Survivor of the Long March

by Charles Waite

  ‘Where is the guard?’

  ‘I don’t know, sir.’

  ‘Has he gone to the office?’

  ‘No, sir.’

  ‘Has he gone out?’

  So I said, ‘Yes, sir.’ I told him the truth. ‘He went out.’

  So Iron Cross went to the far end, opened the door and called out, ‘Gehen und ihn!’ – go and get him.

  I was watching all this going on when I saw Jan come back in. The silly idiot came up the steps, pushed the door open, entered and stood beside me. He didn’t look over the other side where the two officers were standing right under Hitler. When he finally looked up and across, he saw them, grabbed his rifle and stood to attention. What else could he do? The officers crossed the floor again towards him. Jan stood to attention and they all exchanged ‘Heil Hitler’. Iron Cross gave him a terrible dressing down. You didn’t need to speak German to understand what he said. And then they went off back inside and we were left standing there again.

  I thought that had helped me a bit; he was in trouble and that might make it easier for me when they came to deal with me. But then I found out that they were nothing to do with me, too high-ranking to be hearing a case like mine.

  Clack, clack, more heels, but female ones this time, and a woman in civilian clothes appeared and said something to the guard in German. Jan grabbed hold of my epaulette and started pulling me along as he followed the woman down the corridor. She entered the room first and my guard pushed me inside and disappeared.

  There were two officers sitting behind a large desk. One looked like a 2nd Lieutenant and the other a Sergeant Major, Hauptfeldwebel. At the far end of the room at another table sat a uniformed woman tapping away on one of those large sit-up-and-beg manual typewriters. One asked me my name again ‘Name und Nummer’ and I said it again. The civilian woman looked on silently. I thought she was probably from the Red Cross and if this was my trial then she was here as a neutral observer to see that things were done correctly. I wished she would say something to me; a word of comfort wouldn’t have gone amiss. The other officer asked me my name and number again and pushed a foolscap sheet of paper across the table to me along with a pen. I was trembling and my palms were sweating. What was this? Didn’t I get the chance to speak? I bent down to pick the pen up and I looked at the paper. Of course it was all in German. No idea what it said. So I put the pen down and pushed the piece of paper back to him.

  ‘Ich verstehe nicht.’ – I don’t understand, I said.

  ‘Egal, ‘ – doesn’t matter, was the reply and he pushed the paper back to me.

  I pushed it away again. ‘Ich verstehe nicht.’ As scared as I was, I was not going to sign that piece of paper. I could have been signing my death warrant for all I knew. So I didn’t sign and left it on the table and stood to attention.

  The officers looked at each other and started talking; they consulted Red Cross Lady who nodded and left the room. A moment later, she returned with a middle-aged chap in uniform who told me, in broken English, that he had been a prisoner of war in England at the end of the last war. So with his bit of English and my bit of German I learned that the charge of ‘Incitement to Mutiny’ had been dropped and changed to a lesser one of ‘Sabotage, wasting food and damaging army property’. I was so relieved that I nearly cried with relief. Although I was still frightened about what would happen next.

  My guard was called back in and off we went again. Jan was still pulling me by my epaulette, taking the same way back. Across the squares, through the gates, on to the road to the station, on to a train, and so on, back to camp. It was dark when I got in and my pals were there, pleased to see me.

  Jimmy patted me on the back and said something like, ‘A wee break like that does you the world o’ good.’ Sid gave me bit of bread and butter that he had kept back from supper. Laurie lit me up a cigarette and Heb said, ‘Good to see you in one piece.’

  And that was it. I didn’t hear any more about it. It sort of fizzled out. I got away with it, or so I thought.

  A week passed before I heard anything more; I really thought they had forgotten about it. Jan was still around on duty but he never came out on any job I was on. It was Friday after work and the guards had got us lined up outside. The Unteroffizier arrived and called out my name again. I stepped forward. He held two cards and handed me one typed in English and read out the other in German. I was to be taken to Stalag 20B to do ten days’ solitary confinement. And I was scared all over again.

  I went to collect my things, my greatcoat and bundle. My pals rallied round. ‘Don’t worry, could have been worse,’ and collected what biscuits they had saved from their last Red Cross parcels. ‘You’ll be all right.’ I had three or four biscuits of my own and they added some more until I had about a dozen in the end, wrapped in a scrap of paper. A real feast. ‘Got to save ’em. Don’t know when you’ll eat again,’ they said to me.

  Two guards escorted me this time, a similar route it seemed, except we were going to the main camp at Marienburg. You never knew where you were half the time. There were so many camps and forts which formed the overall Stalag 20B and there were prisoners coming and going out on work detachments all over the area. There were few signs or landmarks to get a sense of place. Any names I saw meant very little to me in relation to anywhere else.

  I was standing on my own again in a train, the two guards sitting together in the middle. One took out a packet from inside his jacket, unwrapped it and started to eat. It looked to me as though he’d got a boiled egg and some bread and butter. Oh well, I thought, I’ll eat something too as I missed breakfast. I bent down and put my hand inside my kit bag and felt for the paper packet of biscuits and managed to draw one out.

  ‘Essen verboten!’ – no eating, the guard shouted and I jumped and nearly dropped my bit of food. He got back to eating and I put the biscuit in a pocket. It was going to get all smashed up which was a shame. It would just be crumbs by the time I got there. So I stood and watched the guard munching, and the empty countryside going by while thinking about my biscuits.

  The main camp was in the middle of the town surrounded by high walls and barbed wire. I looked up at one of the watchtowers as we went through the main gates. We had the usual ritual of checking papers, opening and closing gates. The guards took me across a square, up some wooden steps into a building and down some dark and dismal corridors. No idea where I was or what was ahead. One of them opened a door, pushed me in and shut the door behind me.

  There was an assortment of different furniture. A chair, made up of odd bits of wood nailed together, one of those folding card tables with a rather tatty green felt top and a wall cupboard, locked with a padlock. There was a single iron bed with a palliasse and three folded blankets on it. I prodded the straw mattress which rustled nicely and felt and smelt freshly filled. Not bad. I felt the blankets, and I gave them a sniff too. Quite clean and not too rough.

  ‘This isn’t too bad. I could stick this for ten days,’ I said to myself. Better settle in, so I took off my overcoat and laid it on the bed; put my bundle, which contained my bowl and spoon, toothbrush, piece of rag, which acted as a flannel, on the table and sat down and waited to see what would happen next.

  10

  Birthday Party

  ‘What the bloody hell have you been doing to land up here?’

  A British Army officer stood in the doorway shouting at me. I jumped up and stood to attention. I did know that much, even though I hadn’t saluted anybody since being captured. I was too shocked to speak. I didn’t like the sound of this. Why was he shouting at me?

  ‘All right, Private, at ease. You can sit down,’ he said. ‘What’s been going on then to land up here?’ So I told him everything that had happened, leading up to that point.

  ‘Bloody stupid, eh? Could have got yourself shot.’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ I said. I didn’t need him to remind me.

  ‘You’re here now, still in one piece. Right. We’ll have to see what’s what
, won’t we?’ He went over to the cupboard, undid the padlock, opened the door and took out a stethoscope.

  What an idiot I was! Of course, he was the camp doctor come to check me over before I started my sentence. Then I knew that this was his cupboard, his table and his bed. If this was his room where was I going to be sleeping?

  ‘So, do you think you can do this?’ asked the doctor as he unravelled the stethoscope.

  I wasn’t sure what he meant. My last medical had been on my call up. I was classified ‘A’ then, I was probably ‘Z’ now.

  ‘Take your shirt off, man. Do you think you can take the solitary?’

  I started to undo the buttons of my tunic but my fingers didn’t seem to work properly and I fumbled with them. Do solitary? Was I fit enough? You can’t say no, can you? Can’t be a whinger. I was as fit as any man, I thought, who’d been in a POW camp for years, forced to work outside all year, come rain or shine, twelve hours a day, six days a week. I took a deep breath and said, ‘Yes. I can do it.’ I still didn’t know what was going to happen to me.

  The doctor listened to my chest and did the same to my back. ‘Deep breaths. Cough. OK.’ He looked into my eyes and mouth and checked my pulse. He told me to put my shirt back on and he returned his stethoscope to the little cupboard. ‘Not in bad shape considering. You’re going to be on half rations, you know. Think you can make it?’ I nodded. Half of nothing much, thinking of what we normally got.

  ‘Now you know talking isn’t allowed. Mustn’t speak, not to anyone. Not even the guards, all the time you’re in here. Or in the yard when you exercise or when you have a wash. Keep your mouth shut.’ His eyes caught sight of my bundle. ‘What’ve you got in there?’

  ‘Just the usual, sir. Washing things. Bowl and spoon.’ I opened it up to show him and he peered inside.

  ‘What’s that?’ The doctor pointed at my little pack of biscuits and started to fold back the paper to have a look. ‘Right, you got biscuits. You can’t take them in. Not allowed to take in any food. Didn’t they tell you?’

  I didn’t think he wanted me to reply or to hear that nobody had told me anything. I continued standing in silence, watching him as he took out my precious biscuits and stacked them neatly in a pile on a shelf in his cupboard.

  That’s a shame, I thought, they would have come in handy. No breakfast that day and only a meagre piece of bread and bit of sausage the previous night. I was dying for something to eat and drink. My heart sank when I heard the next statement.

  ‘You should get a hot meal on the third or fourth day.’

  ‘That’s a long time to wait,’ I thought. ‘I haven’t got any choice.’ I was willing to bet though, that it would be soup.

  ‘You can have some of these,’ he said, and picked up some paperback books from the bottom shelf and handed them to me.

  I would rather have my biscuits, I thought, but kept my mouth shut and slipped them into one of the inner pockets in my greatcoat.

  The doctor looked me up and down one last time and patted me on the shoulder. I thought he was about to say, ‘Chin up, young man, it’ll be fine,’ but all he did was open the door, put his head out and called for the guard.

  A guard came in and gestured to me with his rifle. I picked up my coat and bundle and followed him, pausing for a moment before going out of the room. I looked at the doctor and the closed cupboard door where my biscuits were.

  We walked along corridors and then passageways which got darker and colder and smellier. You wouldn’t have known it was summer outside. We went down some steps and passed door after door. Then by the miserable light of a single bulb hanging down on a frayed cord, I could see one door ajar at the end. It had a tiny pane of frosted glass high up with barbed wire tacked outside. The guard kicked the door open, pushed me in and then slammed the door shut behind me.

  It was almost completely dark inside so I couldn’t make out a thing. I felt my way around until my foot hit something and I tripped and fell. It was some sort of board fixed to the wall. Ah, that was my bed. I patted my way along it till I felt a rough blanket. What a stink! Better off without it. I wasn’t going to sleep under that so I pulled it off, dropped it on the floor and kicked it to the side. Well, it didn’t have far to go. I suppose the cell was about 8ft by 8ft. I was to pace it out a few times A day over the next ten days.

  What about a toilet? Now I wasn’t used to anything fancy. Camp latrines are nothing to write home about and squatting down in a field is OK as long as you avoid nettles and thistles but what was I meant to do here? Were they going to let me out to go somewhere? A few seconds later I got my answer. Ting. I kicked something metallic in the corner, not a bucket but an empty jam tin, as it turned out. Germans like their jam and this tin was catering size and was empty at the start of my stay, thank goodness but very full by the end.

  How long it was before I had any human contact I can’t say. It was difficult keeping track of time in the dark like that and a watch wouldn’t have helped much even if I’d had one. Sid was the only one with a watch, one which he had taken off a German soldier, I believe. I’m not sure under what circumstances but I wish he had thought of lending it to me anyway. I knew from what some of the chaps back at camp had said about the sentence that it wasn’t just about being on your own but also having to survive on next to nothing to eat. We never had enough food as it was, so I knew I’d be having even less but the good thing was I wouldn’t be out slaving away all day on the farm, coming back, worn out and starving. OK, ten days, yes, I can do that, I thought. Got to do it and put up with it. I kept thinking that this was nothing compared with what others had gone through or were even now experiencing.

