by Matthew Hall
Apeldoorn fell to the 5th Canadian Division on 15 April 1945. Herford was immediately anxious to return and find news of his comrades who had remained behind. Despite being told that the road into town was not yet open, he used his well-proven persuasive powers to convince the Canadian soldiers manning the checkpoints en route of the urgency of his visit. Two days after the town’s liberation he returned to the Wilhelm III barracks. The buildings were by now largely deserted, the remaining personnel having been moved on into a POW camp in Germany. It was guarded by Canadian soldiers with instructions not to let anyone in, but on hearing his story they allowed him to enter to search for Colonel Warrack’s dog-eared diary and any other remaining personal effects. He found the hiding place in the ceiling of Warrack’s room, and to his great relief the diary and a little hoard of belongings were still there. These he returned to Warrack’s family. He also retrieved a souvenir which could have sentimental value only to him: the mirror above Warrack’s hand wash basin. The same mirror remains on Herford’s bathroom wall to this day.
Herford later learned that Warrack had in fact escaped with the help of the Dutch resistance. The morning after Herford and McGowan had got away the Germans issued orders at 8.15am that, with the exception of five MOs, two padres and 20 RAMC Other Ranks, a complete evacuation would take place in two hours. The men deliberately dragged their heels, and by 11.30am Colonel Warrack had disappeared. The Germans were infuriated; they moved all remaining personnel into one block and the guard doubled. On 26 October Major Simon Frazer, now OC, was told that all remaining staff and patients were to be moved to St Joseph’s Kreigs-Lazerett. The final evacuation took place that day. All patients were moved, including one subaltern who was transported on a bus while receiving a blood transfusion from a Dutch girl (who had been kept in the barracks by German soldiers for their pleasure) and who willingly acted as a donor to keep this man alive.
That afternoon, Herford was delighted to be reunited with Major Simon Frazer, the surgeon with whom he had so carefully cut up the smoked salmon to distribute amongst the wounded soldiers in the Airborne Hospital. The memory of the extreme pangs of hunger suffered by both men, and doubtless the supreme test of will involved in defeating temptation, had etched itself into both their memories. Like many of the bizarre and perverse incidents of war shared by men suddenly and unexpectedly thrown together in deplorable conditions, it formed a deep bond between them.
Herford learned that after his escape Fraser had continued to work in St Joseph’s Hospital. The hospital was by now largely evacuated, but still contained 20 wounded British soldiers waiting to be flown home. As Fraser showed him around the crumbling building, Herford realized that in the final months and weeks of German occupation Fraser had performed a heroic task in caring for the sick and wounded with dwindling medical and food supplies. While awaiting rescue the Germans had become increasingly tense and erratic in their moods, and the threat of a bullet in the head from an embittered German soldier hung menacingly over Fraser and his patients until the moment they saw the faces of the first Canadian troops. Ironically, Fraser talked not of his jubilation at being freed, but of his relief in getting hold of Canadian rations. Neither he nor his patients had enjoyed anything approaching a proper meal in months, and while the German soldiers continued to eat well, many of their hospitalized prisoners were in the early stages of starvation.
There is no greater agony for a doctor than to see his patients dying needlessly from lack of the most basic medicine, food, and no greater joy than to see them receiving the nourishment which will save them from the jaws of death. It is a testament to Colonel Herford’s level-headedness and unswerving dedication to his work that never once in his diaries does he pour vitriol on those who cruelly treated the prisoners he and Fraser tended in Apeldoorn. His rare ability simply to attend to the task in hand, without being side-tracked by feelings of hatred for the enemy, was to prove his greatest asset in the coming weeks. The hardships endured by the prisoners at Apeldoorn would pale into insignificance when compared to those suffered by the inmates of the concentration camp to which he would shortly be posted.
On 27 April Herford’s unit was ordered to proceed to the infamous Belsen camp in north-east Germany. At that stage very little was known about the crimes against humanity which had been perpetrated in Hitler’s ‘dungeons of democracy’. Even the Allied High Command was ignorant of the scale of the atrocities. Until April 1945 only rumours had leaked out, and these were usually dismissed as wildly exaggerated.
