Dunkirk: The Men They Left Behind (43 page)

Following their arrival in the Third Reich, no one bothered to tell the prisoners where they were. All they could do was try to decipher the names they saw on signposts. And nobody told them where they were going.

The final stages of the prisoners’ journeys were by rail, crammed again into cattle trucks, usually with the stencilled words ‘40 men – 8 horses’ on the sides. In place of windows there was a slit running around the top of the wagon that allowed a little daylight to creep in and some air to circulate. Graham King later made light of what was a quite awful experience: ‘No horses were travelling on that occasion, so we travelled eighty to a truck.’ As many would later recount, in modern Europe there would be angry blockades and boisterous protests if sheep were to be transported in such cramped conditions.

As the first men entered the wagons they had little idea of what lay ahead. Many had already travelled by rail, although on those occasions the army had been careful about how many men were allowed in each truck. Furthermore they had often travelled with the doors open, allowing air to enter as they moved through the French countryside. This was different. When Bob Davies described the experience as ‘pretty grim’ he was downplaying the reality of what he and his comrades endured. The Germans made no attempt to count how many were going into each wagon. Men who had slumped down on to the floor found themselves trampled on as the space got increasingly crowded and the doors were slammed shut and bolts drawn across to trap them inside. Eric Reeves recalled the experience: ‘They kept pushing us in – and pushing us in – you hear various numbers for how many were crammed in, but no one was really counting. All I know is that once we got in, we sat down with our knees up against our chins. Now, if you had to stand up because you’d got cramp, you didn’t sit down for a long time – because everybody else had moved to fill your space.’

Within minutes of the doors being bolted, the interior of the wagons became hellish. In the heat of summer it did not take long for the crowded men to feel the temperature rising. It was not too oppressive while the trains were moving but as soon as they came to a stop the prisoners began to suffer. Those strong enough to move through the stuffy crowds to gasp with relief beside the vents did so.

Almost as soon as the men crowded into the wagons and jostled for space a new and important question arose – where would they go to the toilet? As Ernie Grainger remembered: ‘On the cattle trucks it was a bad time. At least on the barges there was a plank hanging over the rear!’ A few discovered a bucket had been put in with them, but most had nothing. Pages were torn from books, bibles and paybooks and used in place of toilet paper. Some tore the pockets from their battledress and defecated into them. Others used their caps. Some even took their boots off urinated into them, then poured the urine out of the air vents, which was why Gordon Barber had no intention of getting too close to them: ‘Heaven forbid if you sat near them. ’Cause if anybody had gone to the toilet they’d throw it out. So if you were near you’d get backdraught and the wind would blow some of it back in.’

Jim Pearce recalled his experiences: ‘We were stuck on there – we had to try to pour it out of the window. If not you just went down the side of the truck. Everyone got stomach upsets. We just sat in silence. Everybody was absolutely fed up with life. They didn’t care if they lived or died. You thought “If I’m going to die, I’m going to die.” I thought my life was finished and that was it. That’s how it looked.’

Ironically, Fred Coster, who had earlier warned his comrades about the dangers of drinking dirty water, was not immune to the effects of the deprivations:There was only standing room and we were in there for about five days – with no food! It was there that I had a bout of diarrhoea. I thought ‘Oh God, what do I do now?’ You still had a bit of dignity and self-respect. I said to the boys, ‘Sorry but I’ve got to do.’ So they made a space for me in the corner. I did what I had to do, then threw it out through the window in a handkerchief. It happened two or three times and I felt awful about it. But then it started to happen to the others so I didn’t feel so bad. But it was degrading. It was horrible, I can’t really describe it. The conditions were inhuman. The Germans were a different breed. They really felt they were the masters of the world. They were the master race and anyone who disagreed with them was to be wiped out.

As the journeys progressed conditions deteriorated. Not all the sick did recover, as Bill Holmes discovered: ‘We were on there for three days. We had nothing to eat. Two of our lads died during the journey. We just had to tie up the bodies as best we could. They stayed in the train with us until we reached the POW camp.’

