Prisoner of Dieppe

by Hugh Brewster

  “All right, men,” Beesley finally called out. “Line up in rows of five!” We shuffled into formation.

  Spitfire was sulky that we had obeyed Beesley’s orders but not his. He began counting us but took his time doing it. He would pretend to lose count and then start again. At one point he wandered off and kept us standing there. Then he came back and began counting us from the start.

  “Isn’t he the little Napoleon!” I heard an English voice mutter.

  “Little twerp, is more like it,” a Canadian res-ponded.

  That first morning, roll call took well over an hour. Sometimes on freezing winter days, Spitfire would keep us standing there even longer, if he felt like it.

  Each day the routine was the same. The loudspeakers in the yard would summon us to the parade ground. After Appell was over, two men from each hut would go to the cookhouse outside our compound and bring back Kübels of mint tea. A Kübel looked just like a large, metal garbage can and was carried with two poles shoved through the handles. In the morning it was usually filled with a greenish liquid we called mint tea, even though there wasn’t much mint in it. Some days we got fake coffee made from burnt barley that was equally vile. Most of the guys used the fake tea for shaving as there was no other hot water. We also got our daily ration of black bread — one loaf to be shared among ten men. Since all knives had been confiscated, cutting the bread posed a challenge. But a fellow from the Calgary Tanks managed to sharpen up an old door hinge and became expert at slicing a piece of bread exactly three-quarters of an inch thick. For starving men, every crumb counted. Sometimes we were given fake jam made from beet pulp that looked and tasted like pink glue. On Sundays we would sometimes get a slice of liverwurst or a piece of fishy-smelling cheese.

  At midday the Kübels would be brought in again, this time either filled with watery soup or boiled potatoes. If it was potatoes each man received two small potatoes or one medium-sized one. And that would be all the food we would get for the rest of the day. In the evening there would be another Appell before dark and we would then go to bed hungry. I was hungry all the time. I thought about food constantly — about my mother’s Sunday roast, about beans on toast, about hot scones with cream and jam.

  Hunger was one of the constants of POW life, but boredom was another. Each boring day seemed just like the boring day before. Mackie spent most of his time playing cards. He was a good bridge and poker player and often had little piles of cigarettes beside him — proof of his winnings. Cigarettes were what we used for money. You could trade with them and sometimes even use them to bribe the “goons” — our name for the guards.

  But I wasn’t a card player — what I really longed for was a book. I went to the wire of the British compound one day with some cigarettes Mackie had given me, hoping to trade them for something to read. But there were no books to be had. I was told that some soldiers occasionally received books in the mail from England but that they were soon used for toilet paper. Having become accustomed to using my hand for that purpose — and then rubbing it in the sandy soil of the parade ground — I could understand the allure of paper.

  A few days after we had arrived at Stalag VIIIB, Harry Beesley reminded us that it was the duty of every POW to try to escape. The idea of digging an escape tunnel got everyone excited, particularly Mackie. Our hut was chosen as the entrance for a tunnel, since it was the closest to the wire fence. Bill Lee was one of the Royal Canadian Engineers and thus a good person to take charge of a tunnelling operation. In mid-September he and Sid Cleasby, a burly miner from Timmins, had begun to cut a square in the concrete floor under a bunk near the wall. They used a saw that had been carefully crafted from some pilfered sheet metal. After the concrete slab was cut and lifted up, we took turns digging out the earth underneath with tools made from tin cans. Lookouts were posted at the doors and windows to keep an eye out for goons. Any trace of earth would have given the game away, so we scooped it into homemade bags that we dumped down the Forty Holer at night. If the Russian prisoners who had the nasty job of shovelling out the “honey pit” beneath the latrine ever noticed the extra earth, they didn’t let on to the Germans.

