Chapter 6

INTERROGATION AT DULAG-LUFT

Early the following morning I was awakened by the guard as he opened the door. He handed me a razor, towel and a piece of soap, and then accompanied me to the latrine at one end of the corridor. I was warned not to waste too much time as there were many more of my comrades waiting to use the washing facilities. The soap would not lather and had the consistency of clay: however, I felt considerably refreshed after the shave.

After handing back the toiletries, such as they were, I was put back in my cell. The breakfast comprised of a slice of bread spread with ersatz margarine and jam, and a mug of mint tea. The margarine seemed to have been made with the same ingredients as the soap, and the jam was fruit flavoured swede purée. Although I ate the bread and jam, I refused to drink the tea for fear it contained a drug to make me more amenable to interrogation.

Like most of the staff at Dulag-Luft, the guard had a working knowledge of English. In high spirits he remarked that he had never experienced such an influx of my comrades after an overnight raid on the Reich. It was a fact, he said, that the Luftwaffe had accounted for no less than fifty Allied aircraft during Friday night.

Still very sceptical of the German claims and, as the guard appeared a reasonable creature, I made it obvious to him that I thought he was talking a load of nonsense, emphasizing my point by giving him a two-fingered Churchill salute. He became quite cross and obviously considered that such insolence had to be immediately discouraged. Pressing his face close to mine, he snarled a warning that it was most unwise to incur his displeasure at any time, and that it would be in my interest to respect and cooperate fully with any Luftwaffe personnel who visited my cell. I was pleased that he did not splatter my blood about the cell, but instead he drew his Luger and, holding the muzzle close to my face, he queried whether I fully understood him. I told him that he could not have made the position plainer, and secretly promised myself that I would make every effort, within reason, to maintain a more amiable understanding between us for the duration of my stay.

He left the cell, slamming the door shut so hard that the shock waves popped my ears again.

In the absence of a radio or any reading matter, I occupied my time trapping the various specimens of creepy-crawlies also sharing my billet. I slaughtered the more repulsive looking bugs, keeping the more intelligent ones which, I hoped, would respond to training. I was busy examining my catch, dropping the bugs I intended to keep, when the door was opened and a well dressed gentleman came into the cell.

He cheerily wished me a good morning and sat down on the bed beside me. The guard collected my plate and mug, walking off with my entire collection of best bugs. Resting his briefcase on his lap and looking for all the world as though he was about to try and sell me some life insurance, he offered me a cigarette from a freshly opened packet of Players Medium Navy Cut. We then lit up from a lighter which he made sure I recognized as a Ronson. The stage was set.

He benevolently introduced himself as a representative of the International Committee of the Red Cross at Geneva. He was interested to know how I had been treated by the Germans since my capture and had I any cause for complaint? I pointed out some swellings on my face and mentioned the incident at the railway station. He expressed his sympathy but explained that the conduct of the civilian population, whilst most deplorable, was a civil matter and beyond the control of the military. He would make a note of my complaint.

He then advised me that I would be humanely treated as Germany fully abided by the rules of the Geneva Convention. He looked forward to the end of the war so that all prisoners of war could be reunited with their families, and so on.

Not only was he a charmer, but he smelled as though he had showered in eau de cologne.

He then got down to the nitty-gritty. Only the Red Cross organization would be able to quickly get word to my parents that I was safe and a prisoner of war and it was in my own interest to complete a form for administrative purposes in order that the matter could be quickly dealt with from head office in Geneva.

He proffered another cigarette the moment I stubbed out the first one, and then produced a form of questionnaire from his briefcase. Handing it to me, he advised that I should take my time and answer every question.

The initial questions caused me no concern as I was merely asked to give my name, rank and service number, together with details of my parents and my home address. The second part, however, sought details of my squadron, the names of my commanding officer and the rest of my crew. These questions I refused to answer and I handed back the partly completed form.

I now completely distrusted him and was convinced that he was a German intelligence officer rather than the ICRC representative he purported to be. We had been warned to expect the bogus ICRC agent in such circumstances.

