Survivor of the Long March

by Charles Waite

  When Mickey had gone I was alone sitting in the dark, with just my thoughts for company. What was everybody else doing? I listened for signs of life beyond my cell. Nothing except the odd scuffling sound and noise of distant banging. What about my pals in the camp? Singing, laughing and playing cards. What about the ordinary people who were caught up in this dreadful war, trying to carry on as normal. The families, what was left of them, going about their business on the farms and in the surrounding villages while I sat there feeling sorry for myself. Cows were being milked, butter being made and washing hung out to dry.

  It was sad that we weren’t able to have any real contact with people outside the camp, perhaps to see a bit of their home life. We worked alongside the locals and shared a cigarette or two and accepted loaves of bread, but it was not enough to form a bond between us, like you would with a friend you see every day. What did they think of it all? There were Russian women prisoners who worked alongside us in the beet fields, backs bent, heads down. We never got the chance to exchange even a few words with them, only a smile or gesture maybe.

  I remember once we were working near a lake towards the north of the region. There was a small community of people known as Kashubians living there. We were walking through their village and were close enough to hear them talking as we walked by – not German or Polish but a strange language. We tried to signal to them but the guards hurried over and pushed us on quickly. I would have loved to have spoken to them, or try to communicate, and have learned something about them and their lives. Perhaps if people talked more and fought less it would be a better world.

  I had tried to think of things to do. Reading would be ideal, I thought, remembering that the doctor had given me some little paperback books. They were those Forces Special editions for POW camps on very thin paper with rather faint print. Now, it was a kind thought but how the devil was I going to read them? Everything was dark and, even though my eyes got used to it a bit, I still couldn’t see anything really, certainly not the tiny print on the pages. I was crouched down trying to read one by the little bit of light coming from the bottom of the door. Impossible so I gave up and, I’m sorry to say, found a better use for some of the pages. Damaging army property again. Still the doctor meant well, I suppose.

  It was very quiet most of the time except one night, I’d been in about three days and suddenly I was woken by loud footsteps down the corridor and this terrific racket of banging and shouting. It was the guards coming along kicking the cell doors and then calling out ‘Bist du da?’ – are you there? How stupid! Where else would you be? You had to answer ‘Ja’. Apparently there’d been an escape but not from the prison. After I came out I learned that it had been down below, where the prisoners in the main camp had built a series of tunnels.

  We were supposed to get regular breaks, to go out every morning for half an hour to exercise and get a quick wash in the wooden trough in the yard. I went out twice. Guards came and kicked the doors, opened them and shouted ‘Heraus! Waschen’ – Out. Wash, and you grabbed your flannel and toothbrush and waited to be marched out to a small yard.

  The other prisoners were a rough-looking lot but then this wasn’t a holiday camp and I didn’t know who they were or why they were there. You couldn’t tell what nationality they were from their uniforms, which were more bits and pieces of odd clothing. There were English, French and Serbs, I think. And I didn’t ask. I was very careful not to look up too much in case I caught someone’s eyes and spoke by mistake. I didn’t want the butt of a rifle between my shoulder blades. We took it in turns to wash our faces as best we could in the dirty water in the trough and then walk round and round the yard to stretch our legs and enjoy a tiny bit of sunshine on our faces.

  Ten days isn’t very long really. I mean, I wasn’t being punished with hard labour or anything. That was what I was going back to. I wondered if the lads were thinking of me. Had they received any Red Cross parcels? Would they save some ciggies or jam for me? Were they right now boiling up some hot water to make a jelly from the rations? That would go down a treat right now.

  Were there any letters waiting for me from Lily or sister, Winnie, and brother-in-law, Bert? What about my arch enemy, the guard, Jan, what was he up to? I felt sorry for him actually. He was a prisoner too of the same invading German Army. He would rather be at home, going to work at a local factory every day, having a laugh with his mates and going home to his wife and kiddies every night, and a meal of pork and dumplings laid out ready on the table, finished off with a tot of schnapps.

