Dunkirk: The Men They Left Behind

by Sean Longden

  Although the prisoners had grown hard during their time in the stalags, some events still made a distinct impression upon them. During the march Fred Coster and his pals encountered a group of Jews marching away from a concentration camp:

  We had this Jewish soldier, Freddy Freid, with us. These women came past us, just in their loose-fitting dresses. So we were slipping them food, so the guards couldn’t see. But Freddy was doing it openly, speaking Yiddish to them. I tried to stop him. The women couldn’t believe it. He gave all his food away. The two guards waited with us when the column passed. Then came this very old Jewish woman, she could hardly keep up – she was at the end of her tether, she could hardly walk. This German officer was with her, pushing her along, prodding her in the back with his pistol. As she reached us she stopped. So the officer shot her in the head and she slumped to the floor. We had to hold Freddy back. This bloody officer just marched off, all proud of himself. But we’d seen a lot by then, we were pretty hardened. Even now I feel hardened about death. You are sorry about it, but you can’t do anything about it.

  Such were the conditions that some of the prisoners decided they would not stay on the march. After nine days Seaforth Highlander David Mowatt decided he would escape with the intention of reaching the Russians:

  The wind and snow made it bloody cold and we’d had nothing to eat or drink for nine days. We stopped for the night and there was this big ditch beside the road. One night I was at the back of the column – I thought ‘I’m going to die on this march’ – so I dived into this big ditch. Within minutes I was covered by snow. In the morning I could hear the guards shouting for us all to get up, but I laid there until everything was clear. I thought I was going to freeze to death. When they’d gone I crawled out. Two other bods crawled up as well. One of them was also a Seaforth.

  The three men made the decision to head towards the Russian lines, figuring they would be safer there. They were on the loose in the Polish countryside for two weeks, killing and eating farm animals and sleeping in the beds of German farmers who had fled the area: ‘One morning we woke up to the noise of tanks. We thought “Good God! We’re in the front line.” By the time we got dressed all the doors had been smashed in. We were expecting it to be the Russians, but it was the SS! They put us up against the wall with a firing squad of five men. It’s dreadful to think about it even now! Then an ordinary Wehrmacht officer appeared. “Lady Luck” was on our side – he stopped them.’ Saved from the firing squad, Mowatt and his mates were taken into the care of the officer, who arranged for them to be sent to Danzig, where they were put into a compound with other POWs.

  Despite the extremes of violence shown to some sick marchers, others were offered a measure of care. On some marches horse-drawn carts were available to carry those too sick to continue. Elsewhere, they were able to leave the sick in civilian hospitals. Eventually the marchers began to reach POW camps where medical facilities were available. Graham King reached Stalag 2A at Neubrandenburg where he set to work again. Under the supervision of US Army doctors, his duties focused on treating the feet of the pitiful wretches who had shuffled all the way from East Prussia: ‘In this ward most had already lost part of their feet, or all. Gangrene was rife and the sickly smell took some getting used to. The American surgeon demonstrated cutting off the dead bone with rongeurs. No anaesthetic was necessary; the bone being dead, there was no feeling.’

  One of the men who understood the depth of suffering endured during the march was Les Allan. Having left his workcamp wearing a pair of clogs he had been ill-equipped to deal with the icy roads. Just a few days after departing, he slipped on the road and fell awkwardly to the ground. Despite the pain there was little he could do but strap up his ankle and carry on. In all he had marched nearly 600 miles by the time he reached Stalag 11A at Fallingbostel, south of Hamburg. It was soon discovered he had fractured his ankle when he fell but had somehow managed to march through the pain to reach his destination.

  Jim Reed’s war came to an end in a hospital camp in Germany. He was one of the lucky ones who had been taken sick during the march back through Poland and had been allowed to complete his journey by train:

  One of my pals died on the march, he was a Cornishman in his thirties. The conditions were too much for him. He was found dead in the cold. People were just disappearing like that – no one knows how many died. I had a hole in my shoulder, the Germans took me to see a medical orderly. You could have put your finger down into the hole – and they just poured iodine into it! I was calling him all names I could. They sent me to a camp at Schwerin. I was all bandaged up nice and neat. There were half a dozen British in the camp, but there was nothing in that camp – and no food whatsoever. I saw men sitting on the beds cutting gangrene out of their legs with a penknife.