This one persisted. He was insistent that nothing I put on the form would be divulged to the Germans. He also complained that I was wasting his time unnecessarily as there were many more of my comrades to be processed.

After I had chain-smoked four of his cigarettes he finally gave up. Obviously quite vexed, he snatched up the packet of cigarettes and only a locked door prevented him storming out of the cell. While he waited for the guard to let him out, he muttered something about the lack of cooperation, and it was quite possible that my parents would wait months before they heard of my whereabouts.

During the days that followed I had numerous visits from intelligence officers – the Abwehr, but there was nothing secret about their methods of interrogation and they made no bones about the fact that they were there to extract as much information about my service life as possible.

They adopted the ‘good guy, bad guy technique’ of questioning. Two officers took it in turns to visit the cell and question me, one an outright bully who only just stopped short of physical violence, followed by the other who had only his halo missing. He promised eternal salvation if I gave a complete rundown on my squadron. Although I felt a bit of a prune sitting for hours staring ahead, it would have been fraught with danger to enter into any sort of dialogue, especially with the ‘good guy’.

I believe the fact that there were a lot more prisoners in the establishment to be interrogated let me off the hook to some extent. I doubt whether I was subjected to the sort of intensive questioning those before me must have endured.

On my sixth day of confinement, the bogus ICRC representative came into my cell for the last time. On this occasion he made no pretence that he was anything other than an intelligence officer. He was carrying a folder under his arm on which was printed 427 Squadron in bold graphics. He made himself comfortable on the bed, opened the folder and, with an arrogant smirk on his face, he recited a brief history of my squadron, including Christian names and personal family details of senior officers. He finished by assuring me that I was a member of the squadron, and asked if I wished to add anything.

I was far too nonplussed to add anything to his file, even if I was so inclined. He had a large amount of information at his finger tips, even if much of it was pure fabrication of details of which I could have no knowledge. I was simply flabbergasted by the amount of knowledge the Luftwaffe had gleaned of a squadron not yet five months old, and undoubtedly of Bomber Command as a whole.

I sat and wondered just how much intelligence was obtained by Nazi agents and sympathizers operating in the vicinity of the squadrons back home, and just how much was extracted from prisoners by interrogation at Dulag-Luft. I convinced myself that the intimate details of the officers’ family lives and backgrounds must come from the Luftwaffe’s agents in the UK, while other details would probably be extracted from the completed form handed back to the bogus ICRC representative, who was doubtless one of the more successful interrogators at Dulag-Luft.

After a week on bare rations of black bread, swede jam, and cabbage or swede soup, my stomach was protesting at the change of diet. Consequently, I suffered from a mild form of diarrhoea and this, coupled with a high pressured flatulence, produced a worrying combination. However, before there was a need to repeatedly summon the guard to dash to the latrine, I was taken from the cell for good. My inquisition had come to an end.

I was led into a large communal room where I was delighted to see Bill and Bert standing with about thirty other air force POWs. Still very much aware that the room may be bugged, we carried out a strange, almost whispered conversation to update ourselves with the series of events.

Bert’s face was black and blue where his parachute had snagged in a tree and he had slammed into the trunk. He had a difficult time reaching the ground, and was soon captured by a soldier and a particularly nasty Hitler Youth. When he baled out of the aircraft, Steve and Geoff were still to follow.

It was a strange gathering in the room, with airmen standing in groups, furtively glancing over their shoulders before whispering anything they did not want the enemy to pick up. The men in the room were the survivors from so many crews that the Bomber Command’s casualty figures must surely have been exceptionally high and gave some credence to the claims made by the Luftwaffe.

We listened intently while a Luftwaffe officer read out names from a list and formed us into small groups. The few aircrew officers were going to Stalag-Luft III in Silesia, while the NCO ranks were bound for Stalag-Luft I, a camp near Barth on the Baltic Coast. He said these were to be our permanent camps for the duration of the war. And we cheered! We cheered not because we were overjoyed at the prospect of being incarcerated for goodness knows how long, but rather because it was the result of the euphoria brought about by mixing with colleagues who, during the past eight days, had experienced the most traumatic times in their lives. We refused to give the enemy the satisfaction of seeing that we were so bloody miserable. For their part, the Germans thought we were completely round the bend.

