The Forgotten

by Nathan M. Greenfield

  27 DECEMBER 1944, STALAG LUFT III, SAGAN, POLAND

  HARVIE WONDERS ABOUT HIS FAMILY

  This being his third Christmas away from home, Stan Darch, who was on a work party on a farm, knew that the buildup to Christmas would lead to a letdown. “It’s most memorable for the booze we made from prunes and raisins from the Red Cross parcels. There were 20 of us and there was no ceremony, but we enjoyed the booze we made. And then when alone, of course, I thought of my family,” he recalls.

  Harvie lay awake on Christmas night wondering if his family even knew he was alive—and if Jean and Bert were married, and Bert already flying with Bomber Command. He picked up his pen and, after writing another letter home and a postcard to friends in Scotland, took out a slip of paper that he had found in the pocket of the flight jacket he’d been given upon arriving at Stalag Luft III. On the paper was a female’s name and address, which he assumed came from a girl working in the Birmingham factory that made RAF flight jackets. Perhaps she collected letters from airmen posted to exotic locales. In any case, here he was, a young man forced to cool his heels in a German POW camp, with an address of a girl whose hands had actually touched the jacket that now kept him warm. Later he wrote that he “had fun” writing a postcard to her and imagining her surprise when she heard from a prisoner of war.234

  28 DECEMBER 1944, VANCOUVER

  MRS. E.M. CALLAGHAN RECEIVES A CURIOUS LETTER

  The letter that arrived at 1368 West 8th Avenue in Vancouver troubled Derek M. Warner’s mother enough to bring it to the attention of Canadian Army officials with whom she worked.

  Her son had an expert knowledge of the Vancouver area coastline, yet he had written, “Do you think you could try and get me thru the right connections at your work some D.N.D. 1/25,000 maps. Particularly of the Vancouver area. I would like to get some as they would be very handy for making pleasure trips. I have been doing some work on my Spanish of late and a lot is coming back.” From this illogical request, together with other letters to his wife and grandmother telling them not to bother writing because they would soon be seeing him, Canadian intelligence officers determined that he was sending a message through them to MI9: that the soldier captured in Holland on 13 October was busy planning an escape.

  31 DECEMBER 1944, MILAG UND MARLAG NORD, NEAR BREMEN, GERMANY

  STUART KETTLES SEES AIRMEN DIE TERRIBLE DEATHS

  Thirteen hours before the turning of the year, on Brother Antoine Lavallée’s 1,354th day of captivity, Kettles and the other POWs at Milag und Marlag Nord watched the sky in awe and horror. As much as they were awed by hundreds of bombers attacking targets in and around Hamburg, and by the huge clouds of black smoke that billowed into the sky, presumably from burning oil tanks, they were horrified by the human cost they saw when planes broke apart.

  Lavallée wrote of “white parachutes balancing for what seemed long periods in the clear blue sky.” Kettles was stunned by the sight of one parachutist turning from a white blossom into a fireball that fell to earth. Then he saw two of a group of four burn. Elsewhere in the sky, nine men jumped from one plane, and one man’s chute did not open. It was, he later wrote, “a hard thing to watch him come down, his arms and legs dangling in all directions.” He saw the man slam into the ground and his lifeless body then bounce almost 20 feet in the air.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  January–March 1945

  The times are nightfall, look, their light grows less;

  The times are winter, watch, a world undone:

  They waste, they wither worse; they as they run

  Or bring more or more blazon man’s distress.

  — GERARD MANLEY Hopkins,

  “THE TIMES ARE NIGHTFALL”

  5 JANUARY 1945, STALAG LUFT III, SAGAN, POLAND

  JOHN HARVIE WORRIES ABOUT WHAT IMPRISONMENT WILL HAVE DONE TO HIS MALE PROWESS

  Even for someone raised in the Laurentian Mountains north of Montreal, the cold and snow were remarkable. The footsteps of tens of thousands of men were not enough to tamp down the continuous snow that fell on the Appellplatz. Still, had he not twisted his right knee by slipping on a patch of ice, John Harvie would have been out bashing the circuit, readying himself for the long walk to freedom. Another cut in their bread ration increased the siren call of their Red Cross parcels, but the Kriegies resisted dipping into the stock they knew they’d need soon. Yet even as the excitement built after BBC reported the start of the Russian winter offensive and someone quickly figured out that, at the rate they were advancing, the Reds would reach Stalag Luft III by the end of the month, the daily rhythms of the camp continued.

