When he opened the parcel and saw the lovely accordion his face lit up. It must be terrible for somebody with a special talent or skill to be stuck in a place like that with no way of practising it. He immediately started opening and closing the accordion, breathing some life into it. He managed to play a few scales and we all clapped. It was wonderful to hear a sound like that after being starved of music for so long. From then on Jack practised regularly and we enjoyed listening to him.
As he got better, he played all sorts of music to cheer us all up. We were thrilled that nobody stopped him. Perhaps the guards got some pleasure from hearing the sound of the accordion wafting over to their quarters or they just thought if we were listening to it in our spare time then we couldn’t be getting up to any mischief. We had singsongs together in the evening and sometimes some of the fellows danced around together, no doubt imagining they were holding the sweetheart they had left behind. It almost made me want to dance. But I didn’t.
The question of proper wages arose again later when a fellow joined our camp in exchange for one of our men who had gone off sick. We were sitting round talking about money one evening, saying how worried we were about our families. There were a few married men with children among us, so obviously the main bread winner of their family was absent from home. This fellow told us that we could send money home to our families.
‘But we haven’t got any money,’ somebody said.
‘Of course you have. Your army pay is still being paid into your bank at home.’
We hadn’t thought of that. ‘That’s no good with us stuck here,’ said another.
‘Now I’ve done this myself,’ he said. ‘You can write from here to your paymaster and send it with your normal camp mail. You ask them for such and such an amount to be sent to whoever you want to. And Bob’s your uncle.’
I couldn’t believe it but then decided that there was nothing to lose so I might as well have a go. When we were given our next supply of camp writing paper, I did exactly that. I didn’t know the address but marked it to The Paymaster, c/o The War Office, London, England. I had no idea how much I had in the account but I asked for £100 to be forwarded to my parents. Two or three months later, I had a letter from my mother thanking me for the money. I was amazed that it had worked and tried it again, sending them another £100. My only thought was that they could be in trouble and I wanted to help. Money was no use to me in there and I never thought about needing it when I got home. I didn’t plan for the future; I just lived from day to day.
When I finally got home after the war, my parents had kept the money for me and paid it all back. That was why I could afford to buy Lily an enormous 18 carat gold diamond engagement ring on my return.
* * *
As the months slipped by and then the years, we settled into our life in the camp. We had our work and we had our leisure time – evenings and Sundays. Much of that was taken up with our own little jobs such as washing and mending clothes, darning socks and pants and writing letters. We also socialised, playing football and cards and listening to Jack play. But even this got monotonous. I know some camps received books and board games, they even had records and gramophones but not where I was. We had to make our own entertainment, which wasn’t easy. It was important to have an outlet for our anger and frustrations and also good to have a laugh and a bit of fun.
Many of the other prisoners were good with their hands and had a wealth of experience from civilian life. We had a tailor, a chap who lived not far from me in Barking, who was able to make things like hats and mittens out of bits of old uniform. He made me a smart new cap which I liked to wear as it wasn’t army regulation. We had a cobbler who helped us mend our boots with leather patches which came in some of the Red Cross parcels. He made me a belt out of the tops of old army boots. Laurie, the butcher, knew about animals, looking after and killing them; Jimmy, the gamekeeper, loved the outdoor life and was knowledgeable about birds and plants. There was Heb, on his way to becoming a proper blacksmith. My ability to contribute was limited as I didn’t have any special skills and had never been apprenticed to a trade or profession. Being able to add up the price of a pound of potatoes and half a pound of carrots wasn’t much use here. So I hoped the opportunity would arise for me to help out in some way.
At roll call one morning, the Unteroffizier read out the work schedule. He needed a group of men for forestry work. Eight of us, including me and three of my pals, were allocated a two months’ work detachment in the Rosenberg Forest region, working under the jurisdiction of a local forest ranger. Although it wasn’t too far away from the camp, we were working in a large area of forest and could cover a lot of ground during the day. So we had to take our own food with us for the day. The soup cart wouldn’t be able to come out to us. It was a welcome break from the farm and the change of scene and different type of work gave us greater freedom. Another lucky break for me.
We had to walk about 5km to the working site and one of guards escorted us as far as a clearing, bang in the middle of this vast conifer forest. We knew then that we had come to somewhere special. It was beautiful and so quiet, just bird song and wind rustling the tops of the pine trees. The guard left us when the forest ranger appeared, a chap dressed all in green with a sort of Tyrolean hat and feather sticking out. He carried a bayonet, not as a weapon, but to mark the trees for cutting down. He told us a bit about the types of trees in the forest and the work of a forester, in his broken English mixed with a lot of arm waving and hand gestures.
There were mainly pines, firs and spruce and he pointed to some logs piled up ready for collection. ‘Holz,’ – wood, he said. We nodded. ‘Für Mäntel’, – for coats, he was stroking the front of his jacket. We looked surprised. ‘Ja, for ze clothes.’ I couldn’t believe it but it was true. He showed us the equipment, a couple of cross-cut saws and some choppers, pretty basic, and demonstrated how to cut and fell a tree, chip off any smaller lower branches and saw the trunks into the required lengths for stacking and then transportation later.
