Twenty Days in the Reich (9 page)
Breakfast over, we boarded one of the quaint little trams that seemed to emanate from Frankfurt. After a short ride through the outskirts of Oberursel, we at last came to the gates of the prison camp. We surveyed the place with interest as we walked the last 50 yards towards the sentry box. It was very pleasantly situated, as had been the one at Arnsberg. There were neat rows of wooden huts all lined up on the side of a hill slope, with pine woods in the rear to lend a picturesque touch to the background. We noticed the fact, which was as obvious as it had been at Arnsberg, that there was no sign of any English or American prisoners! Our first flush of excitement was over and doubtfully, with quickly growing misgivings, we entered.
A
dolf was soon fussing about from one official to the other, but even whilst he was thus occupied, the conviction in our minds grew to a certainty that this place was not to be for us. After a little while, we were led into a room that was once somebody’s office but which now appeared as though its occupants were in the throes of packing-up ready to move on. We were invited to sit on a little bed that stood against one wall, and a
Luftwaffe
corporal addressed us in English.
‘This camp is no more,’ he said, ‘you will have to go on to Wetzlar, and there is one other to go with you.’ As he spoke, our eyes turned to the door, and we beheld an English flight sergeant air gunner, with no shoes on his feet. He looked every bit as weary as us. The corporal left the room, and Jack Evans, for that was his name, joined us on the bed. He told us that he had baled out a week ago yesterday, which was the day after our accident, and that he had managed to evade for five days before at last getting picked up due to
making an over-confident appearance in the daylight. He had lost one of his boots in the jump, and whilst he still carried the other one over his shoulder, he had spent most of the time barefoot – a state of affairs that had not done a lot to alleviate the natural sufferings of his predicament.
Like ourselves, he had hoped that his arrival at Oberursel meant at last a relief from immediate hardship. He was immensely disappointed that he still had to face a further period of unknown duration, on the road, especially as the powers-that-be were either unable, or unwilling, to furnish him with a pair of boots. At length, the arrival of lunch, in a more appetising form than of late, of a tin of meat that looked like spam, with some fresh bread and margarine, cheered us all up.
There was an incident over lunch that showed up Adolf’s petty character. Ever since we had lost Karl, we had had difficulty in cutting the bread, because Adolf’s penknife was not really adequate. Accordingly, I borrowed a table knife from the English-speaking corporal for our own use, on the understanding that if he were not there when we finished, it was to be left on the table. On the completion of the meal, Adolf calmly wiped the knife and put it among his own possessions, taking no notice of our remonstrations that it was only borrowed. Although the victim was a German, we felt that our honour was at stake. Rather than let Adolf get away with it, we wrote
a little note, leaving it on the table where the corporal would see it on his return. It read:
Dear Corporal,
The knife we borrowed has been removed by our guard, and not by us.
It might appear utterly trivial and ridiculous that it should bother us, but it shows the innate honesty of the average British mind.
We didn’t see that corporal again, for in a little while an officer appeared, and indicated that with Adolf once more as our guard, we were to proceed immediately to Wetzlar. Adolf was obviously disappointed that his visit to his wife was to be delayed still further. Yet, he retained all his cunning, for we sensed that he was telling the officer that another guard would not be necessary as he could pick up Karl again in Frankfurt, where it seemed, he had, in any case, arranged to meet him at the railway station. Crafty fellow, all he was worried about was retaining charge of the party so that he could make his own pace.
We set off down the road once more. Jack Evans, whom we arranged to call ‘Ev’ so as to avoid confusion with the other Jack, plodded along in his bare feet. We boarded one of the quaint little trams, and soon were once more in the town of Oberursel, with Adolf making his usual beeline for the
bahnhof
. It was a nice modern unbombed station and according to the
timetables still hanging around everywhere, it must have handled an enormous number of trains to all parts of Germany in the days before our Air Force got busy. There was actually a current timetable, the first we had seen on any of the many stations we had visited. It indicated, according to Adolf, quite accurately, that there were no trains at all to Frankfurt, and none to anywhere else before 7.15 p.m.