  Of equal concern to the men was a debate sparked by the repatriation of a Royal Navy Fleet Air Arm flight lieutenant, whose claim of mental illness from “self-abuse” was accepted by Red Cross medical officials. Though steeped in Victorian values, thanks to the spread of Freudianism, and devotees of pictures of Hollywood starlets like the buxom Rita Hayworth, the Kriegies had a much more public consciousness of sexuality than did prisoners taken in the First World War. Military leaders did not, of course, encourage masturbation, but they took a less jaundiced view of young men than did religious leaders, who decried the sin of onanism, and doctors, who linked it to mental illness. On a ship steaming toward Dieppe, for example, Lieutenant Colonel Cecil Merritt roused the men of the South Saskatchewan Regiment from their hammocks with the words “Hands off your cocks, pull on your socks!”235 The Kriegies discussed in worried tones what their long years away from women would do to their male prowess.

  14 JANUARY 1945, MILAG UND MARLAG NORD, NEAR BREMEN, GERMANY

  LES RELIGIEUX DISCOVER THEY ARE NOT BEING REPATRIATED

  The announcement over the tinny loudspeaker that 45 American civilians were to be repatriated raised the Oblates’ and Christian brothers’ hopes. Word that 86 sick men would also be repatriated brought their emotions to a fever pitch. When the expected third announcement did not come, les religieux realized that, despite what the Swiss delegate promised in December, their prayers to be delivered from the sombre life of the prisoner of war had not yet been answered. Though happy for their American friends, they were pained by the realization that it was God’s will that they not awake from their four-year-long nightmare.

  18–19 JANUARY 1945, SUDETEN MOUNTAINS, CZECHOSLOVAKIA

  JOHN GROGAN IS FREEZING AND HUNGRY ON THE ROADS OF GERMANY

  The order to evacuate the camp came earlier in the morning than the usual guttural “Raus,” but it was not a surprise. For several nights running, John Grogan and the other men (including about 12 who had been prisoners since being captured at Dieppe) at a farm labour camp had seen the flashes of Russian guns not 30 miles away. Before leaving the camp on the morning of 18 January, each man was given as many Red Cross parcels as he could carry.

  The sky was clear and the weather a dry cold of -25°C, which made snow crunch and skin burn. Still, despite their shivers, Grogan was in good humour, knowing that whatever the guards said about the evacuation being necessary to save the POWs from falling into the hands of the Bolsheviks, his freedom beckoned ever closer.236 His mood darkened considerably when the sun began to set and he saw armed guards wearing warm boots and greatcoats prod more than a hundred ill-clad emaciated men and women (almost certainly from one of the many subcamps connected to nearby Auschwitz), each with a yellow Star of David pinned to their clothing, down a snow-choked road. Grogan had no way of knowing that on a nearby road RCAF Flying Officer John Patterson, who had been a prisoner at an Arbeitskommando connected to Auschwitz, was falling so ill from pleurisy, tuberculosis and a foot infection that the German doctors placed him in the hospital.

  A few hours later, the POWs reached another Arbeitskommando, where they hoped they would spend the night, for the temperature had fallen another seven degrees. But they were soon ordered back onto the road. As ice formed on the POWs’ eyebrows and around their mouths, and the wind whipped away what warmth their bodies produced, Grogan saw guards burning docu
ments and wondered what crimes they sought to hide.

  The next day, the swirling snow seemingly summoned ghosts of the Royal Regiment: Joe Coffey, Ernie Good and Grogan’s childhood friend, Earl Ricard, who drew their last breaths on the beaches of Dieppe. Cursing the heatless burning of his feet and face, Grogan remembered how during route marches in England their sergeants had bucked up the men out of fatigue with a word or two.

