Mackie then saw Hartley lying on the beach and flopped down beside him. He tried to get his Bren gun firing, but it had jammed from being in salt water. When Hartley saw the men of the second wave arriving, he sent Mackie to join them. Mackie sprinted down the beach, scooping up a Tommy gun from a dead man on the way. He then spied Catto leading a small party of men in a dash towards the seawall, and decided to follow. At the wall, he’d helped boost up two men trying to hack away at the barbed wire.
He described with awe how an enraged lieutenant named Stewart had climbed onto the seawall to provide cover. “He just stood there blasting away with his Bren gun. How he didn’t get picked off, I’ll never know,” Mackie said. “He kept hollering for more ammo so I scrambled around picking up Bren mags on the beach and throwing them up to him. He got hit in the legs but he just stood there cursing and firing.”
Mackie was one of the last to shinny up the seawall and crawl through the wire. As he did so, a bullet ricocheted off the wall into his foot. He managed to pull himself through the wire and limp up through the gully. Ahead, he could hear shouts and gunfire. Germans in a machine-gun nest were firing from inside one of the holiday cottages on the cliff. Mackie joined the other men taking cover around it. A lieutenant named Ryerson and two other men charged at the cottage with their Sten guns and killed three Germans. They then ran to flush out other cliff houses — only to find them empty.
Lieutenant Ryerson was then sent to check out the road to Puys, but he soon returned to report that a German patrol was headed towards them. Catto quickly led his twenty or so men west towards Dieppe, hoping to link up with the Essex Scottish on the eastern headland as planned. But when they approached the Rommel Battery they could hear its big guns firing on the beach below. Catto knew he didn’t have the men or the firepower to attack the battery, so they took cover in some nearby woods and waited — that’s when Mackie had a minute to inspect his bleeding foot and found the bullet inside his boot. When they saw the rest of the Royals marching by with their hands up, Catto knew it was hopeless. With no chance of escape, they surrendered later in the afternoon.
Other men in the camp at Verneulles also told stories of what had happened to them at Dieppe. It helped pass the time during our miserable days there.
By the third day we were so hungry that some men were gathering weeds and grass and putting it into the soup for extra nourishment.
That evening a soldier from the FMRs came over to Mackie and me. “Pour vous,” he said, handing us a can of processed meat and two apples. We both looked at him with stunned expressions.
“Nous sommes tous canadiens. Nous avons bien combattu ensemble,” he said.
“Merci, mon ami!” was the best reply I could manage in my high-school French. But I understood what he had said and related it to Mackie.
“Canadians who fought well together,” he repeated. “Yep, that’s us!”
We later found out that French officials who had collaborated with the Nazis had brought extra rations to the camp for the French-speaking prisoners. They considered them to be French rather than Canadians. The Germans thought it would be a good way of sowing discord among us. The FMRs accepted the rations, but decided to share them with all the other prisoners.
I’ve never eaten an apple that tasted as good.
On the fifth day, we were marched out of the camp to the train station in Verneulles. There we were given a loaf of black bread each and a small can of liverwurst to share with two or three others.
“Ten will be shot for every man who escapes,” bellowed a German officer as we were herded towards the wooden boxcars.
“Aww, they’re just bluffing,” whispered Mackie, as he limped beside me with his arm around my shoulder.
I wasn’t so sure about that.
German soldiers prodded us with bayonets and cries of “Schnell! Schnell!” as we were hurried towards the train along with hundreds of other prisoners. I could see CHURCHILL’S 2nd FRONT KAPUTT! chalked in bold letters on the side of one boxcar. As we got closer, I could also see GANGSTERSCHWEIN — gangster pigs — and other insults. Further down, neatly stencilled in French on each boxcar, were the words 40 hommes, 8 chevaux.
“Great,” I said to Mackie. “These are supposed to be for forty men or eight horses!”
