Survivor of the Long March

by Charles Waite

  As usual we were at the back of the column following the others in straggly groups as they made their way towards the entrance. It took us a while to get there so we were the last to go in. Somewhere dry for the night. Fantastic! A couple of guards were having a quick smoke and then moved on inside. When we got in through the big heavy front door it was dark inside. We were in a wide, narrow, dark vestibule with steps and passageways off to the side. In the gloom I could make out the shapes of fellows hunched up asleep in a corner and moved past them towards the inside door. Sid and Heb were ahead, already poised to open it and go inside the church.

  It was Jimmy, of course, who spotted it, always on the lookout for opportunities to make his and our lives better. He obviously had an idea.

  ‘Look, Chas,’ he said pointing to this full length plush red velvet curtain which was pushed back to the side of the door into the church. ‘What d’yer think?’ I nodded, wondering what he had in mind. It was thick and heavy and wouldn’t be easy to handle. What on earth were we going to do with it?

  ‘We can get it down.’ He looked at Laurie and me. We nodded. ‘It’ll be heavy to carry.’ It seemed mad to me but I knew Jimmy well enough not argue.

  ‘OK, then,’ I said. ‘I’ll do it.’

  Sid and Heb came back to see what was going on and Jimmy told them to go and have a scout round. ‘What we need is a long bit o’ wood. A pole or something.’ He turned to me. ‘Quick, on my shoulders before anyone sees.’

  I was the smallest and the lightest, although to be honest, we were all as thin as the wooden window pole which Sid and Heb came back with. Jimmy cupped his hand for me to get up and then pushed me up onto his shoulders and manoeuvred me towards the top of the door. I clenched my thighs firmly round his neck.

  ‘All right, Jimmy?’ I said, wobbling a bit. ‘Steady there, man.’

  I managed to take the curtain off the hooks attached to the heavy rings on the metal rail and give it an almighty tug. ‘Timber!’ shouted Jimmy as the massive curtain flew past his head nearly landing on Laurie below. Laurie caught it and started trying to sort it out. I jumped down and between the three of us we managed to fold it over and over until it formed a tight bundle. Jimmy had some twine in his pocket – proper stuff, not the soggy brown paper nonsense from the Red Cross parcels, which he tied round the curtain to secure it.

  ‘That’ll do. Gi’us here.’ Jimmy grabbed the pole from Sid and pushed it through the centre of the bundle. ‘There you go.’ He and Laurie lifted it up.

  ‘Look, Dick Whittington!’ said Sid.

  We all looked at each other again still puzzled.

  ‘That’ll keep us cosy at night,’ said Jimmy.

  Ah, yes, of course.

  Nobody had noticed all this kerfuffle of ours in the vestibule – or cared, thank goodness. We got away with it.

  It was warm inside the church, probably because of the huge number of men packed in. I reckoned on a thousand there leaning, lying, squatting and sitting in every space and corner. They were in the aisles, the pews, up the pulpit, on the tombstones, against the altar. But there was room, there’s always room for one more. Wherever we went over the next months, however crowded it was – whether stables or pig sty, bombed-out railway station or church, you could always squeeze in a few more.

  As Sid, Heb and I made our way carefully over the sleeping men on the stone floor, Laurie and Jimmy carried the pole between them like Indian bearers for a memsahib. Suddenly the organ burst into life and this terrific sound of music filled the church. A verse of Onward Christian Soldiers followed by the chorus of Roll out the Barrel. It was Jack, the one who played the piano accordion in our camp. So his hours of practice weren’t wasted. He had found a way into the organ loft and couldn’t resist having a go. People started cheering and clapping at the music.

  After a final flourish of I Do Like to be Beside the Seaside and more applause (and a few cries of ‘Shut the f---- up!’) Jack came back down and managed to work his way through the mass of bodies to join us where we had settled down. He didn’t want to be separated from us. No good going off with another group in the morning. Never knew where you might end up. Even though we didn’t have a clue how, when or where it would end, it was better sticking with the mates you knew from all the years together than risk something worse with a bunch of strangers.

