FEW OF THE SOLDIERS who went to France gave the subject of surrender much thought. The waving of a white flag or the raising of hands were usually deemed sufficient and were probably the only tactics of surrender known to soldiers at the Front.
If any soldier had anything appreciably white to wave in the muddy battlefields of northern France and Belgium, then it was in no way thanks to the army. In August 1914, all white handkerchiefs were handed in, to be replaced by red spotted alternatives. Whether this was solely an attempt to avoid a soldier unwittingly giving a position away whilst wiping his nose is not clear.
Over 190,000 British soldiers were taken prisoner during the First World War, one in sixteen of all battlefield losses. The vast majority were captured when they were cut off and surrounded by the enemy. Unable or unwilling to fight on, they surrendered in the hope that the enemy would choose to interpret their dropping of weapons and raising of hands as a clear sign that they had indeed decided to give up.
In the heat of battle, however, there was no guarantee that a soldier pumped up with adrenalin would necessarily understand an enemy's attempt at surrender, or indeed would choose to do so. The killing of prisoners was against all international law but frequently occurred. In action it was up to the individual, often on the spur of the moment, to decide whether to take a man prisoner. An enemy soldier might have his hands in the air, but a look in his eye or an apparently furtive movement could easily be misinterpreted as renewed defiance and might well lead to his death.
Despite the efforts of the Geneva Convention to safeguard prisoners' rights, there were unwritten commands that the taking of prisoners was undesirable in a specific attack and indeed might jeopardise the successful outcome of operations. On other occasions, rumours were spread, unfounded or not, that the enemy had opened fire while waving a white flag and therefore could not be trusted. Soldiers were occasionally reminded that every prisoner taken had to be fed, which meant less food on the table for loved ones back home.
It is hardly surprising, then, that soldiers were extremely nervous and usually very co-operative when first taken prisoner. There were tricks of the trade that soldiers taught each other to aid survival. Certain troops, particularly machine gunners, bombers, or snipers, removed all unit badges in combat, for these men could inflict grievous casualties amongst enemy ranks and consequently received short shrift if captured. Another ploy was to hold up photographs of loved ones, in the hope of winning the compassion of enemy soldiers, in effect asking the capturer to see the captive as he saw himself, a family man with young children to support.
For those prisoners taken back behind the lines to makeshift cages, there was the expectation that at least they might now survive the war. It was a prospect which had seemed gloomy while they remained soldiers in the trenches. Now they would be fed, clothed and watered until the end of the conflict. The reality was somewhat different for British prisoners. At the end of the war, these troops were often found to be grossly undernourished and in a parlous state of health. During the war, many British POWs were routinely reported by the Red Cross as having died of wounds or illness. However, in January 1919 when Britain demanded the overdue release of one final group of 35,000 men registered as having been taken prisoner of war, the Germans replied that only 13,000 remained in their hands. The difference, some 22,000 POWs, had in fact died in captivity owing to the many and varied privations they lived under.
There was no central organisation responsible for prisoners of war in Germany. Owing to the federal nature of the state, POWS were sent to prisons right across Germany, where commandants were left to rule camps as though they were personal fiefdoms. Discipline was often iron, and punishment harsh for indiscretions. But the real problem was the desperate lack of food and resources allocated for prisoners, a crisis that deepened as the war dragged on. Ironically, the Allied naval blockade of Germany, introduced to cripple industry and weaken the enemy's fighting capability, also drastically reduced the country's ability to feed the POWs. Not surprisingly, the Germans blamed the Allies for the POWS' predicament – the half-starved soldiers having to work for any edible scraps once the army and the civil population had received first call on all foodstuffs and raw materials. With most fit German men away at the Front, British, Russian and French prisoners were typically sent down salt mines, stone quarries and coal mines to dig out the raw materials to keep German industry working. Unknown thousands died.
For the troops in the front line on 21st March 1918, the launch of the German offensive was akin to all hell being let loose. Jack Rogers was lucky, as his trench did not suffer the intense bombardment felt elsewhere, but even so, he found himself quickly surrounded as the German troops poured forward.