  During our third week in the camp, a stack of brown cardboard boxes was spotted at the gate. The word spread like wildfire — the Red Cross parcels were here! We gathered near the wire, almost crazed with excitement. Real food at last! Beesley elbowed his way through us and took charge of the transfer of the boxes. He announced that instead of the one box per soldier as the Red Cross had intended, we had only received one box for every four men. We all groaned, but knew that we’d manage to share a box with our fellow “muckers.” During our first week in the camp we’d divided up into muckers’ groups of four or six men with whom we shared all the food we could find or scrounge. I think we got the name from the English expression “mucking in,” for making do. Mackie and I were in a muckers’ group with Big Jim from the top bunk and a fellow named Wilf, one of the Camerons from Winnipeg.

  The four of us sat on my bunk and carefully opened the Red Cross box. No parcel we’d received as kids on Christmas morning was ever as eagerly anticipated. We pulled out a large can of Klim powdered milk. Then a can of butter, a tin of sugar, a packet of tea, raisins, powdered eggs, biscuits, cans of sardines, cocoa powder, pudding and canned vegetables. There was also a bar of soap, a large bar of chocolate and a can of fifty cigarettes. Since none of us were smokers, this gave each of us a little extra currency. We weren’t tea drinkers either so we immediately swapped our tea for some cocoa powder. Everything was divided up fairly among the four of us. I stowed my stash under my bunk. I never had to worry about theft — the POW code of honour meant you never stole another man’s food no matter how hungry you were.

  Nothing in the Red Cross parcel was wasted. Wilf could put a wire handle on a sardine can and make it into a soup bowl, or turn a taller can into a handy mug. And we used the empty cardboard boxes to get rid of the sandy soil from the tunnel. As we walked around the compound we would let it leak out from the boxes and then scuff it in with our boots. When the goons saw us with the boxes they figured we were simply guarding our food or doing a little bartering.

  The evenings after the Red Cross parcels arrived were always the best ones we had. That first night, I remember sipping hot cocoa and chatting with one of the FMRs who was helping me improve my high-school French. I looked over at the smoky poker circle surrounding Mackie and saw from the pile of cigarettes at his elbow that he was having a winning night. My full stomach filled me with a feeling of contentment.

  But evenings like this one were rare. And very soon, misery would come calling, in a way that we could never have imagined.

  CHAPTER 13

  ROPES AND CHAINS

  October 8, 1942

  At Appell that morning we knew something was up. The barbed wire around our compound was surrounded by German soldiers holding machine guns. Several armoured cars stood outside on the roadway with their guns pointed right at us. Had someone ratted on us about the tunnel?

  We lined up in our usual rows of five. Then we saw the commandant of the camp arrive at our gate. The morning sun reflected off his perfectly shined boots, and on his cap I could see a Nazi eagle clasping a swastika. As he entered, Beesley crisply called us to attention.

  With a stony face, the commandant pulled out an official-looking document. He handed it to an interpreter who proceeded to read it aloud to us in halting English: “The German government has always shown the utmost clemency to prisoners of war and accorded them the treatment due to honourable men captured in battle.”

  “Baloney!” someone behind me called out. A few others jeered.

  The interpreter waited for the noise to die down and then continued. “After the abortive enemy invasion at Dieppe, many German soldiers were found shot with their hands tied behind their backs.”

  A nervous murmur rippled through our ranks. There was just no way this was true.

  The interpreter went on. “The German go
vernment has demanded an apology from the British government and an assurance that such inhumane treatment will be discontinued in future. The British government has refused to apologize and therefore the German government has no choice but to take reprisals against all members of the Dieppe Force.”

  Reprisals! This word was greeted with icy silence. We knew about German reprisals. Only a few months ago an entire Czech village had been massacred as revenge for the assassination of one Nazi official. I felt my heart begin to hammer in my chest. The soldiers at the wire raised their guns menacingly. Beesley was ordered to march the first ten men into a nearby barracks. The POWs from our hut, 19B, were the first group in line.

  Beesley swung about and spoke to us in a calm voice. “Men,” he said, “I don’t know what’s going to happen. But whatever it is, we’re going to act like soldiers. First two rows, right turn!”