  The doors of the church were locked. We five settled down in a side chapel near our own men. All looking forward to a good night’s sleep. Safe and dry. Sid and I propped ourselves up against a sculptured monument. I was squeezed up against another fellow who turned to me and put out his hand. ‘Harry,’ he said.

  I returned the handshake, ‘Charlie. Nice to meet you.’

  ‘And you. Would you like a Bible?’

  ‘OK,’ I said. It would have been mean to say no to a padre.

  He reached in his backpack and took out a small testament and gave it to me. ‘I’ve got a spare one.’ He smiled. ‘It’s always good to have God on your side,’ he said.

  ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘I need all the help I can get.’

  Nothing, not even hundreds of coughing, grunting and snoring men, or the foot of a stone angel pressing into my back, could stop me from falling asleep straightaway. Jimmy and Laurie were curled up together and had the luxury of the velvet bundle as a pillow that night but from then on, two of us took it in turns to carry it and we used it as a ground cover and a blanket wherever we went.

  Imagine the comfort and warmth of plush velvet round you as you slept in the open air, under a hedge or in a cattle byre. We managed to carry it for the next six weeks until we found it too exhausting and had to leave it behind. A real shame but I’m sure somebody else benefited from it when they too looked for shelter and found our velvet curtain neatly folded up on the ground.

  13

  Body and Soul

  When I look at the notes I jotted down all those years ago on The March and trace the route now on a map, it looks absolutely crazy. How did I do it? How did I keep going all that way?

  We made our way along the Baltic coast from our camp near Marienburg, on to Neustettin, crossing the river Oder at Stettin where the bridge was blown up soon after. On to Nuebrandenburg, in the direction of Lübeck where we had heard there were a million Red Cross parcels. We got as far as Schwerin and turned south towards Wittenberge. We walked across the frozen river Elbe, at some point, on to Stendal, further south to Magdeburg and Halle (just north of Leipzig). We zig -zagged across to Luckenwalde, Belzig, north west to Brandenburg, eastwards to Potsdam and finally in the direction of Berlin. Goodness me, what a journey! I must have covered about 1600km.

  On we went, sometimes just a step ahead of the bombing raids, other times soon after. We passed civilians and soldiers going both ways – like us, looking for somewhere safe to go. What else could we do but keep going? We were marching at gun point so we didn’t argue, following wherever we were led. The officers tried to plan the day’s march and rest stops. An officer would send a party of guards ahead to look for somewhere suitable for the night. It might be a barn or stables or in more populated areas, they found railway stations, churches, factories and the remains of bombed buildings. Later we found ourselves commandeered to clear bombed areas and railway lines, doing yet more slave labour for our German masters.

  Thank God for a decent pair of boots! My army issue boots had seen me through a hell of lot over the past five years. Now my lovely new soft leather boots, the best quality my mother could afford, would do the same. Unlike the army issue ones, which had to be broken in, mine gave me no trouble. They were a perfect fit and I managed to keep them in good order on The March. Without them I would have been in deep trouble. Look after your boots and they will look after your feet. If you can stay upright and just keep going then you had a good chance of getting through it all.

  And that’s what I did: kept going.

  A lot of men were not so lucky. There were fellows with dreadfully worn-out shoes which let in the wet and rott
ed their feet; some didn’t have anything to wear and had bits of material wrapped round their feet like bandages. I heard of somebody who had his wooden work clogs on when his camp was suddenly evacuated and his feet were permanently damaged by wearing them. So good boots were essential to your health and survival.

  The most important thing to remember was not to take off your boots, not just because of the fear of frostbite, and your toes going black, but because they could get stolen or you might never get them back on your feet. Sad to say, it was every man for himself out there. If you left your boots somewhere at night they would be gone by morning. If you were lucky and they were still there, either your feet would have swollen so much or the leather frozen solid over night, or both, that you wouldn’t be able to get them back on. If you couldn’t walk, and your mates couldn’t carry you, and the cart was full of the injured, sick and dying, then you were left behind.