  With German resistance collapsing, increasing numbers of POWs found themselves behind the Russian lines. Sometimes they were simply bypassed by the advancing army, elsewhere the Red Army arrived to announce they were free and told them to head off into villages and towns to find their own food. At some camps Red Army officers even asked for volunteers to join them to fight the Germans. Only a few of the most adventurous types accepted the offer. Graham King witnessed the aftermath of the Red Army’s advance in the area around the stalag: ‘After two days we were out wandering around Neubrandenburg seeing what we could loot. Not much, the Red Army had already been through and taken most of value. We saw lots of bodies lying around, especially later when we wandered around the woods and parks. Signs of rape and suicide. Hanging from a tree branch we found three generations of a family; Granny, wife, three kids about nine, six and three plus Dad . . . Some had been shot, others bayoneted.’

  Despite the violence displayed in some German towns and villages, other prisoners witnessed a disciplined army whose officers and NCOs enforced order with extreme measures – they shot anybody disobeying their orders. Dick Taylor, a veteran of the defeat at St Valery, had an eventful journey to freedom after his liberation by the Red Army. He approached a female tank commander and asked her what they should do. She simply told him, in surprisingly good English, that they should head to the port of Odessa. He was amazed; Odessa was hundreds of miles away and he was given no idea of how to get there:

  I and one or two of the other POWs in the surrounding area got together and organized things. I was able to speak quite good German and make contact with a Russian who could speak German. He got us walking in the right direction. The Russian guards had no idea where they were; until he organized us we went round in circles. But we were on our way home. The Russians treated everyone the same – they were a rough lot. They’d had millions of casualties and they were on their way to Berlin – no one was going to stop them! It didn’t matter what anybody said.

  On his long journey to freedom he witnessed all the violent madness of modern warfare. One of the first places he passed was a farm whose owners he knew from his time on working parties. On top of the manure heap were the corpses of the seventy-year-old farmer and his wife, having been executed by the advancing Russians. Elsewhere were the corpses of people who, fearing Russian revenge for Germany’s crimes in the Soviet Union, had chosen to take their own lives. Everywhere were the bodies of soldiers – either those who had fallen in battle or those executed after they had surrendered. The corpses of German refugees filled the roads where the Red Army had simply obliterated everything that had blocked its way. For the men who had witnessed the German bombing of refugee columns back in 1940 these scenes were wearily familiar. As Dick Taylor remembered: ‘You just get used to it. Once you’ve seen it once, seeing it again doesn’t make much difference. It’s just one of those things – you have to accept it. It’s self-preservation, you’re looking after yourself, you’re not bothered about anybody else. One more dead person doesn’t make any difference. It was the same as the march in 1940, when men broke ranks and got shot – as long as it wasn’t me.’

  After days of marching east, Taylor and his fel
low ex-POWs were sent by train towards Odessa. At least the Russians had taken care to fit stoves inside the wagons to allow the men some heat. Basic as the trucks were, it was still better than any transport the Germans had made them ride in. The journey was an eye-opener for the British soldiers: ‘There was nothing left, the whole place was flattened – everything. You’d come to a village and there was hardly one brick on top of another. That’s why there was no shelter for us as we went through. Absolutely nothing – we were travelling through a wasteland.’

  Arriving in Odessa they were put into a large house surrounded by barbed wire. There was a sense of foreboding for all the ex-POWs to be behind barbed wire again. However this time the ordeal did not last for five years. One morning, without warning, they were told to gather their gear and march to the port. There, waiting for them, was the pre-war liner Duchess of Bedford. They were going home.