  When I was eventually released, a guard came and fetched me and escorted me outside into the main camp. It felt good not being cooped up like I was, to look up and see a blue sky and breathe nice fresh air. To watch other people walking around outside. I might still be in a prisoner of war camp surrounded by high walls and barbed wire and watch towers but it was a relief to be out there with other men. We came down the steps and out through the gate and this chap was waiting, another English officer, and a prisoner of war, obviously.

  ‘Right, now then. You’re Private Charles Waite. Correct? 10511, your number?’

  ‘Yes, that’s right, sir.’

  ‘Before we go any further, do you want to go back where you came from?’

  ‘Yes, I do, sir.’

  ‘Then, stay away from that main gate.’ He pointed towards it. ‘Because that’s the town there.’

  Funny that, if you stood in the right place you could see ordinary townsfolk passing by in the square. People free to go about their everyday business going to work and then home again.

  ‘If they want somebody for work and you’re standing there, they’ll grab you and then that’ll be it. Probably stay there. And you won’t see your mates again back at your place.’ He was like a school teacher telling a naughty pupil off. ‘You wouldn’t want that would you?’

  I shook my head, ‘No, I wouldn’t.’ I thought of Jimmy and Laurie, Sid and Hebby waiting for me to return. Jack and Bill and all the others.

  ‘Because you’ll always be there under their thumb, ready to go out to do their work, whatever it is. Never go near that corner up there. That wire’s electrified. Keep away. Now you want something to eat I bet?’

  ‘Yes, please. I’ve got some biscuits in a locker somewhere.’ That’s good, I thought. I’ll get them back after all. I was starving.

  ‘Forget the biscuits,’ he said, ‘You can take them back with you. We’ve put you in here.’ He took me across the open square where a few prisoners were exercising and standing around smoking. There were rows of single-storey wooden huts and we went into one, turning into a small side room where there was a table, a couple of chairs and a single iron bed. Light was streaming in even though the panes of glass in the windows were greasy and dirty. It looked cosy and you could feel at home there but then I thought, I couldn’t stay there, not have lived there permanently. I wouldn’t have liked that, locked up behind those barbed wire and electric fences, along with the thousands of other men.

  I was better off outside in the open, even if the work was hard. Work took your mind off what was going on or might happen. Yes, we saw terrible things happen which reminded us that war was never far away and that this what our men were fighting to stop. But we could get away from it, at least in our minds, when we were working.

  There was nature all around us and we watched the seasons change on the farms. We walked out into vast, flat, open countryside, into those huge expanses of fields and pine forests. On the way we passed through hamlets and villages, with their stone built cottages and brick farm buildings. We heard church bells ring or horses hooves on cobbles. We had occasional glimpses of normal everyday life: women hanging out washing and children running around a yard. We had a different sort of freedom in my camp, I realised now. We didn’t have guards breathing down our necks all the time when we were working. And we knew how to get out at night, if we wanted to, as long as we didn’t do it too often. It didn’t look as though you could ever g
et outside a camp like this.

  ‘Would you like a shower first?’

  ‘That’ll be nice.’ I hadn’t had a proper wash for weeks before I went in. I was taken to a shower block which was a brick building with a row of cold water showers. Running water. Heaven, not having to share somebody else’s filthy water. When I came back there was a meal waiting for me. On a battered tin plate was a fried egg sandwich, oozing fat and the yolk already running out from between two slices of bread. ‘Where did you get this from?’ I asked.

  ‘Never you mind,’ he said as I tucked in. I picked up the sandwich and crammed it into my mouth, nearly choking with excitement and hunger. I licked my fingers (and the plate) to make sure every last bit had gone. That egg tasted so good. The last one I’d had must have been several months before, probably one that Jimmy had sneaked into the camp.

