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January/February
1945. At
01.00 hours we had to parade at the outer gate ready to move
off but after a few minutes we were told to return to our huts
for a few hours. I think this confirmed to many of us our wishful
thought that the move would not take place and throughout the
night we looked out to the wire expecting to see the guards depart.
During the night in our room we overhauled our packs, tried to
get some sleep and Ted Walker made a sledge out of a wooden crate
- this proved to be a great boon. Finally after a restless night we were again paraded about 6am on Sunday in heavy snow and this time we were off. All those, numbering about 80, who were genuinely unfit to march were allowed by the Germans to remain behind and were taken to our destination by transport. Each man on passing through the gate was handed an American Red Cross parcel. The long column was at last lined up outside the camp ready to march down to Sagan and a considerable halt was made while the camp was searched for possible escapers; we must have presented a strange sight dressed in all manner of uniforms with no uniformity, and carrying a variety of packs. Some were made with great care and precision while others were just kit bags slung over the shoulder. Most fellows had a part share in a sledge and in the snowy roads this was the best method of transporting heavy loads. After a weary wait until 9am the column moved off heavily escorted by armed guards who were also carrying full kit and who were in much lower spirits than the prisoners; we in fact were in quite good fettle because, without minimising what lay before us, we knew that all the hardship was a stage nearer our ultimate release and the end of the war. We marched through Sagan early on the Sunday morning and it was clear that some of the civilian population had preceded us in the evacuation; here we met a phenomenon which recurred many times during the march. I refer to the apparent indifference with which we were regarded by townspeople and country people alike. We expected that considerable hostility would be shown to a body of terror gangsters' as the population had been schooled to look upon us but in fact the Sagan people showed no interest in us and probably at this stage of the war most Germans realised that the war was lost and their plight hopeless. We marched through the town and on past the railway sidings to the main camps at Karlswalde where we halted again. Our disillusionment was bitter when we learned that the other camps were on the road ahead of us and that we were to march to a place called Spremberg more than 70 miles away - I think this was one of the worst moments of the trip when we finally realised that we really were going to do a forced march. Before we started our Senior Officer, Group Capt. MacDonald, uttered words of encouragement up and down the line and our Medical Officer, Capt. Montuuis, brought up the rear with a cart drawn by his assistants for any casualties en route. About midday a halt was made for about half an hour during which we had a snack and adjusted our packs - some fellows found the burden too heavy and ditched those items which they felt they could do without. Early in the afternoon we experienced a high wind with blinding snow which made marching very uncomfortable along flat roads through fields covered with thick untrodden snow or along avenues of pine trees; it was a very sparsely populated area and singularly unattractive after one has seen the pine forests for the first time. Towards dusk when we knew we must shortly halt for the night the column took a wrong turning and had to retrace the route for a mile; spirits were already low and this incident was a further blow after a long hard day of unaccustomed marching. However soon after 4 o'clock we entered a long straggling village called Kunau and at the far end we came to a large farmyard surrounded on three sides by big barns where we were to spend the night. These barns and the lofts were used for storing flax straw and were completely without heat or light so that by the time 1000 men had managed to find space to lie down it was dark and there was no alternative but to settle down for the night. The barns were not locked but guards were posted all round the farm on which a number of French and Polish prisoners were working but these guards were not vigilant so that a few Frenchmen among us were able to contact their compatriots and hide until the Russians arrived - at least that was the plan but we never heard what became of their venture. As for our party of 11 this first night in the flax was by far the worst we had to endure; in spite of two blankets each, all our clothes and burrowing deeply into the flax, the cold was intense and sleep impossible; in addition most of us had difficulty in keeping the circulation going in our toes. When I set out next morning the pain in my toes convinced me that I had frostbite and this together with blisters which had developed on each heel made the following day an agonising one. Meals in the barns of course were very scratch affairs although our group was lucky enough to succeed in bribing the farm people into supplying hot water for a brew at breakfast time. This was the first of many occasions on the journey when bribery was accepted and we were surprised at the willingness of Germans to trade with prisoners of war for cigarettes, coffee, soap and chocolate; they had been short of these things for many years but I doubt whether British civilians would have behaved similarly towards a body of German prisoners marching through England. |
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