On the first day of his journey, Eric Reeves watched as the doors slid open: ‘They pushed in a bucket of water and about three of their big loaves. Well, if you weren’t near the door, you didn’t get anything. Because you couldn’t get over there – too many people were in your way.’ Despite being too far from the doors to get any food, there was a positive side to the experience – even if it did mean continuing starvation: ‘Through eating this rubbish all the way, these blokes all got diarrhoea.’

Still without food, Graham King and his fellow prisoners found themselves at halt in the German countryside:Sunday morning and the train stopped about a mile from a country village. In the distance could be heard the tolling of a church bell and we could see the religious people of the Fatherland going to church in their finery, especially those who had minor roles in the administration of the Third and Greater Reich. None spoke to us nor jeered, just looked at us as if we were a new species arriving at the local zoo. Consequently I avoid zoos. To be shut up and stared at by strangers is not pleasant and I wonder if the zoo animals feel as we did.

Their next stop was an altogether more pleasant experience, albeit with unfortunate consequences:The train moved off and slowly chugged through the outskirts of a big city and eventually pulled into the
hauptbahnhof
of Berlin where the German Red Cross was much in evidence, as were the uniformed civil servants, newsreel crews, shouting officers and grinning master race members. We didn’t give a damn. The Red Cross was dishing out extremely thick, hot pea soup, hunks of fresh white bread and lovely, cold water. It didn’t last long and we were soon on our way again. The dysentery sufferers, having ignored all advice, had eaten as starving people will and were suffering again and the stench was unbearable – but bear it one must.

As the hours – then days – passed, the POWs became increasingly frustrated. Every yard they travelled jolted them, they felt every vibration as the rails passed endlessly beneath the wheels. Seated on the bare boards, with their knees drawn up to their chest, their bodies became numb both from the constant shuddering of the trains and the cramped conditions within. Every movement of the man leaning against them was irritating, as if it was a personal attack on their space.

Gordon Barber, who considered himself both a survivor and well prepared for the harsh life of a prisoner, finally found it pushed him to the brink of mental tolerance: ‘That was the only time I can remember despairing. I fell asleep back to back with another bloke. All you could hear was “boompty-boom, boompty-boom” – for three days! I thought it was going to drive me mad. You just had to think, it has to finish. We’ve got to end up somewhere!’

He was right. Their journeys did eventually have to come to an end. As the trains drew to their final halt, the prisoners were completely unaware of where they might be. Some had seen the names of passing stations as they rolled through towns and villages but the names were meaningless. The small towns and villages of Germany, Poland and East Prussia meant nothing to men whose horizons had been so limited back in civvy street.

As the wagon doors were finally unbolted, the men inside prepared themselves for the next stage of their ordeal. First the light hit them, cutting through the gloom, hurting the eyes of those who had sat in the dimly lit wagons for days on end. One prisoner described them as appearing like cavemen, who would climb nervously from the dark depths of the train, inching into the light with dark-rimmed eyes and wild hair. As their eyes adjusted, Bill Holmes and his companions had one important job to do, unload the corpses of the two men who had died during the journey.

Next came the strain of standing up and jumping – or rather lowering – themselves from the wagons. The men who had fought to guarantee the escape of their comrades from the beaches of Dunkirk were transformed into a ragged army of slaves, stinking and starving, defeated and desperate as they dropped down from the filth-filled railway carriages on to the firm ground of the eastern regions of the Reich.

Arriving at the station outside Stalag 20A, Fred Coster recalled the doors finally opening to allow them out: ‘They shouted “
Raus! Raus!
” As we jumped out we all just flopped to the ground. Then we dragged ourselves up to walk into the camp. For me, as I was walking along, it didn’t feel like it was me walking – it was as if my spirit was pulling me along.’

