The March

THE MARCH (from Stalag 603, Fallingbostal, 1945)

Rumours of a march strengthened and we were told to prepare for what, in our weak state, could only be a very demanding trial. George Ritchie and I somehow acquired a kit bag each, which we converted into some apology for rucksacks. I vaguely remember being issued an extra allowance of black bread and margarine. Early on the 6th April, 1945, to the usual “rouse, rouse, aufsteigen schnell”, we stirred ourselves.
Extra guards arrived, including dog handlers with Alsatians, and we received the usual warning that anyone attempting escape would be shot, but some of our guards were old Wehrmacht, almost as ill equipped to march as we were and shared a degree of friendship borne of fellow suffering. So we left Fallingbostel, still prisoners, not knowing our destination. Someone had heard Lubeck mentioned. Perhaps we were bound for the rumoured Northern Redoubt where the Nazis would make their last stand.
We sought to make it the slowest march possible, and our weak state made it nothing more than a shuffle. We were a tattered column, staggering along like cattle. But even with an uncertain future, there was excitement in the air. We were outside the wire, seeing houses, trees, fields. There were civilians too, some staring with hostility, a few with pity. Other marching columns passed, German infantry moving up, refugees, foreign workers, and overhead a continuous stream of Allied planes in formation, silver dots in the sky. How many of us moved from Fallingbostel I cannot say, but we left in columns, each of about 500 men, moving roughly in the same direction. We were rarely on asphalt roads as it was a rural journey, much of it on Lüneberger Heide, which had few roads.
I remember only a few of our overnight stops, including the first and the last, both in barns, for we usually slept in the open. Most of the time the weather was gentle and there was little rain. Those who had been marched off earlier, before the Russian advance, suffered severe cold and some had died. In contrast we had spruce branches for bed and blanket, and enjoyed more comfortable nights than those of our last camp winter.
After some days we were given a quarter loaf, and at one halt a slaughtered sheep provided a minute portion of raw meat each; otherwise we ate turnips and mangolds from the fields with water from cattle troughs or ditches. We marched between twelve and eighteen miles a day. I now wonder how we did it. Some found it too gruelling and dropped out. Others made a run for it and if lucky found refuge with French or Russian prisoners. A few were picked up by the S.S. prowling for deserters.
After miles of sparsely populated country, we approached Luneburg. We slept somewhere on the outside, still on the Heath, and it was early morning when we marched through the streets. Ahead was Lauenburg, another 20 km east. Once across the Elbe, the Germans would blow the bridge and, we feared, make a last stand with us on the wrong side of the river. It was on this day, or was it another and in another place, that we were delighted to see a landing strip with a line of JU88s in flames. Were they destroyed by the R.A.F. or fired by the Germans in defeat?
Lauenburg by the Elbe is now a charming tourist spot with narrow cobbled streets, 18th century houses, bars, restaurants, a few hotels and with pleasure boats and barges along the waterfront. It must have looked much the same to us then, but we were oblivious to its charms, wondering only how much longer we would have to trudge. We stayed on the main road towards Boizenburg, following the river until a minor road led north, and then, close to the village of Lance we made our night halt in open pasture.
I remember this overnight halt because for the only time on the march we went to sleep uncomfortably bloated, thanks to the gift of a solitary Spitfire. Lacking a military target, it aimed at a barge slowly travelling up river, carrying not arms and ammunition, but herring roe, much of which somehow made its way to our camp giving many of us severe stomach problems next morning.
It must have been next day that a tragedy happened that we might have anticipated. With clear skies and Allied air forces active above, neither the high bomber formations nor low flying fighters gave us anything but joy. When some ground attack machines flew low over us we waved. It seemed impossible that our long ragged column could ever be seen as a target. Tragically, we were wrong.
Two such parallel columns of our men were approaching the village of Gresse when a flight of six British Typhoons came over and flew south again. They then returned, low and in line astern, aiming at the other column. We watched horrified as puffs of smoke came from under the wing of the first one. Five attacked with rockets, then cannon. The sixth turned off, perhaps aware of the error. The ultimate tragedy had occurred: our own air force in which we had all served, had killed and maimed their own.
Any thought of rushing over to the other column was barred by our guards who ordered us to continue, doubtless anxious to find concealment in the forest ahead. At least we were spared the sight of our fellow airmen, some prisoners of four years, killed within two weeks of release.