  Keeping warm was also a matter of life and death. I didn’t take my clothes off for at least six weeks. I walked all day and slept all night in them. I was in a shocking state most of the time. Never mind the stink; everybody was in the same boat. Not washing or shaving, hair and beard matted with filth, skin crawling with fleas and lice. My skin hurt, red raw from me scratching through my clothes or at any bits of exposed flesh. Like so many things in my life – during those lost years of imprisonment, I got used to it. It became normal. There were more important things to worry about anyway. We didn’t dare take our clothes off or we would have died of cold so we tried to keep every part of ourselves covered as much as possible. Nobody wanted to get frostbite or catch pneumonia. When the weather got better and everything started to melt, there was plenty of water around to have a quick wash in a puddle or stream, however basic it was.

  Later we stopped at stalags en route and work sites and, when the weather was better, if there was a tap or stand pipe it was a treat to wash your face and hands. We didn’t dare take off our clothes and certainly not our underwear when we got a delousing.

  [16 March]

  Sid, Laurie & myself just deloused.

  An important enough event, I made a note of it on the back of the group camp postcard I had kept with me. I think all we got was a puff of DDT powder on our heads, down our underpants and inside our vests. I don’t remember where that happened or who did it. Somebody obviously took pity on us or just didn’t want any more lousy prisoners around. But of course it made no difference as the blighters all came back pretty well straightaway. Same clothes (unwashed), same sleeping arrangements (cheek by jowl) and same fleas (offspring ready for action).

  Now lying in barns waiting to move again

  The best place to settle down for the night was somewhere with straw. If you were lucky and found a barn or hay loft, you could climb up and bury yourself in the hay. Lovely stuff. You could move it like sheets and then tuck your feet under. It wasn’t warm, it was boiling. Marvellous. Imagine walking all day in thick snow and in the freezing cold and finding that for bedding. Wonderful. Failing that, a cowshed would do with cows preferably because they gave off so much heat. Failing that, huddle up with your pals or anybody; you couldn’t afford to be choosy. It was Shakespeare, I believe, who wrote, ‘Misery acquaints a man with strange bedfellows’ and I certainly experienced that first-hand.

  If you couldn’t keep warm it was even more important to make sure you kept eating – anything to keep your strength up. Years as a POW conditioned me to starvation rations and my stomach shrank considerably. I learned to eat whatever was put in front of me and make the most of what I was given or I scrounged or stole. Obviously I learned my lesson the hard way when I turned my nose up at that cold soup served on the farm the day, when I chucked it on the ground and was attacked by Jan, the guard. No point in being squeamish or fussy about what you put in your mouth or you would starve to death.

  The thought of food was always in our minds. Every minute of the day and night, waking in the early hours with a gnawing pain inside from the hunger. Jimmy, Laurie, Sid, Heb and I were used to eating rubbish food, with the occasional luxury of a Red Cross parcel and extra farm produce we nicked. Searching for food (anything edible) was second nature to us. Even more important than before in these harsh conditions. We had no idea what was round the next corner.

  We preferred keeping at the back of the group, trailing behind the long straggly column of men, with the guards spread out ahead. We were able to go off on our own or in pairs to forage – like our night raids through the barbed wire fence. There were farm buildings and empty houses where the owners had fled and we checked for food and water. Then we caught the group up and shared our booty or kept it until we stopped for the night.

  Fields were deep in snow and ground frozen solid so it was impossible to find anything edible growing. I do remember, however, eating raw turnips (ghastly because they gave you belly ache), dock leaves, sour as crab apples, and wild chives. It might be only four or five mouthfuls but it kept you going. We searched pig sties. I ate stinking, rotten left-over pig swill from troughs and examined slurry for scraps. I found some tiny, small potatoes in the mud and shit and took handfuls to a stream where I washed them. I filled my pockets up and we had them baked on a piece of tin over a fire that night. We all played our part in finding extra life-saving food.