As I was climbing onto the lorry to take me to Frankfurt railway station, I spotted Geoff with a batch of prisoners entering the camp. I only had time to shout and pass on the sad news about Steve’s death before the lorry moved off. For four to survive out of a crew of five was something to be thankful for in view of all the circumstances.

At the railway station I expected a repetition of the fun and games we had to put up with the week before, but nothing materialized. We were shepherded to a carriage waiting at a siding without having to run a gauntlet of bloodthirsty locals. As it was a Sunday perhaps most of them were at church, some even confessing their sins.

Our party was to occupy one carriage and, after the week of solitary confinement and the attention of the Abwehr inquisitors, we behaved like overgrown children on a day’s outing, scrambling for the window seats. I scrambled for the seat nearest to the toilet compartment, or the equivalent to an Elsan chemical lavatory.

The guards were getting on in years and claimed they were First World War veterans. The one doing his stint of watching us carefully always nursed the sub-machine gun on his lap. Both conveyed the impression that they would not stand for any nonsense from us, in fact they were just waiting for the opportunity to shoot one of us to set an example. One of them had the task of looking after a large box containing the food rations for the journey.

The carriage had been adapted for the conveyance of prisoners to either prison or concentration camps, and its doors could only be opened from the outside. The windows could not be opened and the small one in the toilet compartment was reinforced with barbed wire.

It was approximately 280 miles from Frankfurt to Barth which was situated on the Baltic coast, and eight miles north of the main Rostock to Stralsund road.

The route we were to take was via Hannover, Schwerin and Rostock, and then on to Barth. We had to spend one uncomfortable night in the sidings at Schwerin, and at Rostock we were once again sidetracked while other trains were given priority.

During the night at Schwerin, the guards took it in turns to watch over us. We were given no opportunity to escape while we were on the train, although I was treated as a suspect escaper because of the number of times I used the toilet – at least until I managed to recover from the problem with my bowels.

One or two of the lads were still in a state of shock following being suddenly and violently excused flying duties for the duration of the war. We were unable to communicate with one airman who had suffered a complete mental block. He simply stared into space with his lifeless eyes, completely devastated. He should have been receiving hospital treatment rather than travelling to a prison camp.

The daily food ration comprised an eighth of a loaf of bread, and about six ounces of liver sausage, per man per day. And no afters! Flasks of water were replenished by one of the guards when we stopped at a station. There was no point in complaining about the quality or quantity of the food because the guards fared no better.

The train chugged slowly through delightful scenery and past many picturesque villages. It puzzled me how the inhabitants of a country with such charm could plunge the world into two wars within a quarter of a century. I could only conclude that militancy and expansionism were endemic in the character of the German nation. I was to learn that barbarism was another trait.

We pulled into Barth station during the afternoon. In common with the majority of the urban railway stations in Germany, it was a good walk to the town centre, and Stalag-Luft I was about a mile away in the other direction.

It was a beautiful day, and we were pleased with the opportunity to stretch our legs following the tiresome journey from Frankfurt. The terrain was flat and uninteresting – much like the fens of Cambridgeshire – and the area had been designated a bird sanctuary, or Vogelschutzgebeit. Skylarks and other song birds were making themselves heard under a clear blue sky, and the sea breeze coming from the Baltic felt so invigorating. Only the presence of the jackbooted guards and the sight of a Dornier Do 17 with its undercarriage down circling to land, reminded me that I was a long, long way from Canvey Island or Cromer.