  The Catholic from the Ottawa Valley, who drew strength from the Scapular of the Sacred Heart that hung around his neck, grieved for his dead and suffering comrades—and for “old men and children, potato bags covering their heads and shoulders to ward off the bitter cold, eye holes cut in them like Halloween masks.237

  21–23 JANUARY 1945, ON A ROAD IN UPPER SILESIA, POLAND

  ANDREW CARSWELL FINDS SHAME FEELS WORSE THAN FREEZING COLD

  The Canadians, including Andrew Carswell, Father Louis Larivière and Father Desnoyers (who had recently been transferred to Stalag VIII-B), knew the hardships they and the thousand other men being evacuated from the POW camp in Lamsdorf were about to face on the snowy roads on a -17°C night. Still, as much as he was a prisoner of war who guarded the justice in the cutting of the hard black German bread and learned to parse out his Red Cross parcel, Desnoyers was first and foremost a priest. While around the camp, men packed the contents of hastily distributed Red Cross parcels into rucksacks, backpacks and, in a few cases, bags on makeshift sleds, Desnoyers gave his attention to a German guard who came with tears in his eyes asking for a benediction before leading the POWs on what the guard knew would be a terrible march and for which no provisions had been made.

  Whatever joy the marchers felt at leaving the barbed wire behind them was tempered by the howling winds and the knowledge that, although the guards’ rifles were not tipped by cold steel, they were loaded. Carswell’s worldly possessions—a blanket, some extra clothing and a Canadian Red Cross parcel—were in an RAF kit bag slung over his back. Seeking to conserve every calorie their bodies had as they marched through ten inches of snow, the men hunched over and shoved their hands hard into their pockets. The ten minutes every hour given over to rest may have been necessary to conserve strength on this first night of their march to Görlitz, 60 miles to the northeast. Yet as the Canadians knew well, standing in the snow wasted scarce body heat, so they stamped their feet. Late that night, the crooked line of humanity stopped at a barn, where soon more than 1,000 men collapsed into sleep on damp, foul-smelling straw crawling with vermin.

  A decade older than most of the Kriegies, Desnoyers found it difficult to start moving in the 3 a.m. chill. Red Cross parcels provided nourishment, but the absence of anything hot, even the reviled ersatz coffee, meant the men remained cold. Later, under bright sunlight, they passed frozen farms. Unfolding across the bleak landscape were scenes akin to those they’d seen on newsreels of the fall of France five years earlier: groups of refugees, their clothing torn and tattered, pushing baby carriages or carts loaded with whatever remained of their lives, their situation made all the worse by snowdrift-blocked roads, howling winds and sub-zero temperatures.

  Carswell never knew who the female prisoners shivering on the ice and snow on the side of the road were. Perhaps because of the watch kept by the warmly dressed and well-fed guards, perhaps because the prisoners—just a handful of the thousands of men and women around them who were the detritus of a war that was on its way to claiming 40 million lives, including 25 million civilians—had fallen so deep into hunger or into a cold-induced stupor, they looked at Carswell’s column but, he felt, did not see them. None made eye contact. Then one woman, whom Carswell guessed to be about his age, looked expressionless at him. Their eyes met for an instant and he thought, “She must have been very beautiful at one time.” Then they both glanced away, and the man who had bailed out of a burning plane and endured years in captivity felt shame for not being able to do something for this woman on a frozen stretch of road in the middle of Europe. In the days to come, as dysentery set in and men soiled themselves, shame was an emotion that none could afford to feel.238

  23 JANUARY 1945, NEUENGAMME CONCENTRATION CAMP, NEAR HAMBURG

  TEDDY BLENKINSOP DOES NOT DIE ALONE

  The letter arrived in June 1945 and confirmed what Edward Blenkinsop’s parents already knew: their son was dead.

  There were some things to hold on to. He had not been tortured to death. He had not died alone; François Fernand and a few others were with him. As tuberculosis ravaged Blenkinsop’s lungs, his fellow POWs tried to find him wholesome food. Neither at Neuengamme nor at the Deutsche Werft shipyards could the vital calories and nutrients be found. Nor could medicine be found in a camp where the bodies of more than 50,000 men, women and children were reduced to ash in ovens.239

  By the time Fernand wrote to his friend’s parents, the horrors of Auschwitz, Bergen-Belsen, Buchenwald and Treblinka had been splashed across the pages of Canada’s newspapers and seen in newsreels. From these images, Blenkinsop’s parents in Victoria had some idea of the wretched conditions their son lived through during his last days: the overcrowded barracks; the bare wooden shelves that served as bunks; and the raw, barren landscape. They’d seen pictures of desiccated humanity—bone-thin men and women with sunken eyes and shaved heads. They’d read of slave labour camps. Little would have distinguished the bodies shown in the newsreels from the body, wasted to 100 or fewer pounds, they never did see and which during the last week of January wheezed toward death.