  Bill Lee led off the first ten men. They marched smartly with their arms swinging high. One of them began whistling “The Maple Leaf Forever” and the others joined in. Mackie and I were now in the front row. Would they only shoot the first ten, I wondered? Or would we be next? We waited for the sound of gunshots. I closed my eyes and thought of my mother. I could hear my ragged breathing. But there were no sounds of firing. I opened my eyes.

  “Second two rows, right turn!” came the order. I glanced at Mackie, who gave me a wink. We, too, whistled as we marched into the barracks, but a little shakily. Inside, we saw a row of German soldiers standing with ropes over their shoulders. Were they planning to beat us, I wondered? Then an officer stepped forward and called us all Gangsterschwein. He took a rope and motioned to one of his men to hold up his hands, then demonstrated how our wrists would be tied in front of us. “Till Church-eel apologize!” he added in English.

  “And Hell freezes over!” someone called out. We laughed nervously and the officer shouted at us to be quiet. But I felt relief flooding through me. We weren’t going to be shot! They were just going to tie our hands! I looked at Mackie, who shrugged and rolled his eyes. In turn, each of us stepped forward and held up our wrists while they were roughly tied. As we were shoved out the back door we were almost giddy with relief. Once back in our hut we began working to loosen the ropes.

  But it wasn’t long before the grim reality of being tied up sank in. Simple tasks like cutting a slice of bread or spooning soup into your mouth became difficult. Going to the latrine was the worst of all. Men who had been stretcher-bearers were appointed to be Sanitäters, as the goons called them. We would have to go to the Forty Holer in groups of ten with a Sanitäter, who would pull our pants down and then lift them up again when we were finished — there was no wiping as there was nothing to wipe with. Many of us had diarrhea from the lousy diet, which made the whole process even more frequent and humiliating.

  The Red Cross parcels also stopped coming. When Beesley protested to the Germans, he was told that the parcels were cut off “until the British government apologizes.” So it was back to surviving on watery soup and black bread. One day the skeleton of a large rat was found in our soup Kübel. Our sergeant called out, “Meat in the soup today, boys!” and held the skeleton aloft. We were all too hungry to care.

  The goons untied our wrists in the evening and then tied us up again before the morning Appell. One night after their hands were untied three Royals cut a hole in the wire behind the latrine and escaped.

  “Wish, I’d known!” said Mackie. “Woulda gone with ’em.”

  “With your bad foot?” I replied. “Are you nuts?”

  Mackie was still limping because of the bullet that had gone through his foot. But he was determined to get better and would walk around the compound at least twice a day, doing twists and knee bends and stretches as best he could with his hands tied. The three Royals who had escaped were captured ten days later. They were made to stand outside against a barracks wall with their hands chained behind them for a full day. If they moved they were jabbed with a rifle butt. Then they were hauled off to “the cooler,” a nine-by-sixteen-foot cell, for ten days’ solitary confinement.

  “Well, at least they didn’t shoot ’em,” said Mackie, who seemed as determined as ever to make his own escape.

  After a few weeks of tying our hands in front of us, the Germans decided they would tie them behind us, instead. Small things we had learned to do with our hands tied in front of us now became impossible. Morale plummeted to an all-time low. We weren’t allowed to lie on our bunks during the day, so I often sat on the cement floor with my back against the wall, feeling utterly hopeless. The weather had turned cool and it was hard to stay warm.

  One morning I saw Mackie standing over me. “Okay, Allie, up and at ’em,” he said. Then he pulled me up and dragged me outside. “I’m worried about you,” he went on. “That droopy look of yours reminds me of your dad.”

  I knew he was referring to the time when my father was unemployed and had just sat smoking and reading the newspapers on our front porch.

  “I am feeling pretty low,” I said, turning to Mackie. “I’d be okay if I just had a book to read. Then I’d have something to look forward to when I woke up in the morning.”

  “You’ve read lots of books,” replied Mackie. He paused and looked at me and then said, “so why don’t you tell me about some of them. You know a lot of stuff!”