For some reason he chose me to record how much we did each day. He gave me a notebook and pencil to keep a tally of the wood we cut down. We measured areas off in square metres, marking them out with small poles. Four men worked on one area and four on another until we’d done ten metres. But instead of writing ten down, I would write eight which I thought would give us a bit of slack if we had a bad day or needed to take it easy on another. Then we could add those two onto another day to make it up. We had targets to reach and the ranger trusted us to do a good job. He didn’t have the time himself to stand around in the cold counting all the timber we had cut and stacked. So we did a good job as we did not want to get into trouble. We liked it out there; we didn’t feel as though we were under the thumbs of the German authorities.
The ranger went off and left us to it, returning from time to time to check on our progress. It was hard work but we were our own masters pretty much, enjoying the freedom we had. We could stop and have a break when we liked. We always carried our bowls and spoons and we had brought some food with us, bit of bread and butter saved from the night before, maybe something left from a Red Cross parcel to make a small meal. As we were miles from anywhere, we were able to build a little fire to keep ourselves warm and we melted a bit of snow in a bowl, add a few tea leaves which we had saved in a twist of paper and put in a pocket before leaving the camp. Bob’s your uncle – a nice cuppa cha!
Jimmy was in his element. I suppose he imagined he was back on his Drumochter Estate. As game-keeper, he was responsible for the shoot and looked after the birds and organised the beaters. He was a very good shot and told us about taking part in national competitions down at Bisley. It was pity he didn’t have a gun there; we could have done with a bird or two for the pot for supper. Instead Jimmy talked about life on the country estate where he worked and the changing seasons and the beauty of a life outdoors. He pointed out trees and plants to us and identified bird calls as we sat in a clearing warmi
ng our hands by the fire.
I remember going to see Jimmy in the Highlands of Scotland in 1960, driving with Lily and our son Brian, in our first new car, a Ford Consul, which cost £600. Jimmy wasn’t expecting us and I didn’t know his address exactly but enquired when we got to a village near where I thought he lived. I asked at the post office if they knew him and sure enough I was directed to his cottage nestling in a hillside. Fortunately his wife, Catherine, was home but Jimmy was working up on the hills. She went outside to the back of the house and gave a loud whistle through two fingers which was some sort of signal. A moment later we heard a whistle answering back from far away and she replied to that with a different whistle. When Jimmy eventually appeared, carrying a dead lamb over his arm, he not only he knew to come home, because he had visitors, but also to bring something to put in the pot for supper.
We quite often glimpsed deer through the trees while we were there but they were shy creatures and we never got really close to any. One day, however, I was sitting quietly on my own on a tree trunk when an adult male deer, a lovely russet colour with dapples of cream on its back, emerged from the trees and stopped at the edge of the road running through the forest. He looked from side to side and when he saw that it was all clear and there was obviously no danger, he stamped his little hooves on the ground to signal to the others that it was safe. A whole herd appeared, mothers and babies and all, and followed him off into the safety of the forest again. Moments of solitude and beauty like this were precious then. They helped restore your spirit and give you the strength to carry on.
Of course, we took advantage of our time in the forest to collect kindling wood and bring back what we could for the stove. But one day, I had another idea. As we were measuring up a trunk for cutting up into the required lengths, I remarked that a piece of that would make a good dartboard. I think it was the rings inside that reminded me of the score board with the bullseye in the middle. The others agreed it was a terrific idea and it would cheer the other chaps up. I thought it would make a change from playing cards or our homemade snakes and ladders. Football was impossible in bad weather so some indoor competition would be good. ‘OK, Chas, over to you.’
I was getting quite good at this woodcutting caper so I sawed off a section. Boy, was it heavy! So I took off my overcoat and wrapped the block in it and carried it like that. Our guard who came back to collect us did not say anything when he saw me in just my tunic and trousers. I thought he would think, ‘What’s he doing without his coat on a cold day like this?’ It was freezing cold. But he was only interested in getting us back as fast as he could so he could get back into the warm and enjoy a plate of Bratwurst and tot of schnapps. So I carried the block of wood wrapped up in my overcoat all the way back to camp. At last I had something to contribute. When I showed Heb the piece of wood and explained about turning it into a dart board he said he could do that.
The next time he went to the blacksmith’s shop to work, Heb saw a man’s bicycle leaning up against a wall outside. When nobody was about, he removed some spokes from the wheels. Because they were long he had to fold them in half to get them in his jacket pocket in order to sneak them back. We used the spokes to make the rings and the numbers on the darts board. The chap who was making the darts whittled down bits of wood for the body and cut bits off a spoke to use as the tip. There were plenty of chicken feathers floating around the place so he had no problem making the flights and between us we managed to make a dozen darts. The dart board went down really well with everybody and we even started a league table for different teams in the dormitories.
Unfortunately, during one of the inspections, the officers turned up and found them and confiscated the darts and the board. ‘Verboten,’ – forbidden. And holding up a dart as though it was a deadly weapon. ‘Nein. Nein. Schlecht.’ – No, no, bad. But a month later we made another board and started playing again. Heb was still working at the blacksmiths shop and he had enough spokes left to make another lot.