  While the prisoners who had been working in East Prussia headed for northern Germany, the prisoners who had been working in Silesia headed west through Czechoslovakia into southern Germany. Their marches had started later, which meant they missed the worst of the weather. They were also fortunate that they did not have quite so far to march. Many took advantage of the hospitality of the local population and escaped from the columns to make their way home under their own steam. Bill Holmes was one of those who escaped, making his way back to the Allied lines via Prague, aided by members of the Czech Resistance.

  Also on the run in Czechoslovakia was Eric Reeves. His group had left Blechammer at the end of January and headed through the mountains into Czechoslovakia. It didn’t take long for him to decide the conditions were against them. As he marched he had his greatcoat collar up and his hat pulled down. He noticed that not only had his hat frozen against his collar but there was also thick ice on his glasses that had frozen to his head:

  My mates Ted Kane and Flash said to me, ‘You’ll either freeze to death, starve to death or get shot – which is the quicker?’ So after an hour or two debate I decided to go with them. They said they were only taking me ’cause I could speak German. You could hear the Russians breaking through in Upper Silesia, their barrages sounded like rolling thunder. We rubbed our hands and said, ‘The Jerries are copping it – good.’ That was how we thought. We survived by going to smallholdings – we’d take the food that was hanging under the eaves. The Czechs were helpful. The youngsters could speak German, they told us what they were going to do once the war was over – they were going to hang the German Burgomeister. But we survived by scrounging dripping sandwiches.

  The end came differently for each. There were the men liberated by Americans in southern and central Germany, by the Russians in Poland and eastern Germany or by the British in the north. The final days of war saw the prisoners marching amid scenes of utter devastation. One scene became imprinted on Fred Coster’s memory: the sight of a German sentry box with the bottom half of the sentry’s corpse in the box and the top half blown off and lying in the road. Coster thought to himself ‘poor sod’ as he stepped past the severed torso. Gordon Barber’s most vivid memories of the final days of war reflected the desperate situation they found themselves in. Having eaten some pigs they had found dead in a bombed train, Barber became violently ill: ‘I can still remember sitting at the latrine they’d dug. The bloke sitting beside me said, “Ain’t it terrible. Do you think we’ll make it?” I said, “Yeah.” We sat there watching the American bombing raids, knocking the shit out of this town. All we could see going down into the pit was blood. We had dysentery and malnutrition. I said, “I wish they’d drop a bomb on us.” . . . I felt so weak and so horrible, every time I moved I shit myself.’

  For some, the threat from the air continued to be very real, as Peter Wagstaff soon discovered:

  For five years you thought of how – and if – you were going to be liberated. It was most extraordinary. They marched us south from Eichstadt, in a long, tattered, straggling human line. The column was about a mile and a half long. Then we saw a couple of American Thunderbolts. They had spotted a German convoy on the other side of the valley and attacked it. We sat down and roared with laughter. Then they saw us and thought we were Germans – they went up and down, then ‘strafed’ the life out of us. They killed twelve of us, including one of my best friends. I raced across the road – out of the sun – and found myself cowering with a German guard and an Italian chap. Again, the death of my friend didn’t affect me. Things like that happen as a POW. It’s difficult to explain. I had become conditioned to seeing death. You don’t have time to analyse things and there is nothing you can do about it. The human mind is a most peculiar animal.

  For David Mowatt liberation came in the port of Lübeck. He travelled by boat from Danzig, sailing the dangerous waters of the Baltic in the knowledge that Russian submarines were active in the area. The journey was a repeat of the one he had made down the Rhine in 1940. Again he was travelling in the hold of a coal barge, little knowing what his fate might be. This time he was safe in the knowledge that if he survived he would be going home. Arriving at Lübeck, they were held in a cattle barn in the docks. While they were there, the Russian prisoners continued to be held on boats in the port. Unable to leave the ship, the Russians grew so desperate they turned to cannibalism in order to survive.

  After an aborted attempt to send the prisoners to Hanover, Mowatt found himself back in the cattle barn: ‘We were there a couple of days then the British turned up and liberated us. It was a unit of Seaforth Highlanders! My own mob! I think it was the 10th May – two days after the war had ended.’ They were flown home the following day.