  One day Laurie and I were looking round some old farm buildings when we heard a squealing noise. Laurie went to investigate and came back with a little piglet under his arm which was struggling to escape. There was a metal drum nearby so Laurie got the piglet by its back legs, swung it hard, smashing its head against the side. Bang! Killed instantly. I did feel sorry for the little creature. I know it was necessary but I couldn’t have done it, not even to save my life. Laurie was a butcher in civvy street and not squeamish about animals – dead or alive.

  We returned to the group and Laurie had the dead piglet under his coat. ‘Pork for supper,’ he said, opening his coat an inch to show the others. When we stopped for the night, it was Laurie’s job to cut up the carcass and we roasted it in the fire. I don’t know when we had last eaten any meat. What a glorious smell! Roast pork and crackling. Fat dripping down into the fire making the flames spit. Oh, the taste! We had a fine meal that night and there were even a few scraps left for our friends.

  I was only a greengrocer’s assistant after all. What would you expect me to do? I couldn’t have done without Laurie the time I found the fish heads. We were passing through a village and I was looking around, keeping half an eye open for the guards when I came across a dustbin left on the pavement. The others were up ahead so I stopped for a quick look. I lifted the lid, peered inside and saw a load of fish heads among the rubbish. I wondered how long they had been there. I would have to see what the others had to say. So I picked about a half a dozen out and wrapped them in a bit of newspaper which was inside and carried the packet stuffed inside the front of my coat.

  ‘What you reckon?’ I said to Laurie as I pulled out the packet and peeled back the paper. We both took a sniff.

  ‘I think they’ll be all right,’ he said. ‘Give ’em a try.’

  ‘Yes, but I can’t take the eyes out.’ You wouldn’t have thought after all that business, I would be afraid to remove the eyes. I didn’t mind watching my brother Alfred removing his glass eye to clean it. What was the difference?

  ‘Don’t worry, Charlie, I’ll do it.’ Laurie was as good as his word.

  We stopped that night in part of a disused factory and groups of men lit fires and settled to brew up or cook a meal, depending on what they had found or had brought with them. I took the fish heads out and Laurie laid them on the piece of tin kept for cooking. Laurie borrowed a needle from Jimmy which he kept on a lapel and delicately picked out each eyeball and threw it in the fire. Pop, pop they went. The heads only took a moment to cook so we soon had them to eat. Only a tiny piece each, more like an appetizer, except we had no main course to follow. Still it was tasty.

  We would be walking along as usua
l when one of us would look round and say, ‘Where’s Jimmy?’ He was always slipping off somewhere unnoticed. Nowhere to be seen. Then he would re-appear with something he had found.

  One day, Jimmy was checking out houses to see if there was anybody about. Not that people being at home put him off going in. Sometimes we arrived in a village not long after the civilians had fled after another bombing raid or in fear of Russian troops arriving. Some men slept in the abandoned houses but my pals and I never did. Jimmy went into one cottage which was empty and looked around the kitchen and found some jugged geese legs, preserved in an earthenware jar, on a shelf in a cupboard. He hid it under his coat and brought it back. Sounds strange but they were delicious heated up. I would have eaten them cold. I wasn’t fussy. Pity we had to ditch the jar, as it might have come in handy, but it was too heavy to carry.

  Rations very bad. Everybody hungry and weak.

  Our planes are bombing every day and night.

  Another time, what did Jimmy bring back? Before we had time to miss him he appeared carrying a milk churn. He had been into a cottage to look around and had found two loaves of bread. He grabbed them and when he got outside put them in a churn to hide them from the guards or anybody else who would try to take them away. We had a lot of bread that night. Bread was always an important part of our diet and if we weren’t getting our ration from the Germans because their supply had dried up, it was every man for himself.