It was important to keep up morale with activities like this and also to be able to get one over on the Germans. The feeling of victory, however small, felt good but sadly did not last. You never knew what was round the corner to bring you down with a bump again.
One time we were sent out to help a local farmer with muck spreading. It took a couple of days to cover the acres and acres of land. Farm workers had been collecting manure in their carts for a while from all over the place, stables, cattle sheds and pigsties, I imagine, and transporting it to the fields to deposit in heaps ready for us. We came along in our work parties with our spades and worked slowly spreading the stuff over the ground. We were working in a field near a large farmhouse when we heard the sound of an engine as it came along the road towards us. Anything like that was of interest. It was such an isolated place we wanted to know what was going on. Was it someone coming to check up on us? Then we saw this big, black, shiny official-looking car approaching, which pulled up on the road outside the farmhouse.
Two German officers got out. I’m sure they were SS from how they were dressed in their sharp uniforms, shiny, high boots and the way they carried themselves, stiff backed and marching purposefully. They went towards the house where a Polish couple lived with their son, whom we learned later had already been taken off to a concentration camp. They banged on the door. When it opened they pushed in and we heard a woman scream and a terrific row going on. The officers came out dragging a man down the front steps. He was struggling and shouting, and the more he did, the more tightly the officers either side held him. His wife was screaming and trying to stop the men taking her husband.
The officers had originally intended to take the man away, I believe, but they decided it was not worth all the trouble. One of them let go of him and came across the road and started walking towards us. Oh, God, what’s going on? They’re coming for us now. I looked down briefly so that I didn’t catch the other man’s eyes. One of our guards went across to meet the officer to find out what he wanted. They spoke for a moment and then our chap came back towards us and took spades from the two nearest of our fellows. He then joined the officer and walked onto the road and went with him. As the other officer held the man down, they set about beating him again and again about the head until he fell to the ground in a heap. The officers got back in their car and drove off leaving the man dead on the ground. Our guard came back with the spades and we carried on working.
Next morning on our way back to finish our work in the fields, we had to walk past the body, which was still lying on the road side, unrecognisable now as a fellow human being.
8
Postcard Home
Post early for Christmas, that’s what they tell you nowadays. It’s a pity that my family didn’t think of that during the war because I usually got my Christmas cards and letters in February. Of course, my family didn’t know what was going on where I was and I didn’t tell them.
We only had a fortnightly allowance of four or five sheets of camp writing paper and one card, and with so little space you didn’t want to waste your words. All anybody wanted to know was that we were OK and we wanted to know the same about them. So messages both ways were simple and cheerful. You couldn’t have said what you really thought anyway.
Letters were censored. We had to be careful what we wrote and anything directly about the war was avoided so we sometimes tried to sneak things in. I wrote to my oldest brother Alfred, about the time of the invasion of Sicily, saying, ‘I was pleased to hear about Auntie Cissie,’ which was supposed to be my code. When I got home, I remembered to ask Alfred about it and he said that he hadn’t received that particular letter. I wasn’t surprised.
I had a lot of family to write to and some of them wrote back regularly. I’m sorry to say that my father wasn’t one of them. He only wrote twice, possibly three times, in all those five years. In one of his letters he told me that he now owned two cars – an Austin A40 and a Rover, and he promised me one of them when I returned after the war
. That was nice, I thought, something to look forward to. I missed driving.
Sad to say, once I was home he never mentioned the car again and I never got one. As I found out, even after all I had been through, nobody in the family was going to give me a helping hand. I missed out on all those years when they were building up the family business, having children and buying their own homes. In the end, I had to make my own way in the world with just Lily by my side.
Lily, mum and my sister Winnie were the main ones who wrote. Winnie kept all my letters to her and Bert, her husband, which was good as I can read them again and think back to what was going on at the time.
6 September 1942
Dear Win & Bert, I have not heard from you for a long time & I wondered if it was because I do not write myself. I am sure you understand that my writing material is rationed and I like Lily & Mum to hear from me as often as possible so I apologise for not writing. Cheerio for now. Love Charlie xxx
9 January 1944
Sorry I cannot write more often but as you know writing material is limited and naturally it is my wish to correspond with Lily and Mum as often as is possible … PS just received your cigs. Your Loving Brother Charlie xxxx
But the truth is that my letters don’t tell me much now about what was happening to me and what I really felt. All they show is that I was worried about everybody at home, particularly my mother. I didn’t want to upset her after all she had been through. A month or so after I left for France to go to war, she received a letter from The War Office: ‘We regret to tell you that your son is missing in France’. My poor mother! It was quite a while before she got another letter telling her that I was alive and safe, and a prisoner of war; that was all it said.
Later on she was given the address to send letters to me but I don’t expect she had a clue where or what M Stammlager XXB (129) Deutschland was. Mother wrote the most and included messages from other members of the family. She also sent the parcels, mainly of extra items of clothing such as a pair of new boots, socks and that jumper from Bert, my fireman brother-in-law. Letters could take two to three months to get to you and the same for your letters going back to England.
Survivor of the Long March Page 10