One day in Amiens was the only leave I had had in all the time I'd been in France. Headquarters were aware that I had not been home, so I was given leave the day before my 24th birthday, so I could be home on the day, 21st March 1918. Well, of course this was the launch of the great German offensive. The military authorities didn't know it was going to be that day, but from prisoners we'd taken, they knew a big attack was due any time. I'd written to my mother telling her not to send a cake or anything like that because I was on my way home, when, on the 19th, the army cancelled all leave.
Out in front of our line, working parties had been sent with engineers in charge to dig a small extra trench. This was being prepared for the expected attack and would be occupied solely by a few snipers, eight I believe, including me. On the night of 20th March, a group of us were sent in there. We took all our equipment, everything we'd got and we was told to hold out as long as possible. We waited there all night until at five in the morning the Germans opened up as anticipated, the big barrage.
The Germans did not bombard the whole front, they left sections, shelling to the left and right of us, very, very heavily too, but not directly on us. The next thing we knew, German troops were pouring through but we were still there holding this bit of trench, hanging on, just trying to have a pot here and there. Eventually we looked round to the back and we could see Germans galore in every direction. Mopping up parties were being sent out to clear up little pockets of resistance, working their way round to us. They got nearer and nearer and they were sort of shouting – we weren't shooting. Then they began to throw in some of these potato mashers, as we called them, handgrenades, and one of our chaps was badly wounded in the legs. I looked at my mate Charlie Shaw and said “What do we do?” He says, “It's no good, Jack, throw your hands up.” We realised it was hopeless, so we all just threw our guns at either end of the trench. There was nothing else to do, we just looked around and saw these blinkin' Prussian Guards come tearing down the trench.
I didn't know what to think. One guard came straight for me, fixed bayonet. He came rushing up and from that moment I said goodbye – there was to be no more of me. I expected the bayonet to go directly into me, but it didn't. Strangely enough, when he got right up to me he stopped, and said “Cigarette, Kamarad?” I nearly dropped to the ground in surprise. He wants a cigarette! Of all the things that anybody would ask for at that stage. So I felt in my tunic where I carried a little tin of ready-made cigarettes and I said “Yes” and he took some and put them in his pocket, then pointed to my equipment and said “Los”. Any equipment had to be taken off and left with our kit bags and sandbags on the trench floor, while we climbed out on top of the parapet.
I forget the name of the fellow who was wounded, but he couldn't walk very well, so he put his arms round our neck and we dragged him away up a slope. The three of us hadn't got far when a young German officer came up to us – I can see him as plain as if it were now – and said in English better than I could speak, “Where are you from?” pointing at me. I didn't know what to say, but said “London”. “Oh, London,” he said “So am I. I was at college there but they brought me home, and now I'm in this lot. Anyway, you're lucky, the war's over for you, get on your way.” Off he went and off we went, to walk back as prisoners of war: my 24th birthday!
We reached a great big field and just stopped there all night with a lot of other prisoners, nothing to eat, nothing to drink. In the morning, we were marched to a railway line to await a long line of cattle trucks, forty men to a truck. They packed us in as fast as they could, no windows, all blacked out, with just a little ventilator at the top to give us air. We travelled in this truck for two days, still with no water or food, and the only place we could use as a toilet was one corner of the wagon chosen amongst ourselves for us all to use. We got into Germany, to a place called Münster. There were three laagers or prisoner of war camps, numbers one, two and three. We were for number one camp, and when we got out of these trucks they brought round dixies full of some sort of ersatz coffee and a slice of brown bread. In the huts were bunk beds made out of chicken wire with one blanket per man, however, the blankets were outside the hut when we first arrived and it was raining, so that first night we slept on chicken wire and under wet blankets.
During the war, the British and the Germans had come to an agreement to exchange prisoners who had been badly wounded and could not fight again. The commandant at our camp was one of these, a tall man who had been partially blinded and wore black glasses. He hated the British like poison, and never missed a chance to vent his spite on us. For example, we used to try and keep our huts fairly clean, whereas the Russians had the reputation of being some of the dirtiest people in the camp, filthy, using the corner of their huts as toilets instead of going to the latrines. So every now and again, perhaps once a month, this German would parade everybody on a Saturday and swapped you all round, and we were always made to change with the Russians, so we had to occupy their dirty hut and they went to our clean one.