On 4 April General Eisenhower followed his troops into Ohrdruf, one of the first camps to be liberated. He was so shocked by what he saw that he immediately sent photographs of the dead and dying to Churchill. The photographs were circulated to every member of the British Cabinet. Within two months the photographic images of Belsen, Auschwitz and Dachau would become eternal symbols of the very depths of human depravity.
Herford ordered his unit to pack and prepare to proceed to Belsen. He travelled ahead of them to the 2nd Army Group Headquarters for briefing. His staff car covered 400 miles in a tortuous overnight journey. Northern Germany was still a chaotic and dangerous place; isolated pockets of resistance meant the route was plagued by interminable detours. The roads were unpredictable, potholed and cluttered with army vehicles, bands of miserable displaced persons and abandoned German tanks. Here and there the crack of rifles and thud of mortars was heard. In the distance, like a far-off storm, was the constant rumble of heavy artillery which accompanied the 2nd Army’s inexorable advance.
When Herford arrived to receive his orders he was told his unit was being diverted to Neuengamme a small town almost on the North Sea which was still being held by Nazi troops. It was strongly suspected that a concentration camp would be found there. Herford was instructed to take over the camp as soon as the Germans had been flushed out. This change of plan saved Herford from witnessing the very first days of the Belsen liberation, but his mission to Neuengamme was again to place him at tremendous personal risk. It was now 2 May. Still proceeding ahead of his unit, Herford drove north-west to Geesthacht, a suburb of Hamburg and the location of Field Marshall Montgomery’s Headquarters. There he reported to Brigadier Wimsey of 158 Brigade and successfully negotiated the loan of a jeep and the services of a medical orderly. From Hamburg they drove the 30 miles north-west along the coast towards Neuengamme under the white flag. This was a necessary precaution in territory still hotly disputed by ad-hoc groups of stubborn Nazi troops.
As they neared their destination they came across a British Bren patrol returning to base after having come under heavy fire. Herford was warned that advancing further would involve serious risk, and was strongly advised to turn back. They had reached the front line. The most sensible course would have been to wait for the resistance to be crushed and to follow the Allied troops into Neuengamme.
Having heard some of the first reports which had emerged from Belsen, Herford was in no mood for retreating. He had determined that nothing would prevent him from getting to the wretched inmates of the camp as soon as possible. But rather than risk the life of the orderly he decided to proceed alone, on foot. He had gone only a short distance when he came upon a group of German soldiers. He introduced himself as a medical officer and demanded to see their senior officer. It was an outrageous risk. Soldiers in the last throes of battle are notoriously ruthless. He had no protection other than a square of white cloth and a quick wit. Fortunately, his luck held. Even in the face of inevitable defeat, the soldiers remained sufficiently honourable to take him blindfolded to their commander.
The commander was an ex-Corvette captain, a rabid Nazi, fanatically determined to resist to the last. The command structure in the area had completely broken down, but his troops were continuing to fight in battle-groups, driven on by the obstinacy of their leader. On meeting Herford, he immediately told him that Hitler was as great a man as Jesus Christ.
Herford demanded access to the Neuengamme camp, but the commander i
nformed him that it had already been evacuated. This was not the safest of situations in which to threaten an enemy officer, but nonetheless Herford warned him that if he was later discovered to have lied, he and his fellow officers would be held personally responsible. Before being allowed to return to his Jeep (an outcome which, despite the Geneva Protocols requiring non-combatant medical staff to be treated with neutrality, was far from guaranteed), he also told the commander details of the initial reports from Belsen. Apparently he was visibly shocked. Even among the German officer class, it appears that ignorance was rife.
It was later to emerge that Neuengamme had been the scene of crimes against humanity as bad as any of those throughout the war. In total 90,000 people passed through its gates, 40,000 of whom died there, the victims of unspeakable brutality. Amongst the most unfortunate of the inmates were a group of 20 French and Russian Jewish children, who in February 1945 were selected by Dr Heissmeyer, a Berlin physician, for medical ‘research’ into tuberculosis. During the following three months Heissmeyer made frequent visits to Neuengamme during which he injected his unsuspecting victims with TB bacteria. While the experiments were being carried out the children were given sweets and toys to play with.