  Blenkinsop’s body was treated no differently from any of the other millions killed by Germany’s willing executioners. It was burned. Hidden in the camp and later found and given to Mrs. Pypen were his escape compass and signet ring. Wanting to keep something of Teddy’s, the woman who had washed the Canadian’s lousy body kept the compass but arranged to have the ring sent to the mother who grieved for the only uniformed Canadian serviceman to die in a concentration camp.

  27 JANUARY 1945, ON A FARM IN POMERANIA, GERMANY

  JACQUES NADEAU AND OTHER CANADIAN POWS ARE SAVED BY THE WORD “AMERIKANSKI”

  With the Russian troops so close, Jacques Nadeau and a number of other Canadians on a farm in far eastern Germany saw the Germans round up old men and adolescents, give them an hour’s training with a rifle and then march them off to the front; by March, more than 60,000 16- and 17-year-olds were in the German army. On the 26th, the Germans ordered the Kriegies out into the frigid Pomeranian air for a march to the west, which gave Nadeau and the other Canadians the opportunity to hide. Shortly after the column departed and as Nadeau began to worry about how Stalin’s troops would treat them, the guards, having come up two POWs short in a count, returned and found the would-be escapers.

  A few moments after Nadeau was locked into a room on the second floor, artillery began pummelling the stone building. As he hugged the floor, Nadeau wondered if the Russians would take the same slow, leap-frogging approach his unit would have made toward the house. Even once the explosions and machine gunning stopped, fearful of being shot by a sniper, Nadeau remained beneath the window. When he heard French prisoners call out to the Russians, he shouted through the shattered window for someone to come open the door.

  The Russians looked warily at the soldiers in unfamiliar uniforms who walked from the blasted château with their hands clearly visible. Knowing that hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians had either joined or been pressed into the Wehrmacht, the Russians’ suspicions were scarcely allayed when two soldiers belonging to the South Saskatchewan Regiment spoke to them in Ukrainian. Seeing that “Kanadesky” meant nothing to the Russians, Nadeau suggested using the term “North Americans.” Upon hearing this, the Russians’ attitude changed; yelling “Amerikanski! Amerikanski!” they kissed them on their cheeks and even their mouths.240

  28 JANUARY 1945, NEAR SAGAN, POLAND

  THE HUNGER MARCH FROM STALAG LUFT III BEGINS

  After marching through a blinding snowstorm, Father Goudreau was thankful for the Luftwaffe office
r who ordered him to spend the night after the evacuation from Stalag Luft III in a farmhouse not far from the village of Priebus. The warmth of the house dried his boots, greatcoat and clothes, and a hot dinner that filled his stomach formed his present, but two other realities unspooled in his mind.

  The first began with the hastily organized evacuation of the camp, with men carrying full rucksacks and pulling jury-rigged sleds made from doors, the boom of Russian guns a mere 16 miles away taking on the roll of a bell chiming midnight. Ten thousand men felt first the cold of a sub-zero night on their faces and hands. Then it seeped into their greatcoats, overcoming the heat generated by the effort of pushing through deep snow as that same effort produced sweat that dampened their clothes and conducted heat away from them. Here and there the debris of war poked through the snow, showing where the lives of men, women and children had been leached from isolated villages. As they struggled through the snow, the men whose boots had cracked felt the stabbing pain of cold. They soon found their packs too heavy and began dropping what was no longer essential—pots, carvings made in prison, a copy of the New Testament, a volume of the poet John Keats’s essays and, more surprisingly, blankets. The sun that lit the day did nothing to melt the thickening rime that surrounded their faces. The hunks of black bread they’d been given, which disintegrated to granular bits and pieces as it was pulled from pockets or sacks, did little to fill their stomachs.