When we crawled into a boxcar we discovered that there were at least fifty of us. With some of the wounded lying in stretchers, we were crowded in so tightly that we could only stand or crouch. On the floor was filthy straw matted with cattle droppings. Straw was also floating in the milk can that held our drinking water and in the wooden pail that was to be our toilet. The stench was already bad enough. In the August heat I knew it was sure to get worse.
The only source of fresh air was a small square opening with steel bars across it and barbed wire on the outside. Mackie and I tried to edge our way towards it. After the train lurched forward we soon felt a tiny breeze coming through it.
“I’ll bet we could pry the bars off that window,” said Mackie.
“Sure, just like Superman,” I replied.
We had been told during training that it was the duty of every prisoner of war to try to escape. But leaping from a moving train didn’t seem like a sensible idea to me.
“There’s no way I’m gonna be their prisoner,” said Mackie. “The war could go on for years!”
“You’re right, mate,” said a British commando squatting nearby. “They’re taking us to Germany. Our best chance is to escape now, while we’re still in France.”
Mackie crawled over to him and I could overhear them making eager plans. Most of the soldiers near us were French-speaking FMRs, who may not have been aware of what was being planned. Just as well, I thought, since Mackie and his new friend could get us all shot.
As darkness fell, a couple of other English commandos began pulling hard at the bars on the window. To my amazement, they managed to pry them slightly apart. Soon they were reaching out and pulling down the barbed wire outside.
“I’m going with them, Allie,” Mackie said as he came back beside me.
“Mackie, you can’t! The Jerries’ll shoot you!” I whispered.
“Naww, they won’t,” he replied.
“But you can’t speak French,” I said. “And what about your foot? You going to hobble across France?”
One of the commandos came over and told Mackie that there was a small fellow who thought he could just squeeze through the bars. It wasn’t long before I saw the head and shoulders of this man disappearing through the window. In his bare feet he clung with his fingers and toes to the side of the rocking boxcar, slowly edging his way along it. Minutes of silence passed. Then we heard a rap at the sliding door. Several prisoners pushed the door open and the short man fell into the car with a huge grin on his face. He had managed to twist off the lock with a piece of pipe he had picked up at the train station and hidden in his pants. The courage of this small, brave soldier bucked up my own.
“If you’re going, I’m going first,” I hissed to Mackie. “Someone’s gotta catch you!”
We crawled closer to the partly opened door. Looking out, I could see a wheat field illuminated by moonlight. My first thought was just how beautiful it was. Then I quickly saw how little cover it would provide. My heart began pounding like mad. For the second time in a week I realized that very soon I might be killed. The Germans had a machine gunner on the roof of every second boxcar. Our side of the train was now in shadow, but once we jumped we would be easy targets.
The door was pushed open a little wider and one man soon had his legs outside with his feet dangling just above the railway ties. Mackie and I edged closer to the door. I silently prepared to do a forward roll into the field with my arms folded. My plan was to grab Mackie when he landed and pull him into whatever cover I could find.
“Stay in the car! You’ll get us all shot!” rang out a deep voice in the darkness. Other men called out, “No, no, let’s go!” and began lacing up their boots.
&nbs
p; The train slowed as it started to go into a curve. Within minutes our open door would be easily seen from the roof. Suddenly we heard a yell followed by the loud rat-tat-tat of machine-gun fire. The man in the doorway flipped back inward on top of us. The door behind him was quickly slammed shut.
I lay with my back pressed against the boxcar wall with my heart thudding. There was no chance of escape from our car now. The Germans would see to that. But I was alive! Mackie was alive! Prison camp might be hell, but we could survive it. I suddenly felt a wild joy flooding through me. I loved the small shaft of moonlight I could see through the pried-open bars. I loved the clacking rhythm of the train as I silently whispered in time to it, “A-live … a-live … a-live …”
CHAPTER 12
STALAG VIIIB
August 30, 1942, 1200 hours
With a groan and several sharp squeals the train gradually came to a stop. I heard the slamming noises of boxcar doors being opened. Was this it? Were we there? After five days packed into a stinking boxcar, I was almost beyond caring. Then our latch was unlocked and sunlight flooded the filthy floor.