Whether or not it was consideration for Ev’s feet we could not be sure but Adolf seemed disinclined for further activity on the road. He said that we would wait for the train, which would take us towards Wetzlar, and we should have to give poor old Karl the go-by. We didn’t fancy waiting on the
bahnhof
and asked if we could find somewhere for a sleep. We were mindful, and I expect Adolf was too, for he agreed readily enough, that we had not had anything approaching a night’s sleep since the night before we had left Werl, which was Monday. It was now Saturday. After a short walk round the houses, we at last found a grassy patch by the side of the tramtrack, and settled ourselves for a quiet, lazy afternoon until it was time for our train.
On and off, we managed a little sleep. It was rather hard on Adolf being the sole guard, because when it had got to about 4.30 p.m. and we had all slept and were sitting up again talking, he lay down. Unable to keep awake any longer, he was soon snoring loudly. I suppose it was rather a dirty
trick, but we couldn’t resist it, and when a Cerman warrant officer came along, we pointed to Adolf, then to ourselves, five desperate POWs. We indicated how absurd we thought it was that we should be sitting there whilst he indulged himself in the luxury of sleep! The outcome was that poor old Adolf was rudely awakened from his dreams and given a thorough telling off, with the five of us looking on, not understanding a word of what was said, but realising that Adolf was getting it hot and strong!
After he had exhausted his invective, and with Adolf looking more crestfallen than we had ever seen him before, the warrant officer turned to us. Finding that we understood a little French, he stayed and talked to us for quite a while. We explained that our American friend had been severely knocked about by the civilians, and we thought we were entitled to a little better protection than was to be obtained from one guard who went to sleep whenever the fancy took him. He agreed and said that we ought to have another. We found, too, that this fellow was one of the very few Germans whom we had come across who really seemed to think that the war would last a lot longer (his estimate was two years) and that Germany had any chance of winning.
When, at last, he went on his way, we decided to have tea. As now our rations had been augumented by two more loaves of bread, some
margarine and two tins of spam, we felt that we could indulge in a better meal, for we gathered from Adolf that the journey to Wetzlar ought not to take above another twenty-four hours. So we tucked in, and washed the meal down with water given to us over the fence by the kindly inhabitants of a nearby house. As we ate we could hear the sound of gunfire not very far away. Although it seemed incredible to us at the time, we were prepared to swear that the sound was coming from other directions besides the west, whence we would normally expect it. Had we but known it, even as we sat there eating our meal of bread and spam, General Patton’s merry men must have been creeping up on Frankfurt from the south and east. However we had been too long out of touch with any reliable news even to know that the Rhine had been crossed as far south as this.
At about 6 p.m. we returned to finish off our long wait at the
bahnhof
. It was there that Jack relayed the information that he said he had got from some Russians he had met in the lavatory, that the American armies were within 15 kilometres of Oberursel. It seemed fantastic, and yet the news was probably quite true. At the same time, it was sufficient to set our minds roving once more in the directions of plans for escape. From experience of previous nights, it appeared that it would be a relatively easy matter to drop off the train during the night, because with only
one guard to bother about now, there would almost surely be a time when he would fall asleep. Once we had gone, the big advantage would be that he would not know at which station we had disappeared. We talked about it a great deal during the long wait for the train, but we were aware that Adolf (presumably with the warrant officer’s words still ringing in his ears) was keeping a much more careful eye on us than hitherto. He had actually counted us on two occasions, a formality than neither he nor Karl had ever bothered with before.
At about 8.30 p.m. the train pulled in, and as soon as we entered we got a very rude shock, for it actually seemed to be warm! There were real glass windows in all the compartments, and whilst the warmth was only natural, probably because the coach had been standing in the sun all afternoon, there was plenty of room, and we were able to spread ourselves in a manner that promised some sleep for a change. What was beneficial for sleeping was not so good for escaping, however, because with there being ample accommodation, Adolf was able to position himself so that he could keep a watchful eye on all of us the whole time.
We had surmised on previous occasions that some of these trains went an awful long way round to get to their destinations. Tonight we were treated to a concrete example of the utter chaos existent in the railway system. The journey from Oberursel to Bad Homburg, which, by the
main line, was no further than 3 miles (and which was scheduled, on the old timetables, to take five minutes), took a full thirty-five minutes at quite a fair speed, and with no intermediate stops.