One group dismounted from their train only to be greeted by the sound of a loudspeaker broadcasting to the local population. It announced that these were the men who had laid down their arms and refused to fight for Churchill. It was crude propaganda, meaning little to the starving men it was supposed to humiliate. Quite simply, such ludicrous boasts meant nothing to the prisoners. Nothing filled their heads more than the distant hope of filling their bellies. Not the war – not Churchill – not the fall of France. Food and water – even just a mouthful – became the hope and dream of every man who journeyed to the stalags that summer. As Jim Pearce remembered: ‘We were all in a terrible state, and it was in this state that we were put into the POW camp.’

Totally exhausted. Starving. Filthy. Covered in lice.
Jim Reed, Seaforth Highlanders, on life in a POW camp in 1940

All across the Reich the men of the BEF shuffled into captivity. At some stalags the trains carrying the wretched prisoners pulled up directly outside the gates. Other prisoners stumbled out of the trains into fields, then marched towards the barbed wire fences and watchtowers. Elsewhere, the already weakened men were forced to march for miles. At Danzig some of the survivors of the surrender at St Valery dismounted from their cattle wagons, then were marched through the city ready for the next stage of the journey to a POW camp. Gordon Barber remembered the scene: ‘There were young Jerry soldiers in the streets flicking their fag ends to our blokes and some of our blokes were grabbing them. The Jerries were laughing. Some of them flicked the fags then trod on them when our blokes went to grab them. I said to my mate, “The bastards, I won’t pick ’em up. I’ll never let them see they’ve got the upper hand.” And we were both smokers!’

Just to see a real live city with its crowded streets seemed bizarre. The bedraggled prisoners shuffled along the cobbled streets like a dirty brown stain. The neat streets and shops – horses and carts, trams and buses, people going about their daily business – all were a symbol of a respectable world, one to which the prisoners no longer belonged.

The men on display in the streets of Danzig were representative of the thousands making their way into captivity. Their bodies stank of dried sweat, urine and shit. The wounded also gave off the foetid stench of dried blood and pus. Their filthy clothes hung from their bodies. Soldiers hitched up their trousers, pulling their belts ever tighter around their shrunken waists. Those without belts searched for lengths of string. On the prisoners’ buttocks there was no sign of the firm muscles that had been honed on parade grounds and route marches back in Britain. Instead the flesh hung loose and limp where fat and muscle had vanished as their desperate bodies had used up all their reserves of fat to generate the energy to keep them shuffling along.

The Germans were ill-prepared to cope with the size of the influx. The lack of provisions for their journey had seemed like a vicious introduction to life as a prisoner of war. Yet the conditions they faced once within the camps revealed to them that this was to be the limit of their existence for the foreseeable future.

At Schubin, Stalag 21B was little more than a farmhouse, farmyard and some fields surrounded by a hastily erected barbed-wire fence. Yet as the haggard band of prisoners approached the gates an order rang out loud across the field. Eric Reeves remembered the moment:We staggered out of these flamin’ wagons. The Germans were pushing us with their rifle-butts. We were all staggering about. Then a voice shouted, ‘Pay attention! You are soldiers of the British Army’ – he must have been a regular soldier, probably a Warrant Officer – ‘You will act like soldiers of the British Army. You will fall in, in three ranks, and we will march into this camp with heads high. Now fall in!’ And we did. We marched in. The Germans must have been amazed. Then we got into the camp and straight away we all collapsed again!

During his first days within the camp, Reeves found himself physically unable to react to his new environment. Like so many he was too exhausted to do anything: ‘We were out in the open all day. Me and these blokes just found this place and sat there, leaning against a wall. If you wanted to get up it was difficult. You could get up so far then you blacked out and fell down again. So you’d have to get other blokes to help you up. Once you were on your feet it was OK. Malnutrition had hit us.’ Elsewhere in the camp Seaforth Highlander Jim Reed was trying to adapt to life as a POW: ‘It was shocking. Everyone was a bit low. I wanted to get a shower to get deloused, but we got nothing. It was a stinking hole. We slept on shelves – 100 on the bottom, 100 on the top. It filled the room. The sergeant in charge was as smart as if he was on parade, but he could do nothing for us. It was the worst place. The food was just rotten potatoes, there was no drinking water and we all had dysentery. It was a rough camp – no grass, just one big yard.’