As the Allies closed in, orders were given by SS General Pohl that the children should be taken to Bullenhuser Damm, a satellite camp, and executed, so that evidence of the research would be destroyed. The children and four adult prisoners (two Dutch and two French doctors who had assumed the role of nurses) were accompanied to Bullenhuser Damm by Dr Trzerbinski, one of the camp doctors. The prisoners were taken to a cellar. The adults were removed to another room and hanged. In an uncharacteristic act of ‘mercy’ Trzerbinski injected the children with morphine so that they would be unconscious when hanged. Their executioner was Johann Frahm. Ropes were placed around their necks, and in Frahm’s own words, ‘like pictures they were hanged on hooks on the walls’.
The other inmates were no less unfortunate. A week before Herford’s visit to the area they were loaded onto two ships and three barges which were towed towards Norway, in the certain expectation that they would be mistaken for German industrial vessels and sunk by Allied planes. The ships were duly attacked and the barges set on fire. One of the barges drifted back to the shore near Lubeck carrying 400 survivors. As they clambered ashore German soldiers ruthlessly gunned them down in the sand. None survived.
Herford returned from this fruitless meeting to Geesthacht. At the end of his journey he was an unwitting witness to a historical event. As he was walking back to his quarters he noticed a group of very senior German officers being guided to Montgomery’s HQ under escort. It was the armistice party of the German Army, desperate to surrender to the British rather than the Russians, who were pressing them hard.
It was now 3 May. Herford was ordered to spend the day locating suitable sites for POW camps and hospitals at Lubeck, but the available resources were pitifully inadequate. On that day many tens of thousands of German soldiers poured across the Allied lines. It was a sea of grey uniforms, as far as the eye could see. Such large numbers of prisoners were quite unexpected. There had been no time to prepare adequate facilities, with the result that they did not experience the most humane treatment. They were herded into hastily erected barbed-wire compounds with insufficient shelter and facilities. Many of the prisoners were young teenagers, ill-equipped for war, conscripted by an increasingly desperate and callous regime which proved itself more than willing to send them to their deaths.
Herford and his unit entered Belsen on 4 May, nine days after its liberation. The intervening time had done little to ameliorate the suffering of the survivors, who were still dying at a rate of 60 per day. Thousands of stinking, emaciated corpses were still strewn everywhere, and were gradually being heaped into piles for burial in huge grave pits.
Belsen had no gas chambers, but 35,000 corpses were counted, and of the 30,000 survivors, 70 per cent required hospitalization. The chief causes of death were starvation and disease, mainly typhus, tuberculosis and dysentery. All were as a result of the most shocking wilful neglect.
Like many who were unfortunate enough to witness such sights, Herford experienced difficulty in translating the full enormity of what he saw into words. His diary entries are brief but poignant:
Although No 32 Casualty Clearing Station and No 11 Light Field Ambulance had done magnificent work there in the previous ten days, it was still a distressing sight that can never be erased from the memory. Piles of corpses lay everywhere, naked and emaciated. Huge grave pits were filled with thousands of bodies. Sub-human creatures prowled about apathetically with expressionless eyes. The huts were so crowded that it was impossible to tell the living from the dead. Yet miraculously, many had retained their magnanimity and humanity.
Fortunately for the survivors, Herford was a consummate administrator as well as doctor. While many exposed to such conditions would have failed, he and his unit were able to get on with bringing many back from the brink of death. The job of the medical teams in the newly liberated Belsen was harrowing, and many harsh decisions had to be made. British doctors were forced to move among the survivors and mark the foreheads of those likely to survive with a red cross. It was a heart-rending task, but absolutely necessary.