Accounts of this ‘incident’ of the 19th April vary as to the number of Typhoons involved and of those killed. Dixie Dean has said sixty were killed, some dying of their injuries in the hospital at Boizenburg. One account says the bodies were buried in a mass grave in the churchyard at Gresse after a service given by the local Pastor. What is certain is that all have now been reinterred by the War Graves Commission. Last year I drove along the road where the tragedy occurred, through a hamlet of new houses now called Heidekrug (a familiar name) to the village of Gresse. In the churchyard there is a line of military graves where five of our guards are buried.
Of the rest of the march I have few clear memories. We must have looked anxiously at the sky, but weaker by now, we were an even longer line of men straggling into the distance, much less of a target. The guards were strung out too, doubtless suffering in their own way as they were all older non-combatants, perhaps equally ill fed. Starvation ravaged the column and dysentery followed. A man loses all self respect with dysentery. We dropped our trousers when need arose, often in public and without any embarrassment. I remember doing that once, with several others, on a village green, regardless of local women passing by.
Other incidents of those last weeks of marching stand out. There was the day we found a dead horse. Decomposed as it decidedly was, there was a rush to cut off pieces of meat with knives or bayonets borrowed from our guards. Some chewed the raw meat there and then. Personal survival was our major thought, and there was some talk of fighting over food, but I saw none. On the contrary, I recall acts of kindness by the less weak helping weaker companions. One unexpected act of generosity I clearly recall. Our column became scattered as the days passed, our pace dictating the timing and length of breaks. One break of our group was at the gates of a substantial farm with Russian or Polish women slave labourers. It must have been their midday break for they came out to us with plates laden with hot potatoes and vegetables, their own meal. This was the first genuinely kind act we saw in the outside world.
Many of our Luftwaffe guards had been with us since Heyderkrug and gave us little trouble: they were elderly, unfit and disillusioned. They shared something of our sufferings and showed us some sympathy. With German defeat imminent, they were surely aware that our roles would soon be reversed. Any discipline they had tried to impose in the night camps was now relaxed so that we could forage for food or wood. There were, however, exceptions.
Returning one evening with an armful of wood to boil up some stolen swedes I was stopped by a shouted command from two Luftwaffer N.C.O.s, a feldwebel and an unteroffizier with one of their guard dogs between them. The senior man released the dog with a command and it rushed towards me. I dared not move. Having been brought up with dogs, this was going to be the big test of my standing with them. The dog reached my feet, looked up, then wagged its tail. The unteroffizier, furious with both of us, drew his Mauser, thrusting it into my face, his hand shaking. I recognised him, a hated figure, the recipient of many of our taunts. We called him the Victory Parader. With Hitler’s march through France, he had left his home in the Bronx, New York to join the Victorious German forces. With his command of English he was appointed dolmetscher in a P.O.W. camp.
The route that we took after the tragedy near Gresse was through what is now Lauenburgische reservat Schael-See an attractive, sparsely populated recreation area of lake and forest, but it was survival that was on our minds. For our German escort, their future must have weighed on their minds too, a fate less certain than ours. Our hunger and dysentery dictated the pace of our journey and the frequency and length of our halts, with our guards playing a secondary role. While for a few fanatical S.S. remnants the struggle might continue, for our guards, almost as weary as we were, the end would surely be welcome.
For me, a speedy end to the march had become vital, unless I was to suffer permanent injury. Apart from the German-issue wooden clogs, my only footwear was a pair of ill-fitting French army boots and disintegrating socks. I had developed a seriously septic foot, each day becoming increasingly painful, and in the end it was so swollen that I could only hobble along with my foot wrapped in sacking, not merely at the back but many yards behind the column, my only companion George Ritchie who refused to be separated from me, and a solitary guard, nervous at being parted from his fellows. We too were nervous and felt highly vulnerable. There had been tales of fanatical Nazis roaming the country ready to shoot or string up suspected deserters or escapees.
The Russians were near, and every German’s greatest dread was Russian captivity. Few had any illusions as to the treatment they could expect and it must have been for this reason that the direction of the march was changed back towards the Elbe in the west. With roles reversed, and the guards our prisoners, the Western allies would decide their future. Such thoughts were in more minds than those of our guards. Small groups of German soldiers also hurried westwards, eager to evade the Russians. Some stopped to talk; one even helped me with my load for a short while.
At the village of Salem we caught up with the main body, preparing to settle for the night. As we were now closer to the advancing British than to the Russians in the east there would be no further marching; here we would await events.