“Aufstehen!” shouted a guard.
Blinking our eyes in the blinding light, and desperately weak from hunger, we slowly began to get to our feet.
“Raus! Raus! Schnell!” yelled another guard even more loudly, motioning us out of the boxcar.
“Get the wounded out first!” said a voice near me. Several men began to move the four soldiers on stretchers towards the door. The journey had been hardest on them — they should have been in hospital beds with clean sheets, not in this dark and dirty boxcar. One of them was very pale and barely moving.
On the platform there was a sign that read LAMSDORF. My heart sank. An English commando in our boxcar had said that we were probably headed for Stalag VIIIB near Lamsdorf. He said it was the largest enemy POW camp, deep inside Germany near the Czech border. On the track opposite, prisoners in rags were unloading sacks from a train. My heart sank even further — they looked like bearded skeletons. Then I saw a guard raise his bullwhip and strike one of them.
Was this what awaited us?
“They’re Russians,” I heard one of the commandos behind me say. “The Jerries use them as slave labour.”
“They whip me and they’re dead,” muttered one of the Royals.
In front of the station, Sergeant-Major Beesley was organizing men to carry the wounded. He ignored the shouts of the guards and ordered us to form up in a column behind the stretchers. As we walked along the road out of the village we soon saw cherry trees laden with ripe fruit. My mouth actually watered. But the guards immediately pointed at the trees with their rifles and then at us, indicating that anyone who tried to pick the cherries would be shot.
As the guard towers of Stalag VIIIB came into view, Beesley stopped the column and ordered us into marching formation with three men abreast. Then, in his best parade-ground voice, he called out, “Company! By the left! Quick … march!” With shoulders squared we marched forward, swinging our arms in unison. Some of us were without shoes or pants. Some, like Mackie, were limping, or like Norm, struggling forward on makeshift crutches. But we marched proudly with our heads lifted high. The guards looked befuddled — this was not how defeated men should behave!
Then we heard a roaring sound, like you hear in a baseball stadium after a home run. As we drew nearer the camp we saw hundreds and hundreds of British prisoners standing behind the wire fence, waving and cheering and whooping. As we approached the camp’s main gate, the men at the front of the column started singing our version of an old First World War army song.
Canucks are coming, Canucks are coming
There’s drum, drum, drumming everywhere!
The British prisoners shouted their approval. “Good old Canada!” several called out. I later found out that most of them had been in prison camp since June of 1940 when Hitler’s armies had overrun France and trapped the British forces on the French coast at a town called Dunkirk. Boats had raced across the Channel and rescued thousands of British soldiers there. But these men had not escaped and had now spent over two years in prison camp. They were excited to see us. The very fact that an attack had been mounted on Hitler’s Europe gave them hope.
The Germans would soon do their best to dampen our defiant spirit. Inside the main gate we were lined up for hours in the hot afternoon sun. First we were searched and counted. And recounted. Then we were photographed and given a brown disk with our Kriegsgefangener number on it. My war prisoner number was 26216. Then we were marched through a second gate and counted again.
Two high barbed-wire fences surrounded the camp. Rolls of fiercely spiked wire filled the two-yard space between them. Inside the second fence was a knee-high wire called a trip wire. We were told that anyone stepping over it could be shot without warning. Guards in machine-gun towers scanned the camp constantly. My heart sank at the thought of anyone trying to escape from a place like this.
After hours in the hot sun with no food, some of the men were starting to fall down. Mackie began to wobble on his one good foot so I grabbed him by the elbow. Eventually the wounded on stretchers were carried off to the infirmary, accompanied by our three medical officers. Then a group of British prisoners approached the barbed wire. They spoke to the guards and the gate was opened. As they came towards us we saw they were carrying pails of soup — their lunch ration — to give to us. It was the same kind of weak and smelly cabbage soup we had been given at Verneulles and it had grubs and sand in it. But to starving men it was life-giving. There were no spoons so I drank my soup from a boot.
