob Potter and Ian Black were nearly over when the first P-47 bombers growled overhead. They dropped their bombs either side of the bridge, soared into the sky and swung back round low over the bridge with guns blazing. The Americans desperately needed this bridge intact. There had been advance reconnaissance so now the pilots knew what was on the bridge. They knew there were helpless POWs and civilians but they knew also that the SS demolition squad were moving into place. Some prisoners ran back, some ran forward, some were caught in the middle. Ian ran the last few yards and dived to the sides of the road as the planes screamed over.
While the 5 Armored Division hung in limbo further north the 2 US Armored Division were competing with the 5 to get some glory ribbons and were heading for the bridge at Hamlin. As the bomber flight banked away back towards the west the Americans opened up with heavy artillery. The shells were aimed as air bursts above the bridge. The effect was terrifying for anyone in the vicinity but it didn’t stop the demolition squad. As another bridge went “boom” the prisoners got up and ran once again. It was crazy. They were running away from the troops that were going to free them
but what could they do?
In came the 30 US Infantry and the Treadway Bridge Company. While the POWs started marching north, back the same way they had come just two weeks before, the sappers put in place a new makeshift bridge and the 2 Armored Division took over the Pied Piper’s town. The word was passed down the line: they had a bridge over the Weser. On the 8 of April the 5 Armored Division, who had powered their way east nearly in a straight line, were ordered south round the elbow to Hamlin. They crossed the pontoon bridge by nine o’clock that night. By next morning they were abreast of Hanover on the east-west autobahn. The POW column by now was more to the north, plodding back towards Domitz, some including Ian’s group were hoping to cross the Elbe at Hitzacker about sixty miles north of Hanover. Others went more east towards Wittenberge, Stendal and Taggermunde, nearer to Berlin, everybody scrambling to go nowhere.
A few hours into the morning of the 9th the group that Ian was with crossed the Mittelland canal bridge north of Hanover. The Americans were approaching fast behind them but as they reached the canal they were slowed down by heavy artillery fire. They called in the usual air support but it faltered due to heavy cloud and mist. While they were stopped fending off the attack another bridge went “boom” in their faces. Combat Command R of the Victorious 5 would not be stopped. Abrupt right turn for this juggernaut wasn’t easy and another diversion didn’t sit well with men who were accustomed to moving forward but they made a swift swing to the right. The first town of Peine surrendered without a fight and the Command drove on. After Peine they swung north again for ten miles and then east zigzagging ever nearer to the Elbe.
Across the Bridge Page 14