It was relief for us perhaps, but for the local civilians, many of them women evacuees from Hamburg, there was real fear. Few Germans were unaware of the horrors inflicted upon Russia and now that army was moving westwards, bent upon revenge. As we were later to learn, their fear of rape was fully justified. To those refugee women the arrival of a bunch of weak and starving terror fliegers was the lesser of the two evils and might even protect them from rape and pillage. We were, after all, fellow members of the Aryan race rather than untermenchen from the east. It was for this reason rather than charity that they offered us the comfort of their homes. By now all German military control over us had gone, the guards that were still around amenable and anxious to seek favour. Unhindered by them, George and I could have had the comfort of a bed, but we chose to sleep on a barn floor, too weak, even, to stretch up for a bale of hay above.
Those two historic days were filled with heightened emotions and expectations. There was fear and uncertainty in the minds of the village women; relief and uncertainty among our guards and the fugitives hurrying west. For us there could only be unalloyed joy and relief. The others who shared our joy were a handful of gaunt and ragged Russian prisoners from some nearby work camp bent on mischief. They had found guns and were on the rampage for loot and drink, perhaps even revenge. Even while understanding their motives, years of imprisonment had not destroyed our values and the few among us who could speak Russian were able to restrain their activities.
On our second day in Salem unarmed German soldiery continued to stream west. We had heard no Russian gunfire but there was apprehension in the minds of the villagers and perhaps they welcomed, as we did, the sounds of our own military activity in the west: occasional small arms fire and the rumble of tanks raised our expectations.

RELEASE
It was the sound of shouting that advised us of our liberation. A line of British armoured vehicles trundled slowly into the village; it was May 2nd. There was much laughter as vehicles were surrounded by deliriously happy men; there was weeping too, and I saw one man kneeling in prayer. By now I could only hobble but the Major in the leading vehicle sent me to the tail of the column for a medical sergeant to dress my foot. It was then that I became abruptly aware of the contrasting attitudes towards the enemy between these battle-hardened soldiers and ourselves. These men had spent months in combat and had experienced horrors from which we imprisoned airmen had been protected. Truly, we in Bomber Command had inflicted death and destruction on a massive scale, but our witness was remote: flashes on the ground, flames in the sky. We might have been appalled by individual suffering at close quarters, but for us the sky preserved our distance and our sensitivity.
The difference in attitudes towards the enemy between the released prisoners and those still serving became apparent at once. The sergeant, needing something more substantial than sacking to cover my foot, rushed to the nearest house, kicked open the door, and returned with an assortment of slippers. The longest one cut half open served me better than sacking. While this was going on, our former guards were being rounded up as if for inspection. ‘How did they treat you?’ we were asked. It seemed hard for our liberators to understand that we had few complaints. At some point our dolmetscher, the Victory Parader, was pointed out as the man who had set the dog on me. My sergeant reacted immediately, picking up a Sten gun. It was good to see the fear on the man’s face, but we persuaded the sergeant to drop the gun.
Subsequent events passed in a haze of relief and joy. For the first time in years I could relax and let things happen. George and I must at some time have returned to the barn to pick up what little of ours there was worth keeping. The barn is still there, disused and surrounded by modern houses.
The armoured column soon left us, anxious to push on to Lubeck, but a unit remained to organise our evacuation in captured German vehicles. I suppose we must have kept some military escort but I remember little of the drive except more unarmed Germany soldiery travelling west and white sheets draped from many house windows. At the bridgehead at Lauenburg I was parted from my companions and taken to a field casualty station. I was deloused, put on a stretcher, and then taken across the Elbe on an amphibious vehicle. My day ended lying in a hospital bed in Luneburg attended by an attractive nurse. I wept when I heard her Yorkshire “Ee, thou dust look thin lad”. I was clean, wearing pyjamas and lying between clean sheets.
Next day I was taken to theatre for attention to my foot which was drained, and I received my first penicillin injection, but for some days I was only able to walk on crutches. I was luckier than most of my fellow ex-prisoners, all anxious to fly home, as the injured were given priority. I was taken to an airfield on Luneburger Heide, and the doctor there was from Harrogate, formerly a pupil of my old school. In the Dakota to Brussels I found a bottle of champagne beside me.
My final flight in a converted Lancaster, along with army wounded and with a further bottle of champagne under my blanket, was, I think, to Boscombe Down. We were taken to a hangar where a group from the W.V.S. had prepared a meal for us. For former prisoners it was too generous. My stomach rebelled and it was some days before I could manage anything but a very basic diet. My memories of my first night in England in the station sick quarters is of embraces from drunken nurses, for this was 8th May, V.E. Day.

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