After our meagre meal the third gate was opened and we walked past the British prisoners’ long wooden barracks to a wired-off compound at the back of the camp. Another gate was opened. In front of us stood four low, wide, wooden barracks with small windows and a door at each end. Each one had a washroom in the middle and two living areas called huts on either side. I was glad that Mackie and I were assigned to the same hut, Number 19B. On the other side of the washroom was 19A. Three other barracks were behind ours, and behind the last one was the Forty Holer, the latrine for our entire compound. Each hut slept about sixty people. Once we got inside 19B, men were quickly claiming beds in the three-tier wooden bunks that ran along one wall.
“Go grab us a coupla bunks,” said Mackie, who was limping badly.
I elbowed my way down the room and stood beside a tier of bunks. There were no mattresses — only a few wooden slats on the bottom of each bed.
“Hey, what’re we gonna sleep on?” someone called out.
“You gotta fill your own palliasses!” said Bill Lee, the sergeant in charge of our hut. “There’s bags and straw outside on the parade ground.”
I left Mackie by the two bunks we’d claimed and went out to the parade ground — an area of pounded earth and weeds at the front of the compound. I took two burlap bags and filled each one with straw.
“Gee, this stuff’s actually clean!” I heard someone say.
This was a relief. The filthy straw in the train cars had been so full of fleas we were all scratching from flea bites. I took the two palliasses inside to where Mackie was standing. I wanted him to take the lower bunk because of his foot, but he waved me aside and hopped up to the second one. His palliasse sagged down through the slats to just above my face. Soon a large guy from the South Saskatchewan Regiment came and dragged his palliasse up to the top bunk.
Mackie and I were both exhausted and closed our eyes, but there were too many men moving about for sleep to be possible.
“I’d kill for a hot shower,” Mackie said.
“I heard some of the guys got soap from the Brits,” said the deep voice of Big Jim, the Saskatchewaner on the top bunk.
I got up and went into the washroom. It was a bare room with a long tin trough in the centre with about twelve cold-water taps above it. In front of each tap was a naked man washing himself. I went back and helped Mackie down from his bunk and we joined the line by
the trough. Because there were only a couple of bars of soap to go around, we had to make the most of them. When our turn came we dumped our socks, shirt and underpants into the tin trough. We shoved our heads under the spigot, soaped up our hair and passed the bar of soap to the next guy. With the suds from our hair we soaped our bodies, using our shirts as washcloths. Then the leftover suds in the trough were used to wash our socks and underwear and shirts. We attacked our ten days’ growth — Mackie had grown a full black beard; mine was just reddish and patchy — with an old safety razor borrowed from the British compound. We then hung our clothes to dry over the ends of our bunks. I wrapped myself in the one coarse grey blanket each of us had been given and crawled onto the rustling palliasse.
“Being clean has never felt so good!” I said to Mackie. But from above, I only heard deep breathing and a few contented snores.
“Achtung! Alle Männer nach draussen zum Appell!”
The harsh voice on the loudspeaker kept repeating the word Appell. I ignored it, as I was dreaming that I was in bed at home and my mother was playing the radio too loudly downstairs. When I finally opened my eyes I saw that a few men were climbing down from their bunks. We didn’t know exactly what Appell meant, though we were about to find out. Suddenly the door to 19B was flung open and two guards burst in, followed by a short, uniformed man with a high, whining voice.
“Raus! Raus!” he yelled as he stormed past our bunks and herded us outside. We figured that Appell must mean roll call. Sure enough, he motioned to the guards to jab anyone still in bed with their rifle butts.
This was our introduction to Spitfire, the chief guard or Blockführer of the compound. His face had a permanent snarl on it and every time he opened his mouth he seemed to “spit fire.” So the name just stuck. As we gathered on the parade ground, Spitfire kept shouting, “Alle in Fünferreihen!” We couldn’t understand him so we ignored him. Other guards held up five fingers, indicating they wanted us in groups of five. We ignored them too.
Prisoner of Dieppe Page 9