We rode for a very considerable distance in this train. Its initial warmth was beginning to wear off, when at last it pulled up in the open country, and all the passengers were ordered to alight. Following our guard, we marched at a brisk pace along a path running by the side of the single track. In a few minutes we came across what was to us a most beautiful sight, and the cause of the diversion became obvious. The track, quite suddenly, as though tired of running straight and level on its stoney bed, climbed at a gradient of about one in two until it reached a height of about 12 feet from the ground. There, it left off altogether and the broken ends looked down sorrowfully on a neat round hole, some 12 yards in diameter. On the opposite side, the missing section of metal ran down into the hole, and then up one of the sides, over the top, and then it disappeared into a ditch. Altogether, we were most impressed by what undoubtedly was an extremely accurate piece of bombing, the more so because no women or children would have been killed. Our friends the German civilians who caused us so much trouble in the town, would in this case be deprived of one of their most popular gibes.
When the line was at last safe, we found another train drawn up to receive us, and we were quite
astounded at this evidence of a high degree of organisation to meet the dire needs of the circumstances. We climbed on board, and as expected, found we were back in the old windowless type again. As it was now only about 11 p.m., we wondered just how many hours of freezing we were going to be asked to endure. After this train had been steaming for about a couple of minutes it stopped again. There was then a long wait, the purpose of which was entirely obscure, until at last along the road could be seen two or three women pushing prams. Obviously, it would have been impossible to navigate the prams along the rough footpath and over the bombed stretch. Give Jerry his due, he thought of everything and everybody!
We had not talked any more about the chances of organising an escape. In this new train, we also found that the accommodation was limited, and we were spread out over half a coach, and so got no further chance to discuss the matter. Any one man could have gone when he liked and would never have been missed until the final disembarkation. Diffy told me afterwards that several times he felt tempted to try, but something held him back. I think it must have been that strange something that made me refrain from making a dash for it too. Perhaps something amounting to a Divine inspiration told me that the best thing to do was to hang on and wait for the right moment to turn up.
It had got to about 1 a.m., and we were nothing like as cold as on the previous nights (in fact, we thought that the night itself was a little warmer) when we were ordered off the train again. Adolf was once more trying his luck with the local
bahnhof
. The one we were at was out of use, it seemed, but there might be a habitable one at Weilburg, which was about 3 kilometres away. We set forth, and soon reached the town, but it was a long, straggly kind of place, and it took us an awfully long time, wandering up and down the streets, before we found the station. Adolf, meanwhile, had evidently some hopes of travelling a bit by road, for he stopped quite a few vehicles that passed our way, without finding anything going to Wetzlar. We saw a signpost that gave the distance as 27 kilometres, and wondered whether eventually we should have to walk it.
At length we located the
bahnhof
, bombed out and out of use as usual. There were no trains in evidence, and not the slightest chance of there being any, from what we could gather. It was growing very cold again, and there was one room on the station that was inhabited. It smelt warm and inviting, and seemed to be in use as a kind of club for travelling officers. We supposed, quite rightly, that we should not be invited to share the comfort of this apartment, but Adolf dived inside. In a few moments’ he reappeared with a young officer who was apparently going to show us where warmth and shelter could be obtained. He
led us round the corner and down a flight of stone steps into a hot, filthy and stinking dungeon, where a crowd of men, who for the most part looked like lorry drivers, were stretched out on stone benches trying to get some sleep.
It really was a fearful place. The heat was provided by a large stone fireplace in one corner, and among the men present were some of the toughest, dirtiest and most unhealthy-looking specimens that I saw during the whole of my stay in the Reich. One felt that if one went to sleep, it was a toss-up whether one would be allowed to wake up again. However, we reflected that they probably knew our status, and considered we should not be worth robbing anyway. Nevertheless, it was depressing to a degree, and whilst most of us managed to snatch a little sleep, we were not sorry when at about 4.30 a.m. Adolf gave us our marching orders once again.