  Eric Reeves was liberated by a Russian patrol who simply sent him in the direction of the American lines. Effectively he was free but was actually in no man’s land between the Russians and Americans – in an area still full of German troops:

  It was chaos at that time. We were strolling along – it was May 9th, a lovely day – we thought ‘We’ve won the bloody war!’ Then we saw a Hanomag tug – like a big tractor – it was pulling these two trailers full of German troops. Teddy said to me, ‘Reevo, you stop ’em.’ I had an uneasy feeling about it but I stood in the road and shouted, ‘Halt!’ It stopped and a German sergeant major stuck his head out and said, ‘Who are you?’ Ted said, ‘Tell him we’re the bloody British Army! We won the war!’ So I told him and he started laughing and asked where we were going. I told him where we were going. When I said we were going to meet the Americans they told us to get on and take them with us!

  After a few hours they reached the American lines, where the troops were disarming arriving Germans. As they pulled up a corporal shouted up at them:

  He said, ‘OK, Krauts, get your asses off the vehicle.’ So I translated for the Germans and told them to get off quickly. So they poured off leaving Ted, Flash and me. The Yank looked up and said, ‘Are you Krauts going to get your asses off or am I gonna come up and get you?’ So Ted Kane said, ‘I’d like to see you try mate!’ We expected the Yanks to welcome us with open arms, but they arrested us and locked us in a barn! They didn’t know who we were, so they said we’d have to wait till they interrogated us in the morning.

  The experience of liberation was very different for those soldiers who were still within the stalags. In many cases their guards had disappeared although, in some locations, the guards were attacked by prisoners celebrating their liberation. Released prisoners went on the rampage within some camps, looting food stores, ransacking the guards’ quarters and pinching anything they fancied. Some made straight for stocks of alcohol while others quickly armed themselves or reclothed themselves at the expense of their guards. While some went in search of loot others only wanted basic souvenirs. Jim Charters took nothing more than a comb and his POW registration card, complete with the photograph taken on his first day in the stalag.

  Wherever and however their war came to an end, after five years behind barbed wire they were struck by the emotion of the moment. For many it was difficul
t to put into words. The prisoners were stunned by freedom, it meant everything just to have survived – finally they could return to their families. Jim Pearce remembered his liberation by an American combat unit who were embroiled in battle:

  We marched into a village, where we were stealing and eating seed potatoes. We knew the end was coming because the Germans didn’t try to stop us. At night we were in this big barn. We could hear tanks but we didn’t know if they were American or German. Everyone was tense. Eventually the American tanks came. I hid behind this big tractor wheel because they were firing – I don’t know what they were firing at. The crews gave us cigarettes and food. Men were getting food and wine – men were flopping down drunk. They couldn’t take it! A couple of the men wanted to take revenge against the Germans. The Yanks had taken the guards away but some of our chaps wanted to shoot them. If the Americans hadn’t taken them away our chaps would have set on them. That ten weeks’ march had done it for us – they didn’t care any more. But when I got released I didn’t want to kill anybody. But you can’t really describe what goes through your head when you are liberated. It was a wonderful feeling – it had never seemed possible – ‘I’m going home’ – tears were running from my eyes as I stood there touching the American tanks.

  Following liberation most ex-POWs did their best to get home as swiftly as possible. Some of them ‘liberated’ vehicles to head west in the hope of reaching anywhere where they might cadge a flight to England. Others waited for transport to be arranged. The majority of British prisoners congregated at air fields around Brussels and were then flown home in bombers and transport aircraft. It was an emotional journey for the men who had last seen the UK during the phoney war. As they flew over the waters of the Channel – the same waters they had all hoped to escape across back in 1940 – they were seized by a sense of awe. After five years of uncertainty they were finally returning to see their loved ones. For many the highlight of the trip was to look out from the aircraft to see the fabled white cliffs of Dover. Like the bluebirds of the song they soared high above the chalk cliffs, a potent symbol of freedom and the sense of the nation’s survival against all the odds.