My first job was on what they called the sanitary police. Behind the camp latrines were troughs, well, everything that was dropped, all the sewage, went into these trenches covered over by two big doors. My job, along with five others, was to go to the trenches with a great big barrel on four wheels. Two of us would open these troughs, one each, and we used to have a big long piece of wood, like a big oar, with which to keep stirring up the sewage until you made it into a very fine liquid. The third member of the party would lower a bucket on a chain into the sewage and pull it up and hand it to a man standing on a ladder alongside the barrel. He'd take it up and empty his bucket until the barrel was practically filled. When it was full, we took the barrel to an allotment just outside the camp and with a tap on the barrel slowly deposited the muck all over, spreading it out.
The food was terrible. The Germans themselves had little to eat and used to boil great big mangel wurzels for themselves, and give us the cooking water in tins to drink, as it was supposed to be nourishing. That was our mid-day meal, with bread and ersatz coffee, that was our ration for the day. We were in a pretty bad state, I can assure you. You can imagine the relief when the first parcels from the Red Cross started to come through. A friend of mine at home, Mrs Addis, discovered through the Danish Red Cross that I was a prisoner at the camp. She got me onto the official prisoners of war list at home, and so I began to receive Red Cross parcels. We used to get two or three parcels every two or three weeks, or were supposed to receive them. They got as far as the railway station, when some Germans would go down and collect a few occasionally, bring them to the camp and call out the names and numbers on them. These parcels might have articles of clothing in them or they might have food. One of the pictures I have, we are all dressed in black, well, that's what we received from home.
The Danish Red Cross were allowed to pay a visit to our camp on one occasion. They were to visit all the huts and have a look at what we were being fed, so of course the Germans laid on everything they possibly could. We had diced and baked potatoes and a dixie fill of stuff they called Reisgries, semolina we call it. Anyway, we had a dish each of these which was quite a big meal, all designed to impress the Red Cross that Jerry was doing all he could for us.
The Commandant had the habit of calling us schweinehunde, he never addressed us in any other way. He used to have his spite on us every now and again, having us march round and round the square for an hour or so. Well, on this occasion he was smoking what looked like a small cheroot, little cigar, and he would stand there puffing away. Presumably he must have put it down on one of the window sills, and of course we're marching round and someone couldn't resist the temptation to pick it up. He found it was gone, so he kept us there for another two hours, marching round just because he'd lost the end of his cigar.
On one particular morning, we were all brought out on parade and the commandant spoke to his interpreter and the first word this little man said was “Gentlemen”. You can just imagine the roar that went up when he said that, cheering, shouting, he couldn't keep us quiet. After a bit everything settled and he said the war was over for us. All we had to do was to wait until they could bring a train to evacuate us.
At Münster railway station, there had accumulated hundreds of these small Red Cross parcels which were supposed to have been delivered to the prisoners. They were no good to us and we did not want German soldiers to have them, so we had a chat among ourselves and said that if the authorities could arrange for all the poor people in the village to come to the station, we prisoners would be there and we'd hand them each a parcel.
To be going home, it was marvellous. I thought what's it going to be like to be home – just to see my people again, you know, to be free, oh, I couldn't believe it.
We travelled home via Rotterdam to Hull, and as we sailed into Hull all the sirens of the ships were sounded. There were great crowds of people, as we were the first prisoners to arrive there, about 150 in all. There was a long train waiting for us. We climbed aboard, and as we looked out of the windows these poor mothers were walking up and down the platform, each of them carrying a picture of a missing son or husband. They came up and showed you the picture and asked “Did you know him?” Was he in your regiment?” And so forth, all up and down the train. Finally we were taken off to the repatriation centre at Ripon in Yorkshire. Before we were allowed to go home, we had to drop everything and have a series of showers to make sure you did not take home any disease or any lice, that sort of thing. Then we were given either a new uniform or suit and that was it, the war for me was over.
