21

Return

As the bus carrying all 40 of us moved slowly on to the bridge and towards Montreal, heads were craned to catch a last glance of the building and compound that had been our home for the last three years. All of us were strangely silent as Ile Sainte Hélène was left behind, and we did not experience the euphoria that one might have expected in prisoners heading towards their liberty. There was in a way as much uncertainty in the freedom that awaited us as there had been in the confinement we had just left. In Camp 43 situations and neighbours were well-defined and understood, but here we were about to be set free in a society which for three years had labelled us as enemies, kept us strictly quarantined behind barbed wire and had treated us as somehow dangerous.

Moreover, the freedom offered us was conditional, given only on the understanding that each of us would take up some form of work on our return home. Where would we be offered work? Who would be our companions? As released enemies how would we be treated by the civilians with whom we would have to mix? These thoughts troubled me to no small extent and were obviously uppermost too in my comrades’ thoughts as the bus drove through the busy city streets towards the station. Where one would have expected animated conversation there was only the odd word between us to break the almost gloomy silence as the bus retraced the route we had taken three years ago. But with what a difference! On our departure from the camp we had been issued with dark blue serge suits, white shirts and dark ties, and we must have looked like well-scrubbed inmates of some institution or other. The contrast with our appearance three years before — unwashed, unshaven and almost in rags, could not have been greater. Instead of six heavily-armed guards per bus, our escort consisted only of an unarmed French-Canadian sergeant who maintained an amiable monologue as he pointed out places of interest in the city to us, for all the world as if he were the courier on a travel excursion.

We were decanted at the Central Railway Station on Boulevard Dorchester, where we waited for our train to arrive, huddled together like sheep afraid of straying from the comfort and safety of the flock. Unlike the train journey to Montreal three years ago, this time we knew our destination. Halifax in Nova Scotia, where we were to be embarked for the Atlantic crossing back to the UK. The crossing loomed anxiously in our minds. The Ettrick was only too well remembered, and the gaiety which we finally showed on the train journey served only to mask the underlying anxiety of the group.

At Halifax our sergeant wished us luck, took leave of us, and passed us over to the care of a young corporal. At the port an awesome and reassuring sight met our eyes. Moored at the pier was the huge bulk of the liner Queen Elizabeth. Painted a dull grey, its size dwarfed the warehouses and buildings of the port area. Thousands upon thousands of fully kitted troops lined the quay in front of the ship, and we joined the long queue of uniformed men filing up the gangways into her. The soldiers were American, and their bronzed, smartly uniformed appearance was in stark contrast to our own. In our dark blue outfits we stood out like sore thumbs, giving rise to ribald but good natured conjecture as to our identity. On hearing our accents as we spoke amongst ourselves, one wag offered to bet a dollar that we were Scottish missionaries, scrubbed and disinfected so as not to be contaminated by our proximity to the soldiers, a description which raised gales of laughter.

The journey across the Atlantic was swift and uneventful. The Queen Elizabeth was unescorted, her speed more than sufficient protection against U-boat attack. Fitted out as a troopship she could carry 15,000 men and their equipment across the ocean in just over three days and she was a marvel of organisation on board. The men slept in cabins from which all furniture had been removed, each of which could accommodate 40 men in hammocks. To facilitate movement, all the doors had been taken away as well and during emergency drill the sleeping quarters could be evacuated in a matter of minutes.

The feeding of such a mass of people was a masterpiece of logistics. Each area was allocated a number, and the day would start with a call over the Tannoy system. ‘Zone 1, first call for chow’ and the first group would form a queue to move towards the galley area, there to be issued with a metal tray of food to be eaten when seated in any available space on deck. Then a queue formed for washing-up places to clean the utensils. Five hours later, we repeated the process once more.

Latrine requirements had been solved by the erection of a row of wooden toilet seats over the side of the ship round the complete circumference of the lower deck, providing hundreds of sea-going equivalents of dry lavatories. It was while seated on one of these on the afternoon of July 27 that I heard over the Tannoy of the downfall of Mussolini and of Italy’s surrender to the Allies. I wondered what the reaction would be back in Camp 43 amongst the Fascist remnant there, and wondered too of what use Malusa’s little black book would be to him now.

The next day the Queen Elizabeth docked at Greenock. Our group disembarked, and still under the supervision of our corporal, mounted a train which took us south to Liverpool, there to stand on the same quay from which we had climbed on to the Ettrick three long years ago. There we boarded a large ferry for the short crossing to the Isle of Man. My release had been conditional on taking up some form of work of national importance. Under this category came farming and any other form of food production, and having opted for work of this type, I had the choice of having a work place found for me by my parents near home. Failing this, one would be allocated to me by the authorities in any part of the UK. One month’s grace was allowed for work to be found, the waiting period to be spent as an internee on the Isle Of Man.

Most of the returning Camp 43 prisoners had been given similar conditions for their release, so I was still with my colleagues as they boarded the ship that was to take them to the island. On this journey, however, there were no guards, no barbed wire and no claustrophobic confinement in a hold. For the short journey we had the freedom of the ship and could mix freely with the passengers, most of whom were Italians and Germans of both sexes and of all ages on their way to visit relatives in the various camps on the island.

The contrast between Camp 43 and the camps on the Isle of Man could not have been greater. On the Isle of Man internment zones had been formed by wiring off areas of terraced houses and small hotels and designating them as camps. Two or three men shared each bedroom, and toilet facilities and living accommodation were more than adequate. There was space in abundance. We were assigned to the Onchan Camp, and to ‘the Canadians’, as we were immediately christened by the men there, the place had the appearance of a holiday camp!

A man could live as a human being in Onchan Camp. You wore your own civilian clothes, not a prisoner’s uniform. You slept in a civilised bedroom and ate in a proper dining room. You did not have to share a cramped and stuffy dungeon-like dormitory with a hundred flatulent, coughing, swearing and often unwashed companions, and you did not have to share a latrine with 20 other men.

You had sitting rooms to lounge in, with newspapers and books to read and a radio to listen to. You had no machine-gun towers menacing your every move and no sergeant Le Seour to make your life a misery. You could find privacy if desired and did not have to rub shoulders constantly with persons you disliked and yet could not avoid. You could go to work on one of the many farms on the island and be left alone there all day, and not be herded into closely guarded work parties to serve as objects of curiosity for the local inhabitants. And most important of all, you could have visitors and see and talk with your loved ones.

The only inferior aspect of life on the Isle of Man was the food. Compared to the cornucopia of all good things in Camp 43, rations there were plain and not overabundant, but in this the internees fared no worse than the general population of Britain in wartime. There was no doubt in my mind that I would have preferred a three-year diet of bread and cheese and water on the Isle of Man than a three-year stay in Camp 43 with its superabundance of good food. But I was to learn later that Italians of my age and of similar circumstances were released after only a few month’s internment there, to take up some form of work as free men. If only I had lied with my feet three years before at Woodhouselea!

At the beginning the short stay in Onchan Camp was sheer luxury for me. I shared a room with two other ‘Canadians’, and we never ceased to marvel at the difference of life in the two camps. There was no strict routine imposed on us. Roll-call consisted of a visit and a cursory inspection of the room by a sergeant, after which you were as free as a bird to do as you pleased within the confines of the camp. If you felt like some work in the fresh air you presented yourself at the gate in the morning after breakfast, to be picked up by a lorry and left for a day’s work at one of the hundreds of farms which dotted the island. This work would be supervised only by the local farmer and we were treated at all times in a friendly and pleasant manner. The day’s work over, the lorry did its rounds of the farms and returned the day workers to the camp. No fuss, no armed guards, no shouted orders, no push and shove. The contrast could not have been greater.

My first act once settled in Onchan Camp was to send off a letter to my family, and my father immediately applied for permission to visit. Although travel in wartime Britain was not easy, within four days of the receipt of my news, father and son met in the visitor’s room at Onchan. The meeting was probably the most emotional moment of my internment. A man in his sixties can age considerably in the space of three years, and I was shocked at the change in my father’s appearance. The still virile, thickset man I remembered was suddenly frail and trembling, with a thin voice and shrunken neckline, and I was saddened at the realisation that the war and the uncertainty of his son’s fate had taken their toll.