  I found out afterwards that the officer was on the escape committee and that was why he knew so much about me and wasn’t going to have any nonsense from me. He didn’t want any trouble which could draw attention to what had been going on underground with their escape tunnels. To think that I could well have been sitting right on top of one of them; with men burrowing beneath my cell floor while I was sitting there twiddling my thumbs, dreaming of a bowl of mutton stew and dumplings.

  It was lucky in a way that I got punished for my ‘Insubordination’ because it gave me the chance to see what was going on elsewhere and meet these other fellows in the camp. I stayed the night, bunking up with some of the lads and we had a laugh and swapped stories. It was good to hear a bit of news about what was happening in the war. You felt so cut off and not part of anything connected to what we had been called up for back in October 1939. Obviously they had access to a radio from the things they were telling me about this invasion and that attack. I learned more about what was happening to the Poles and Jews and their families and heard about what was happening in the concentration camps. I thought about Stutthof, the place not far from us.

  In the morning I waited outside for my guard who was going to escort me back to camp. I kept well away from the main gate and perimeter fence as I watched men with sunken eyes, pale skin and skinny arms and legs walk by. I don’t suppose I looked any better than them although my face and arms were quite brown from spending so much time out of doors. And although I was thin, I was fit with muscles in places I never knew you had them. Yes, I had something to be thankful for. I had remained pretty healthy with no serious illnesses and I see now how that was a good preparation for what came later – The Long March home. But I had another two years to wait for that.

  My guard arrived and I was about to leave when someone came up behind me and tapped me on the shoulder. ‘Yours, I believe,’ and handed me with my little packet of biscuits.

  When I returned to my camp I was welcomed back by everybody who crowded round, patted me on the back and gave me a cigarette. ‘All right, Chas,’ and ‘Good to see you, mate,’ and ‘Saved you a bit of bacon.’ I felt like a returning hero even though I had done nothing brave except sit out my solitary in a dark cell. I vowed never to do anything stupid like that again. ‘Yeah, that’s right, Chas. You keep your nose clean.’

  I was careful after that because I was frightened of being punished again, of possibly going to a place called Graudenz where serious offenders were sent. We had heard stories from men we met from other work detachments, about what went on there. ‘You don’t want to go to that hell hole,’ they said. ‘Dreadful place. You go in for a month, do 12 hours a day unloading bricks, sand and cement from the barges. Live on half rations, return to your own camp for a couple of days to recuperate and then go back again.’ Absolute torture.

  When I think of it now, I was lucky; I got off lightly. Unfortunately having a bit of a temper is part of my character and not something so easily controlled when, in the heat of the moment, you think something is wrong or you witness an injustice, it’s hard to keep quiet and do nothing. The soup incident was pretty mild compared with what I foolishly did a few months later.

  11

  A Nice Bit of Cheese

  There’s nothing worse than toothache once it starts and if you can’t get any relief, it drives you crazy. One of our chaps did it himself, took out his own tooth with a penknife. Now I didn’t fancy doing that, not just because of the pain but the sight of blood all over the place. My toothache went on for days and I couldn’t eat or sleep properly. Eventually I couldn’t stand it any longer.

  I went to see the Unteroffizier in his office to ask him if I could go and see a dentist. He was sitting at a desk and stamping bits of paper, moving them from one pile to the next as Hitler looked down on him from the wall behind. I waited for him to finish what he was doing. I realised that I didn’t know the word for dentist. Or tooth. Never mind, you just have to have a go, don’t you. One of my big regrets is that I didn’t learn German while I was in the camp. We picked up odd words and repeated phrases we heard but it was very limited; we never had proper conversations. If we had been allowed to speak more to the guards it would have been good.

  When he finally looked up I said, ‘Entschuldigen Sie. Ich brauche einen Dentist bitte,’ – Excuse me. I need a dentist, please, and pointed inside my mouth and pulled a face as if in pain, which, of course, I was. ‘Tooth hurts. Tooth schlecht,’ – bad.

  ‘Zahnartz, ja?’ he said.