As we approached the camp along a narrow cobbled road, we were surprised at the large area it covered compared with what we had been allowed to see of the detention compound at Dulag-Luft. Stalag-Luft I was in the form of a square stockade, with each of its perimeter fences about 300 yards long and eight feet high. These were twin fences, one behind the other, with a gap of six feet. The space between the fences was filled with coiled barbed wire to a height of approximately four feet. At each corner of the camp, and at other strategic positions, there were watch towers on stilts, each with a guard or Wachposten, a Schmeisser machine gun and a spotlamp. At intervals of forty yards along the perimeter fences there were floodlights fixed ten feet above the ground. Armed dog handlers patrolled the outside of the camp with Alsatians. Only Alcatraz could have looked more formidable to a sprog POW.

An ill-humoured looking guard opened the gate sufficiently wide enough to let us, reluctantly, file through into the Vorlager. The Vorlager was that part of the camp that held the Luftwaffe administration offices, the guards’ quarters, the sick bay, the food parcel store, the cookhouse, and the detention block – the cooler.

We were greeted with a rousing cheer from a welcoming committee of prisoners lined up behind the single barbed wire fence separating the main Lager from the Vorlager. It appeared that the whole of the camp’s population of just over 300 prisoners had turned out to get to know the latest news from home. There would be some delay while we went through the routine of being searched, documented and allocated a POW number.

First the strip search, and, once again, I had to endure the degrading performance of having to touch my toes while some moron on the staff of the camp Abwehr examined my anus and, for no other reason than to satisfy his depravity, prodded my testicles with a cane.

After I had dressed I joined a queue for my personal property, and witnessed an incident that nearly resulted in our first casualty at Stalag-Luft I. An Abwehr sergeant seated at one of the desks, picked out a photograph from property belonging to an airman standing just ahead of me in the queue. It was a snap of a woman in a swimsuit. The sergeant made some crude remark and then, as though goading the airman into action, he rubbed the photograph in a circular motion against his own crotch. The airman had to be restrained from striking out at the German, who immediately leapt to his feet and drew his Luger. Standing back out of harms way, the sergeant deliberately tore the photograph into pieces. It was an ugly scene, and our first encounter with one of the many guards who thoroughly enjoyed baiting us, in the hope that we would overstep the mark and provide the excuse to maim or kill.

Before leaving the building I was handed an oval aluminium identity disc with KRIEGSGEFANGENER Nr 1009 stamped on it. I was now a full fledged Kriegie.

We crossed the Vorlager to the gate giving access to the main Lager. As we waited for more prisoners to join us before the guard opened the gate, there was an exchange of friendly banter through the wire. To a question of how long he had been a prisoner, one replied with a broad Australian accent: ‘Work it out for yourself, sport … Pontius was my Pilate!’ Without a trace of a smile, another wanted to know if pneumatic tyres had yet been fitted to Sopwith Camel biplanes. The Germans were not the only ones who found difficulty in fathoming out our sense of humour; humour that came to the fore in adversity.

I was pleased to notice that Bill and Bert were in the group as we entered the main Lager and were shown to our living accommodation. Towels, razor, clean underwear, etc, were waiting for us – with the compliments of the Red Cross. However, the cutlery was embossed with the swastika.

Before we got settled in, we paraded in the camp theatre for pep talks by the Camp Leader, the Medical Officer and the Chaplain.

The Camp Leader, or the British Man of Confidence to the Red Cross, was Group Captain J. C. MacDonald. He was a long serving Kriegie who began his talk by reminding us that it was a duty to try to escape, but only with the approval of the camp Escape Committee. Then followed a series of dos and don’ts, with emphasis on the don’ts that could incur the death penalty carried out by a trigger-happy goon guard. He warned us to expect sudden thorough searches by the camp security, or ferrets. The person in charge of security was a staunch Nazi with little sense of humour, one Hauptmann von Miller zu Aicholz. He was to be avoided as much as possible, particularly if in the act of escaping. The ferrets were usually getting on in years, and not considered very bright. Nevertheless, even morons could point firearms and pull the triggers. Any fraternizing with a goon should be left to the experts in this field.

The British Medical Officer was Captain Nichols, an army MO captured in 1940. He explained that whilst he was always on call, he had limited medical supplies and sick bay accommodation. He strongly discouraged Kriegies attending sick parades with frivolous complaints – like hunger pangs and homesickness.