For most prisoners of war, capture meant swift relocation to a barbed wire cage and shortly afterwards to a POW camp. For stretcher bearer Bill Easton, the route to imprisonment took a remarkable and unexpected detour.
One night in late November 1917, my unit was withdrawn from the Ypres front. There were not many of us left, and we no longer had enough men to make up an ambulance unit, so we were told to wait for reinforcements. I was on supply, which meant I could be sent anywhere to fill a gap, so eventually I was sent by truck to join another unit. I had no idea what was going on, but I was supposed to meet an officer of the Norfolk Regiment. I arrived in the line on 20th March 1918, and I met a sergeant who knew nothing about this officer I was supposed to meet. He was new out to the Front and was with about forty conscripts, all of whom had been in the army only about three months.
They were in this trench as if they were expecting an attack, and were frightened out of their lives. Well, in the morning the Germans came over in their thousands, as far as you could see across the fields, singing and shouting. As it got lighter, this sergeant said “Shall we fire on them?” but I said “No”. We could see these Germans but they never came towards us. I said “They're bypassing you.” He said “What does that mean?” “It means they'll go so far and then stop and when they're ready, they'll come back and pick us up,” which they did not long afterwards.
Well, one man, he'd gone to try and get back to our troops but after wandering around for a while, he came into our trench. He'd still got his weapon, and I said to him “It's hopeless, we're surrounded, and there are hundreds of the brutes nearby, so you'd better get rid of the rifle.” I noticed that several of these young chaps had kept their blinkin' guns and I said to the sergeant “You'd better tell them to dump them.” The sergeant said “Oh, they've only just got them.” “Well, if they have them much longer there'll be a few rifles without men,” I replied.
I don't know who the lad was who'd kept his rifle, but he didn't seem to understand that we were already prisoners. Of course he'd still got his rifle knocking about when the Germans surrounded us, and they promptly shot him. I thought it was such a pity, but it was his own fault, he ought to have known when to give his weapon up.
We were formed up when all of a sudden a young German caught me such a bang in the back with his rifle butt, I nearly fell down. I swore at him. These Germans, they never spoke to you, if they wanted anything it was the rifle butt, and my goodness that hurt you. He said to me, “Cavalry.” He had two or three goes at me before I was hauled away in front of an officer. He was about the same age and he was yelling at me, banging on the wall, stamping, shouting out “Cavalry, Cavalry” and I said “No!” then he said “Artillery.” Again I said “No”, but I knew what he was getting at. I had come from the 25th Division and its Divisional sign was a red horse shoe. It was a sign I wore on my back, whereas all the men from the Norfolks had yellow oblong and square patches sewn on their backs. I told him I was in the RAMC, when there was a calm voice behind me, honestly it was like a comedy, somebody said “He doesn't like you”. I said “I don't like him a lot either,” and this voice said “He can't speak English, what's the problem?” The voice then spoke German to the officer, I don't know what he said. I looked round and saw a high-ranking officer like you see in a caricature, he was dressed up to the nines, he'd got a monocle, a stick and a cigar. I said “He thinks I'm cavalry.” “I know you're not cavalry, you're 25th Division. What are you doing down here? You are about the only one of your lot. I've been all the way down this front these last two or three days, and I haven't seen any from your Division. Where are they now?” I told him I did not know. “I was sent here and I don't know why.” “Oh well, it's quiet out there now,” he said, and I replied “It wants to be!”
A minute or two later this man spoke again. “I'll tell you what, I'll get my man up here and I'll show this officer a chart.” This high-ranking officer then produced a chart on which there was every divisional sign of the British army. “Here you are,” he said. I looked at it and agreed. “Now his lordship will kick up a row, he's going to be very annoyed, and he's going to take it out on you,” this German told me. I thought to myself “Yes, he'll bring a rifle and give me the butt two or three times.” I wasn't looking forward to it, so he said “Come here a minute.” He spoke to the other officer and then told me in English, “While I show him this chart, you had better slide off, now you have the chance,” so I left the dugout and rejoined the other prisoners.
We were taken back to a field, where barbed wire was put around us, and as we would stop there until next day, so we should lie down. The ground was as wet as anything, but they told us anyone who got up would be shot.