  ‘Ja,’ I said, nodding. ‘Ich brauche einen Zahnartz, bitte.’

  ‘Nein. Kein Zahnartz.’ – no, no dentist. He shook his head and dismissed me with a wave, adding, ‘Keine Zeit. Keine Soldaten,’ – no time, no guards. He couldn’t spare one of his men just to take one prisoner all the way into town to a dentist and then back again. And that was that.

  The toothache continued and I was just considering borrowing a penknife and having a go myself when Laurie and Sid came up with an idea.

  ‘Oh, Chas, my tooth hurts,’ said Laurie, pulling a face.

  ‘Me, too, something chronic,’ Sid joined in, rubbing one side of his jaw. They both agreed to say that they had toothache and needed to see a dentist. So armed with the word, ‘Zahnartz’, they trooped off to see the Unteroffizier. He seemed to have had a change of heart and decided to let us all go. He could justify this to his superiors, the deployment of one guard to three prisoners on this occasion. I thought it was marvellous that my two pals were willing to put themselves through this and the likelihood of a German dentist extracting a tooth or two. That was the way people treated toothache then: they pulled the offending tooth out. So the next morning, instead of going to work, we were marched off to Freystadt.

  It was a half hour walk or so to the village and we had to make our way to the main road along rough tracks from the farm. We were escorted by this particular guard who was following behind, carrying his rifle down by his side ready to fire if we decided to make a dash for it. I don’t know if he was particularly nervous or had been told by somebody that we were a trio of dangerous desperados but we certainly weren’t going to give him any trouble. Me with my raging toothache, Laurie and Sid more worried about what was going to happen than making a bid for freedom.

  Suddenly, as we were going along the main road, we heard this strange sound in the distance. There was a bend ahead and we couldn’t see what was coming. Clump, clump, clump, clump, getting louder. Very odd. The guard knew immediately what it was and shouted, ‘Hinunter!’ – get down. We dropped down into the gully by the side of the road and lay there not daring to move. Memories of the road outside Abbeville came back to me as I lay face down in the dirt. I stopped breathing for a moment and listened, trying to make out what was going on.

  When we dared to raise our heads up enough to see over the top, I saw a column of 40–50 men and women coming round the bend. They were dressed in dark, filthy clothes that mostly hung off their skinny bodies. The clomping sound was the noise from the wooden clogs they were wearing on their feet. It was a shocking sight. Their faces were white, their eyes sunk right in and they ha
d no hair at all.

  There was a guard at the front, behaving as though he was leading a triumphal parade. There were guards either side, some with rifles, others with revolvers in shoulder holsters, holding a whip in one hand which they dragged along the ground and then suddenly cracked. One guard held the lead of an Alsatian dog in his other hand. A guard at the rear held a sub-machine gun, no doubt keeping an eye open for anybody who dropped out or was foolish enough to try and run away.

  I couldn’t bear seeing this and my temper got the better of me. That red mist of anger, frustration, injustice and helplessness rose before my eyes. It was a bit silly, I suppose, you will probably say I was mad but I jumped out of that gully, scrambled up on to the road and rushed towards one of the guards. ‘Schlecht’ – bad, I shouted. ‘German culture, bad,’ and I spat at the guard’s boots. ‘Schlecht,’ I moved my head down to spit again.

  The guard hardly broke step and the next second, I felt the butt of his rifle hit me hard between my shoulder blades. I collapsed and the pain was so intense like an electric shock that I couldn’t breathe. Completely winded. I stayed there on the ground fighting to get my breath back, paralysed, as much from fear as shock. Was a bullet in the head from one of the other guards going to follow?

  Poor Laurie and Sid couldn’t do anything but watch. If they had got up on to the road and come to help me then they would have got the same treatment or worse; we all could have been shot. By the time I came to and started to get up, these poor devils were away down the road. I could see star shapes and big white patches, the size of dinner plates, stitched on the back of their jackets, which denoted the category of prisoner they were.