The eye-witness accounts from Belsen and other camps finally convinced the soldiers and any remaining doubters at home of the justice of their cause. Peter Coombes, one of the first soldiers into the camp, wrote:
I have never seen people looking so ill, so wretched and so near death. Belsen is a living death, an example of Nazi methods, the best indictment of their government one could ever find, and if it is necessary, an undoubted answer to those who want to know what we have been fighting for. One feeble movement of the hand in salutation to us from these people is also an answer, for our coming has saved thousands in this camp alone, but for many it is too late.
In the first days after liberation soldiers and nurses had acted hastily, giving food to whoever they could. But the richness of the British Army rations – tinned meat, oatmeal, dried milk-powder, sugar and salt – was too much for those in the final stages of starvation. Tragically many died as a result of this kindness. The inhumanity of the camp guards was well documented by the survivors. The ethic according to which they operated was brutal and straightforward: ‘Break the body: break the spirit: break the heart.’ Amongst those who did not break, and who owed their lives to the British medical teams, was Fania Fenlon. Even in the first week of April she and the other inmates still had no idea when liberation would come. At that time she wrote:
Hastily built to last a few months, our temporary barracks were half-collapsing; the planks were coming apart. Looking at the damage, a scornful SS man said, speaking of us, the Jews, ‘They rot everything, even wood.’
It was true, we were rotting, but it was hardly our fault as their presence alone would taint the healthiest beings. A few days later, I too had typhus. My last vision as a healthy person was of the women of the camp, like everyone else, outside, naked, lining up to wash our dresses and underclothes in the thin trickle of water from the pierced pipe. On the other side of the wire, the men were doing the same; we were like two troops of cattle at the half-empty trough of an abattoir.
Now the illness took me over entirely; my head was bursting, my body trembling, my intestines and stomach were agony, and I had the most abominable dysentery. I was just a sick animal lying in its own excrement. From April 8 everything around me became nightmarish… No one visited us any more, not even the SS. They’d turned off the water.
For five days before liberation there had been no water at all. The hut lavatories had been out of use for a long time before that. Most inmates, too ill or weak to move, performed their bodily functions where they lay. The floors and bunks of the huts were covered in human excreta. The living, dead and dying lay in lice-infested heaps, barely distinguishable from one another. Conditions for the spread of disease could not have been wo
rse; only feeble attempts had been made in the last days before the Allies arrived to remove corpses from the living accommodation. In one hut, which was close to a pile of corpses awaiting disposal in a mass grave, there were dead women lying in the passage; in one room leading out of the passage there were so many bodies that it was impossible to squeeze in even one more.
The extremes of hunger even drove some poor inmates to cannibalism. One British Intelligence Officer who was at Belsen at the same time as Herford gave evidence at the trial of the camp commandant, Joseph Kramer, that as many as one in ten of the bodies his staff cleared away had a piece of flesh cut from the thigh. At first he assumed they were close gunshot wounds. Later he witnessed at first hand a starving mortuary attendant whipping out a knife and cutting a chunk of flesh from a corpse. He concluded his testimony to the court thus: ‘I leave it to your imagination to realise to what state the prisoners were reduced, for men to risk eating bits of flesh cut from black corpses.’
In such conditions Herford and his team were forced to work and bring some semblance of order. The mental discipline required to keep a level head when dealing with prisoners who were not only physically, but often mentally sick, was tremendous. In one recorded instance a woman approached a British soldier begging for milk for her baby. The soldier took the baby and found that it had been dead for many days. The woman continued begging, so out of compassion he placed some milk on the dead baby’s lips. The mother then started to croon with joy and carried the baby away in triumph. She stumbled and fell dead in a few yards.
As a German speaker, Herford heard first hand from his patients, many of them German ‘undesirables’ – gypsies, homosexuals and ‘enemies of the state’ – the full extent of the atrocities. It is not surprising, therefore, that he and many of his colleagues choose to speak little of the things that disturbed them most. Frustrating as such reticence may be to the researcher of history, it is a profound mark of the humility of those who were present that they will not presume to communicate the enormity of what they witnessed through the inadequate testimony of an individual voice. Colonel T. M. Backhouse, the chief prosecutor at the Belsen trials, had no choice but to attempt a description of conditions discovered in the camp. He opened his case with a film taken shortly after the arrival of the British Army. He told the court: