by Sean Longden
Some of the uniforms had come out of warehouses, smelt of mothballs or were creased and damp with age, yet these were far preferable to the alternatives. Some prisoners found themselves issued with uniforms that had come straight from the battlefields, complete with bullet holes and bloodstains.
As the men pulled on their new uniforms, there was no longer a cohesive look to the remnants of the BEF. Instead they were a motley collection of men clad in the cast-offs of half a dozen European armies. As Dick Taylor later admitted of his early days at Thorn, the British prisoners looked like ‘a real pantomime army’.8
If the clothes made the prisoners appear comical, at least they were not uncomfortable. The same could not be said for the footwear they were issued. Those whose boots had worn out were given clogs. As Barnett remembered: ‘I had wooden clogs, like Dutch ones. They were just blocks of wood. Christ, it was agony. And you never had socks. We had “fusslapen” – just a cloth like a handkerchief that wrapped round your feet. It was easier to walk around in bare feet!’ Although clogs and footcloths were common in some areas of Europe, they were totally new to the prisoners. Even those British soldiers who were familiar with clogs had never worn ones like these. They could no longer raise their feet from the ground when they walked. Instead they had to shuffle along, just hoping the cloths would stay wound around their feet and that the clogs would not slip off. R.P. Evans, sent out on to one of the earlier working parties, recorded the effects of wearing clogs: ‘My feet became chaffed on the insteps, then one day I developed a sore on the left heel which became progressively worse until I had to limp back to camp using two shovels as crutches.’ The following day he reported sick and was sent to a German military doctor: ‘He appeared to have no instruments, for he took out his penknife, heated it in a flame and proceeded to make an incision in what proved to be an abscess. He pressed and pressed to no avail until, losing patience, brought his fists sharply together, when it finally burst. I am afraid I passed out and came to to find him inserting metal clips across the incision. I had no dressing on the wound and returned to work the next day.’9
In the months immediately following the defeat of the BEF and its allies, there hung an awful question over the fate of the men who had been left behind in France. It would be months before many families discovered whether their loved ones were alive or dead. The scale of the German victory was unprecedented. All in the space of ten months they had defeated and occupied Poland, Norway, Denmark, the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, France and the Channel Islands. They had also routed the BEF and captured 40,000 of its men. The vast numbers of prisoners absorbed into the stalag system meant their resources were stretched beyond even Hitler’s wildest expectations.
If the Germans could not keep up with the numbers that needed to be processed, neither could the Red Cross. All the prisoners needed to fill in registration forms that then had to be sent to Geneva for the information to be transmitted to London. Once the details reached London, they needed to be cross-referenced against both the War Office records and the regimental records to ensure correct information reached the families. Too many already feared the worst for their husbands, fathers and sons. Although it was inevitable mistakes would be made, it was important to keep the errors as few as possible. The situation was not helped by the fact that many of the worst affected regiments had not returned home with any records. While some commanding officers had taken care to entrust their battalion War Diaries to a responsible officer making his way off the Dunkirk beaches, others had taken the expedient measure of burning or burying their records lest they fall into enemy hands. Some units, such as those encircled at Calais and St Valery, had no way of passing any accurate records back to London.
The War Office in London wrote to all the commanding officers, asking for accurate casualty figures but, as they admitted, they were ‘up against it’.10 The returns made for sober reading: 8th Battalion Royal Warwickshire Regiment – 417 men missing, wounded, killed or prisoner; 1st Battalion Cameron Highlanders – 250 POWs; 2/5th Queen’s Regiment – 387 men missing; 1st Lothian and Borders Horse – just twenty officers and men returned home; 2nd Field Bakery RASC – fifty-five men lost when the Lancastria sank off St Nazaire. And so it went on.
As a result, until September when the first lists of confirmed dead were received from the French Red Cross, it was anybody’s guess as to who had succumbed in battle and who had been taken prisoner. With the dead spread so far and wide across France and Belgium, it was a slow process to discover who had fallen in battle. The War Office received news from a variety of sources, often in letters posted from neutral countries by people who had received the news from those living near the battlefields. In the summer of 1940 the names of 123 men whose bodies had washed ashore following the sinking of the Lancastria were passed to London. The descriptions of some of the bodies – those with heads and limbs missing – was far more detailed than any family would want to know, but it was all vital information for those recording the fate of the BEF. One Frenchman contacted London with the sad tale of how he had discovered the corpse of a soldier. He had gone in search of his own son and discovered his body side by side with the corpse of a Gunner Harris. He reported that he had paid for the two men to be buried as they had died – side by side. By July 1941 the Belgians had transmitted to London the names of over 3,000 soldiers of the BEF who had fallen in Belgium. Despite the careful efforts of those who cleared the battlefields, there remained plenty for whom no name could ever be found. Some were identified by nothing more than their hair colour or body shape. One sad case of an unidentified soldier was the man described as 1.76 metres tall with black hair, a tattoo of a female head on one arm along with a red rose with the inscription ‘mother’. On his other arm was tattooed the word ‘father’. They were just two of the many parents who would never discover where their son had fallen.
Once the prisoners were given the opportunity to write home, they found there were serious limits to what they could include. They were allowed to send just four postcards and two specially designed lettercards each month. They could not include news of conditions within the camps or any military details. All writing had to be on the clearly printed lines and the prisoners were denied the opportunity to include any embellishments. As a result, there was little they could do except give the briefest of accounts about their lives and send messages of love back to their families.
Despite these rules, the flow of mail was not regular, especially in the early months of captivity. One prisoner recalled being registered by the Red Cross in July but his family did not receive news of his fate until September. In July the Foreign Office reported that they were still awaiting the names of 14,500 prisoners who had been registered. They had also learned there were a further 9,000 prisoners who had not yet been registered. There were others who waited even longer for news. It took nine months for Fred Gilbert to get news of his survival back to his family. His mother had been told he was dead – hardly surprising considering the fate of his mates and the three bullets that had hit him – and had to wait until his letter, written in September 1940, reached her a few months later. Following his capture at St Valery, David Mowatt’s mother heard no news of him for eighteen months. He was the youngest of four sons, all serving in the army, and to all intents and purposes he was lost to her. Somewhere in the confusion of his transfer between Stalags 20A and 20B, the details of his prisoner registration had been lost, thus ensuring the British were unaware he was still alive. It was only when his first letter arrived home in late 1941 that his family finally discovered he was alive.
Many Territorial units had traditionally absorbed recruits from a limited catchment area, meaning there were many close family members, brothers, cousins, fathers and sons, all serving together. Although Jim Pearce and his brother had entered Thorn together, and received consecutive numbers when they were registered, news of their survival was not immediately sent to their family. The authorities alerted them that Jim was alive, but
left them believing his brother was still ‘missing, presumed dead’. It was only after Pearce received his first letter from home that he was able to set their minds at ease by assuring them their other son had survived.
On 4 July 1940 the Berwick Journal reported that one local family had three sons who had been reported missing. The family were the Arnotts, whose three boys, John, Thomas and Peter, had all been called up into the Royal Northumberland Fusiliers on 1 September 1939: ‘The last letter received from Thomas was dated 2nd June. And, since the receipt of that letter, their parents have not had news of any kind until the weekend, when they got the official letter. All three brothers were despatch riders in the RNTF.’11 However, against all odds, the brothers had all survived the savage battle for St Valery and had, along with thousands of others, been registered at Stalag 20B in Marienburg.
For one household in the small mining town of Ashington, Northumberland the chaos of the defeat in France had an immediate impact. The Charters family had two sons serving as machine-gunners in the 7th Battalion of the Northumberland Fusiliers. Brothers Jim and Jack Charters had both been fortunate to survive the battle at St Valery yet no news of their fate had reached their parents. However, a handful of their regiment had reached home. One of them returned to Ashington with tragic news – a story soon went around the town that the two brothers had been killed at St Valery. What made it worse was that the man did not visit their parents to tell them what he believed had happened. Instead they received the news via friends and neighbours who came to commiserate with them at their loss. It was a terrible blow – to lose one son was bad enough but to lose two was devastating. Then to receive the news indirectly only compounded the emotional blow. The only consolation was that at least they had some notion of their sons’ fate – or so they thought.
While so many families were still waiting for any news, the Charterses received an unexpected communication. The postman delivered a letter, written in an unfamiliar hand, postmarked Geneva. When Jim Charters had handed over his address to a woman at the roadside during the march into captivity he had no notion of the impact it would have. The woman, Madame Grenier who resided in the town of Wingles, had kept Jim Charters’ note and written to his home: ‘I’ve still got the original of the letter she sent to my parents. I handed over the message not expecting the news to get home. But the woman sent a letter to Geneva and that was posted to my parents. The woman had written it in French so my father had to take it to a local schoolteacher to get it translated. It was the first my parents knew that we were still alive.’
That was enough for the family. Their boys were not home but at least they were alive. When the brothers finally returned home they wanted to find out who had so cruelly lied to the town about their supposed fate. Their father seemed to know the identity of the culprit but refused to reveal his name. The local branch of the British Legion even wanted the man to be prosecuted, but Charters senior refused. Instead the people of Ashington took action and drove the man from the town. As for Madame Grenier, she later became a member of the French Resistance and was eventually imprisoned by the Germans. She survived the war, was decorated by the French government and died in 1986.
What with all the delays in passing the details of the captured soldiers to the authorities in London, it took some time for a regular flow of mail to reach the stalags. It was not until autumn 1940 that the prisoners were allowed to receive clothing parcels.
While the vast majority of the 40,000 prisoners were transported via the canals and railways of northern Europe to the stalags of Germany, others remained behind in France. Such was the devastation caused by the blitzkrieg that someone was needed to clear up the mess. German manpower was fully stretched, clearing up the remaining French opposition, occupying the conquered lands, preparing for a possible invasion of Britain and the planned invasion of the Soviet Union. So there were no men available to return France to a semblance of normality. As a result some prisoners were immediately absorbed into a system of ‘frontstalags’, in which they were put to work.
Initially the organization was haphazard, with local commanders ordering groups of captured soldiers to work for them. In the aftermath of the siege of Calais, while some were sent on the march towards Germany, others were forced to help clear up damage in the docks. Elsewhere British prisoners were made to begin the systematic rape of the defeated French nation. They were sent into factories where the produce was immediately packed up and sent back to Germany for sale on to the consumer market. Others found themselves made to clear the roads of the rotting corpses of horses killed during the German advance. Even more humiliating was the experience of three soldiers who were made to clear sewage from blocked drains. As both their guards and a group of French prisoners looked on, the men were forced to remove excrement from the drain and throw it out through a window, with just their hands to use as shovels.
From June to November 1940 British prisoners were employed at Frontstalag 142 in the railway yards of the French town of Besançon. Their work included loading and unloading munitions on to trains to be sent forward to the front. They were also made to load damaged tanks on to wagons ready to be sent back to Germany for repair. Others were taken to Malmedy in Belgium where they were forced to fell trees to make temporary runways for the Luftwaffe. Though their employment in military work of this nature was illegal, there was nobody to whom the prisoners could complain. No Red Cross representatives were able to make contact with them and no news was sent home of their fate.
In the year that followed they became forgotten men. Not until early 1941, nine months after the defeat of the BEF, were the Red Cross able to visit some of the 294 men employed at the frontstalags. Many had remained in the areas where they had been captured. In some areas the prisoners were in small groups, such as the eight officers and ten other ranks working at Peronne. Elsewhere some unfortunate POWs were held alone, working for the enemy without the comfort and support of their fellow prisoners. Slowly, reports trickled back to London, painting a bleak picture. At Le Mans fifteen British soldiers were held in conditions that shocked Red Cross inspectors: ‘The disorder here is complete. The huts are falling to pieces. Food is poor and insufficient. The men sleep on the ground without any blankets. Conditions of hygiene are deplorable.’12
The story was the same across northern France. The fifteen prisoners at Saveny received just two loaves of bread between them each day and on just four days a week they shared a small portion of horsemeat. Prussian guards at Laval were accused of brutalizing their prisoners who, without even a blanket, slept on a bare concrete floor. Red Cross inspectors went on to report how the British in the frontstalags were undernourished, treated most severely and often shot on the slightest provocation. The threat of lethal violence was most vividly shown when the 500 British prisoners at Mulhouse revolted following the outbreak of an epidemic. As a result of the revolt, twenty prisoners were picked out at random and executed.
The unfortunate prisoners at the frontstalags were not the only men put to work that year. Almost immediately after their arrival at their designated stalags, the thousands of POWs began to filter out into workcamps – known as AKs or arbeitskommandos – that spread rapidly across the Reich. Under the Geneva Convention all prisoners beneath the rank of sergeant could be put to work. There were definite rules about their employment that were designed to protect them from exploitation. They should not be employed in dangerous jobs, nor in any form of war work. They should be given rations equal with those allowed for civilian workers and be housed in clean and heated surroundings. During the following five years, few of the prisoners were treated according to the rules. Initially those in London had little idea of the working conditions endured by the men on working parties. In August 1940 the General Secretary of the British Red Cross wrote to the Foreign Office: ‘Several relatives of prisoners of war have been in here during the last few days to enquire about a rumour that is apparently going about, that their husbands, sons etc. have be
en put to work in the salt mines of Poland. I presume we can contradict this.’13 His presumption was misplaced. As he wrote, hundreds of men were beginning life as enforced salt miners in Upper Silesia.
Initially, and understandably, most prisoners were wary about working for the enemy – after all they had gone to war to stop the Nazi war machine, not become part of it. However, most soon realized there was little choice in the matter – if the Germans told them to work, they would have to work. Furthermore, there was one attractive thing about working parties: they allowed the men out of the stalags and gave them contact with civilians. The first groups of prisoners, who were sent out to work from the stalags each morning, returned in the evening carrying the spoils of illicit deals they were able to conduct. Furtively, the prisoners made contact with civilians and traded whatever they had available. Watches and wedding rings were exchanged for bread and sausage. Desperation led the prisoners to develop an entrepreneurial spirit. If a prisoner knew he could get two loaves for one watch, he would make deals with fellow prisoners, agreeing to take their watches out to sell. He could then offer the seller a portion of what he had received, effectively acting as a broker for those unable to leave the stalag to make their own deals.
With conditions within the camp failing to improve, large numbers of prisoners began to fall sick. There were increasing numbers of TB cases, epidemics of boils, outbreaks of typhoid and a constant array of men suffering from festering sores caused by the constant scratching of insect bites. Despite the dedication of those members of the Royal Army Medical Corps who had been taken prisoner, there was a limit to how much they could do. For Ernie Grainger the desire to help his fellow inmates at Lamsdorf was undermined by one basic problem: ‘We had no equipment. There was an awful lot of dry pleurisy. It is not a fatal condition but it’s very painful. But we had nothing to treat it with. Bronchitis and asthma were a problem in the winter. Lots of people went down with frostbite and lung diseases. The Germans didn’t give us any medicines.’