  “So what stuff do you want to know?” I asked with a sigh.

  “We-e-ll,” replied Mackie, “How about Mary Queen of Scots. You remember we saw her palace in Edinburgh?”

  “Holyrood House,” I said. “Yes, I remember.”

  “Okay, well, how come they chopped her head off?”

  “Whew, that’s a long story,” I replied. “But,” I added with a wry smile, “I guess we have the time.”

  During our walk, I told him what I knew about Mary Queen of Scots. And that led me the next day to tell him about her cousin, Queen Elizabeth I, whose grave we’d seen in Westminster Abbey. The day after that I told him about Mary’s son, King James VI of Scotland, and how he became James I of England after the death of Queen Elizabeth.

  “So what about Bonnie Prince Charlie?” Mackie asked. “My dad taught us a song about him.”

  “I’ll get to him. He comes later. But first I have to explain about the Stuart kings,” I replied.

  By the time I got to the story of Bonnie Charlie, the “prince in the heather,” we were into our third week of daily walks and my mood had improved greatly. Thinking about what I was going to tell Mackie each day did give me something to look forward to when I opened my eyes in the morning.

  “Allie, you really know a lot of stuff!” Mackie would say. “When we get out of here you gotta go to college. You could be a teacher, or a professor, or something like that.”

  Mackie’s praise and our daily walks pulled me out of my funk. It helped me forget about the ropes and the barbed wire and my growling, hungry stomach. My wrists were also raw and irritated from the creosote in the ropes. Some of the men had developed nasty sores and purple fingers from it.

  During Appell on the morning of December 2nd, the camp commandant showed up again. This time we were told that instead of apologizing, Winston Churchill had ordered that German POWs in England should have their hands tied. We let out a small cheer. Then we were told that because of Churchill’s “obstinacy” our punishment would continue. We booed. Once again we were marched into a barracks, but this time there were shackles waiting for us — handcuffs joined by a chain just over a foot long. Compared to the ropes, however, the shackles seemed a big improvement. You could put your hands in your pockets while wearing them, for instance. With the weather becoming colder and with no gloves to wear, this made a big difference. Best of all, we soon discovered a way to get out of the shackles.

  Wilf, of course, was the first man in our hut to figure out how to do it. We’d kept all of the empty cans from the Red Cross parcels and some of them had little tin keys as openers. Wilf managed to shape one of these so that it could un
lock the shackles. Soon the guys in all the other huts did likewise. During the day, when Spitfire and his goons weren’t looking, we would unlock the shackles. But the punishment for being caught without shackles was severe — eight hours standing against a wall in the cold with hands tied behind the back.

  One day, a guard caught a naked soldier from our hut washing himself at the trough in the washroom. He had his shackles on but it was obvious that he must have removed them to take his clothes off. The guard screamed at the naked man and then ran to fetch Spitfire. Some of us rushed in and helped the soldier take off his shackles, get dressed, and then put the chains back on. When the guard returned with Spitfire, the soldier was calmly washing his face fully clothed. Spitfire began screaming at the guard and accused him of being drunk while on duty. This gave us all a big laugh, but taught us to keep a sharp eye for Spitfire and his goons. Whenever one of them was seen approaching our hut, we would call out, “Air Raid!” and quickly put on our shackles.

  Keeping clean was not easy because we never knew when the water would be turned on. One day when there was no water at all we saw Beesley striding across the parade ground with soap and towel in hand. He stopped beside a large puddle of freezing water and stripped to the waist. He then proceeded to wash himself and then shave using the water from the frigid puddle. Shortly after this, the water was turned on. Beesley more than lived up to his own advice to “make the enemy fear you.” When Spitfire would keep us shivering on the parade ground during winter Appells, Beesley would tear into him. “Hurry up, you idiot!” he would bark out. “Get these lads counted and off parade quickly.” Anyone else would have been thrown into the cooler for talking to Spifire that way, but not Beesley. We were all in awe of him.