Finally the Chaplain, the Reverend R. Drake-Brackman, did his utmost to make us feel at home and wanted. He was always available. He would be pleased to see us at his Sunday services. The offertory box had been dispensed with.

These officers, and the Camp Leader’s aide, Squadron Leader W. Turner, were the only commissioned Kriegies in the camp. With the exception of the Medical Officer, they would soon be transferred to Stalag-Luft III which was in the process of becoming a camp for commissioned ranks only – the equivalent to an Oflag for army officers.

On our return to the barrack block we spent some time updating the senior Kriegies with the latest news from home, even if it was a week old. We were also issued with our first Red Cross parcels. All in all, conditions were much better than any of us had visualized. It was explained that the guards were generally referred to as ‘goons’. There were exceptions of course, such as ‘ferrets’, ‘jerries’, ‘krauts’ and, depending upon the occasion, there were ‘bastards’ and ‘shithouses’; the use of suitable vulgar adjectives being completely discretionary.

Before we were locked in the barrack blocks for the night, there was time for us to stretch our legs by doing a couple of circuits of the main Lager. About thirty feet from the perimeter fence, and a foot from the ground, there was a trip or warning wire. The goons had orders to shoot on sight any Kriegie foolish enough to be seen trespassing in the area between the trip wire and the fence. There was no right of appeal, and the goons could show no mercy: they had to obey orders.

There were six barrack blocks in the Lager, three of which were used mostly by the British, and the others by Commonwealth and other Allied prisoners, such as the Poles and the Czechs. The barrack blocks were divided into nine rooms, plus a cooking area and a latrine. In view of the fact that the camp was only partially full at that time, the number of double tier bunks in each room varied between six and ten to a room. Each barrack was equipped with two cooking ranges and a number of stoves for heating, incidental cooking and brew-ups.

There was a large communal latrine in the Lager, which contained twenty toilet cubicles – minus doors – urine troughs, wash troughs, and cold water showers.

In the adjoining Lager which was used as a parade ground and a football field, the only building was the camp theatre.

Although it would take weeks for me to adjust to POW life, or Kriegsgefangenschaft as the locals called it, the fact that I was sharing it with the ‘cream of British youth’ helped a great deal. Many were almost thirty years-of-age, old boys who possessed years of experience of living with the enemy.

Freedom was something always taken for granted, and I now realized just how much it was worth fighting for.

Stalag-Luft I was built and taken into use in late 1942, primarily to take the overflow from Stalag-Luft III and to bring together those airmen who had found themselves in army POW camps. A number of these airmen had exchanged identities with soldiers so that they could join the outside working detachments where there were more opportunities to escape. Thus, we had the company of one or two soldiers who could pass on first-hand experiences of being left behind at Dunkirk, being overrun by Rommel’s Afrika Corps in the desert, or fighting a losing battle in Norway. Within a few months, such would be the RAF and American 8th Air Force losses, that Stalag-Lufts I and III were unable to absorb the number of airmen taken prisoner and new camps were soon to be constructed at Heydekrug in East Prussia and Gross Tychow in Pomerania.

The initial intake to Stalag-Luft I amounted to only thirty prisoners and these undoubtedly enjoyed the halcyon days of POW life if, indeed, there were such days of Kriegsgefangenschaft. Rumour had it that it was not unusual for parties of Kriegies to be escorted to the beach at Barth to spend a few hours sunbathing or swimming. Conditions had certainly deteriorated by the time I arrived at the camp, and instead of a head count of thirty the number had multiplied tenfold.

By midsummer 1943, the population of the camp had grown to 553, with British Kriegies accounting for seventy-six per cent, Canadians fifteen per cent, Australasians four per cent, and Rhodesians, Czechs, and Poles making up the balance.

The consistent losses, sustained not only by Bomber Command, but now also by the growing American 8th Air Force, were confirmed by the fact that just prior to our move from Stalag-Luft I in October 1943, its population had increased to over 1,000 prisoners. Despite the losses, there was no let up by the Allied offensive against the Reich which, weather permitting, was being targeted by night and day.