I was in the German Army and captured by the English!

A GERMAN'S POINT OF VIEW
My name is Otto Damm, I was born in Steinweiler, near Karlsruhe on the Rhine. I was 12 when the war started.
I was born on a smallholding in the country, where cows were shod to pull the plough.
I was at school when the war started, and our lessons comprised the history of the lives of Hitler, Goering, Gobels and other famous Nazi's. If we knew all the details we would pass any exams.
Everything was very secretive, but as long as you kept your mouth shut and ignored what everyone else did you were OK.

OUR JEWISH FRIENDS.
No Jews lived in our village, but two from the next village used to call to see my mother. They were very poor and sold shoelaces and matches for a living. One day the Bergamaster told us not to let them visit us any more - and I never saw them again. Later all the synagogs in that village were set alight.
I knew there was a concentration camp in Dachau, because our schoolmaster used to threaten us - 'either behave or I will send you to Dachau to pull grass!' But I didn't know anything about any others as they were near Poland. I found out about them later when I was made a prisoner of war.

MY CALL UP COMES
I was one of the last people to be called up, as I had been given permission to stay and work on the farm. My two brothers had been killed, during the war. One in Kiev and another at Krakow in Poland.
We had enough to eat on the farm, but lived mainly on potatoes and our own produce. We took corn to the mill and were given some flour back to use. We cooked our own huge loaves of bread.
We were taught by Hitler Youth to keep our mouths shut and not answer back.

ILLEGAL HOME VISIT
When I was 16 I went into the Infantry for three months basic training. During this time we were sent on a route march which passed just three miles from my friends’ home. We asked our Commander if we could have leave to visit, but he said no. But we borrowed a bike and went regardless, sleeping in a barn. The next morning, we got up early to return before we were missed, but unfortunately got a puncture. By the time we got back to the division's camp — they had gone. So we went after them on foot, luckily managing to hitch a lift in a car, getting there in time for evening Reveille.
We were caught by our Sergeant taken to the Commander and threatened with a Court Martial for being AWOL.
Later when the Commander asked for volunteers to go to Lotringen in the South of France, on the Front line, we had to volunteer to do that, to get out of the court martial.

ON THE FRONT LINE
When we got there the unit was re-taking a cross road, with just 30 to 40 men. Two hundred yard in front of us were the American army, and we received heavy casualties because of their constant bombardment. We had been dug in there for a week when our Corporal (a Russian) told us he had never experienced anything like the shelling we were receiving from the Americans.
Leaving all our weapons in camp, I reluctantly went with the Corporal on a reconnaissance of the American camp. We crawled through the woods and saw the Yanks 30 to 40 yards away having a leisurely breakfast and acting as if nothing exciting was happening.
We watched them for some time, we were very hungry — and then we just returned to our unit.

I TRAINED AS A SNIPER
Later I was sent away from the woods to rest for two weeks, then to Luxembourg. There my Camp Commander offered me a course as a sniper, which I accepted just to get away from the front line. I spent Xmas 1944-45 in Heidelberg where I met two girls with sledges when we were out walking in the snow. We sledged down the hill towards our camp with the girls, who invited us home for coffee and to meet their father. He turned out to be the Colonel of the regiment — who we saluted. He was quite friendly and kept his opinions quite. We were promised two weeks leave after the course, but we did not get it.

WE KNEW ABOUT ARNHEIM
I was in France on the lower Rhine on a hush-hush job two weeks before the English invaded Arnheim, we were instructed to shoot any parachutists who attempted to land. We knew the invasion was going to happen, but not exactly where. I cannot understand why the attack happened when the Germans knew and were waiting for them. I was not there but heard about the Arnheim landing later on the radio.

CAPTURED BY THE ENGLISH.
I was captured on 25th February 1944 at Goch on the Lower Rhine, and sent to a camp in Belgium.
We were caught because we had no where to retreat to, because we were by the river Maas - and the attack came from the front. So we either had to swim the freezing river or get captured. No one wanted to swim - so we surrendered.
At 12pm I was sitting in a cellar with my commrades - luckily our camp commendant spoke English, when we surrendered. We were told to leave all our weapons in the cellar and put our hands up. We we left the cellar one English man hit me in the back with his rifle but and I still remember the pain. My friends picked me up and we walked round to the back of the building.
There we saw a row of machine guns set up facing a wall. We were very frightened as we thought we were going to be shot.

A PRISONER
We were loaded into lorries and sent to an old factory builduing and then on to the camp by open train. As we travelled through Holland in open trucks, the Dutch people were waiting on the bridges over the tracks, and threw bricks and missiles down at us as we passed - we could not avoid them as they were packed tightly in the trucks.
I was in Belgium for a year - and we had a lovely time there. There was not much food for the thousand prisoners, but we were well treated. It was very cold there because we had to sleep in tents.

WHERE NEXT
The following Spring were told to pack all our belongings as we would be sent home from Ostend. But this did not happen, instead we were taken to England, landing in Harwich and then on to Oswestry to a POW camp.
After the war in 1946, we were still kept in England. I was too undernourished to work on the land again at that time, but I did not complain. I was then sent to a big POW camp in Droitwich and eventually put to work on a farm. When we got promoted, we were able to use a push bike to go around.
In 1949 I was still a prisoner, we were allowed some freedom, but not encouraged to 'fraternise' with the locals until we were released.
During the bad winter of 1947 I was in the Military Hospital in Stafford. There I met a cousin from Germany and other villagers I had known. I worked on one local farm until 1953 and then on to a farm in Ombersley. During this time I met my wife.

BACK HOME TO GERMANY
I still wanted to go home - so I returned to Germany and got a job in a blast furnace. I could not settle there as I found I enjoyed the British way of life - so returned to England in 1965, where I worked as a driver for the Milk Marketing Board for 25 years. I am now retired and happily living in a Worcestershire
village.

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