  I remembered what I had witnessed, what I had seen the Germans inflict on innocent people. My young army mates shot to bits in cross fire; the wounded soldiers on the makeshift operating tables; those poor Jews packed into cattle trucks, like us, but going to certain death; and that mother shot and her baby kicked like garbage down the railway track. There were prisoners dying of hunger and disease or sheer exhaustion all over the country. There were chaps who committed suicide because they couldn’t take any more and just gave up. People on their own, with no pals like me. That was no way to be. Yes, I was lucky. I settled down, squatting on the board and sat there, waiting for the days to pass.

  It was afternoon, I imagine, when I heard footsteps and the sound of boots kicking the doors along the corridor. This I learned was the signal for food or exercise or roll call. It was meal time. I found my bowl and got ready for the door to open. I knew it was going to be half rations but I was still surprised when I saw – or should I say felt, the tiny piece of bread, cube of butter and slice of liver sausage which had been chucked in the bowl by a rough and dirty hand. I had a glimpse of the face as well of the soldier in the half light of the doorway. I leaned later that it was Serb POWs doing a lot of the prison jobs.

  So there I was, sitting alone in the dark in my overcoat, trying to make a meal out of my meagre rations. You always break your bread up into smaller pieces to make it go further. Use your spoon to smear the butter on each piece to give it a bit of taste. As for the Wurst you try to keep that till later. The pangs of hunger during the night or early morning were excruciating.

  All of a sudden I heard a little bit of scuffling by the door. Oh God, not a rat! Is there nowhere safe from those horrible wretched creatures? We had them in the house and used to hear them gnawing through the floorboards at night. Like the sound of distant machine guns. Terrible! So we used to stamp on the floor to make them go away. But they always returned. At least I was off ground level there in an upper bunk. I thought I was meant to be doing solitary.

  I was looking down at the bottom of the door where there was ¼ inch gap of light just about. It was a mouse. I saw its tail, a thin stringy affair not some great rope-like thing of a rat. It went back and forth a couple of times before disappearing. Then there was silence and all you could hear was me munching on my bit of bread.


  A bit later the mouse came out again and it obviously knew there was food, probably smelt the liver sausage because it came out every night. Of course, it may have been a different mouse each time but I like to think that it was the same one keeping me company. So I broke off a tiny piece of bread, more a crumb really, and threw it towards the door. I waited and listened for the scurrying and then the movement of its tail in the pencil of pale light under the door. I’m sure I heard him nibbling away. My mouse, my Mickey Mouse.

  On the fourth day, as I had been told, I was served my first hot meal – you’ve guessed it, soup. And this was about the worst I had ever had, worse than the soup that got me there in the first place. Yes, it was warm but it was made of sugar beet leaves and bits of rotten potatoes and smelt to high heaven. I doubt if even Mickey would have touched it if I had put it down for him. But I did drink it. Every last stinking drop.

  And it was a day or two later, when I had counted out the days I had been in, I realised it must be about 23 July, Lily’s birthday. So I thought I would have a little celebration, a party. Lily might not be here but she was still with me in my heart and as I couldn’t celebrate with anybody else, I would share my meal with Mickey. When I got my food that evening, I broke off a tiny piece of bread again and this time, using the end of my spoon, cut off a tiny piece of the liver sausage to add as an extra treat. I put it down on the floor by the crack under the door. Then I sat on my bit of hard board and waited for Mickey to come out.

  So there I was eating my meal while Mickey nibbled away on his. Happy Birthday, Lily, my sweetheart, so far away. Would I ever see you again? If I did would you still want to marry me? Perhaps, she had met someone else. Somebody who could dance. I was a different person now, especially the way I looked. I was never any great shakes in the looks department before the war but now, I thought, my mother wouldn’t even recognise me and Lily would probably run a mile if she saw me. We were both twenty-two years old and I would have to wait another three years before I saw her again.