At about four in the morning, a voice came. “Any Field Ambulance men who would like to do their comrades a good turn, come to the wire.” I went, and this German said “We have got a lot of wounded in the church and we can't look after them because we haven't got enough men.” There were about twenty ambulance men in the cage, but none of them volunteered. I thought “That's a good advert for the RAMC”, so I said that I would go. I was taken by a friendly sergeant who could speak English. He took me to a big church and there were a few candles, and he said “You'll find a good supply of water here, and I'll see you in the morning”. I went round and found that a lot of these chaps were dead, but gave a drink to those I found alive. Funny thing, the wounded weren't concerned with their drink so much, those wounded chaps who had blood on their hands were most keen to get their hands washed. I'd never had that happen before. I'd got buckets of water there and I spent my time going round, I don't know how many men, trying to clean them up. In the morning, a German sergeant came in and after a lot of ritual stamping about, he saluted me. I thought, that's a funny thing, saluting a prisoner. Then he said “I'm to thank you very much from my commanding officer.” He told me that there were quite a lot of supplies coming up in lorries and that the lorries were going back empty. There was a railhead about ten miles behind the lines, and would I be in charge of getting those wounded who could move onto the lorries. I said “I'm sure I can manage it”, and over the course of the next day I helped to evacuate these British soldiers down the line. I was given permission to accompany the last of the wounded down to the railhead, but when I got there and the wounded were unloaded, I was ignored, everyone just carried on and I was left standing there until a German came up and I was taken to a canteen for some food. After a while, I was approached by a German sergeant who said “I have a request. If you agree, we are allowed to keep POWs close to the front to help with the wounded.” The German medical service's motto was “The wounded always come first”, they used to quote it to me, and they needed as much help as they could get. There was a hospital being opened about four miles from the line, and I consented to stop and help, and wrote in this sergeant's diary on 25th March the following: “This is to certify that I, William Easton, do, quite voluntarily, proceed within thirty kilometres of the front with the 625th Sanitäts Komp.”
I was nicknamed the Kleiner Engländer, the small Engländer, and I worked at this hospital under a German sergeant called Charley Feldner. He was very good to me and called me William and spoke to me in beautiful English. I had been working there a while when this sergeant, he seemed to run the show, came up to me and said “I have an invitation for you. It's not right that you should be here giving orders to men and you're not a sergeant, so while you're with us you'll be an acting sergeant”. This meant I could ask one of these German orderlies to do something and they'd do it, and I thought to myself, well, what a thing.
Honestly, we were friends and I worked among the Germans quite willingly, helping the wounded. On one occasion, Charley said to me “As a mark of respect, you'll be the guest of honour at our party.” The Germans had managed to get together free casks of beer, and I was asked along where this whole blooming company toasted my health, they were shouting and cheering and I don't know what. I was offered a beer but I never drank, because I was a teetotaller, but they said “Well, you'll have to have a photo taken”. They made a real fuss of me and I had to sing a song for them.
I worked like a free man. I went into the Mess as a sergeant, and slept in the same room as them. By that time I'd come to respect the Germans, individually I mean, because they were so friendly. Eventually I got dysentery and that put an end to my work near the front line. I was sent to a camp with other British POWs where I spent the rest of the war repairing roads and that sort of thing, but it was an experience I've never forgotten.
So powerful were the sustained attacks made on the British lines during March, April and May 1918, that many new recruits were thrust into the fighting with only minimum training. Percy Williams was one eighteen-year-old among many, who found the horror of the Western Front almost too much to bear.
We were sent into a quiet sector which we had taken over from the French near Rheims, a place called Fismes. We were just manning the lines, we didn't do anything. There was a bit of shellfire and a man called Sutton, a chap from Wakefield, was killed. He was the first of our young boys to die, then next a lad from Accrington was killed. But Sutton was a friend of mine, I'd met him in Doncaster when we were in the KOYLIs, then we were transferred to the Northumberland Fusiliers together. We were in C Company, and he was in my platoon; when a shell fell only fifty yards away and they told me “poor old Sutton's had it”, I was very upset and depressed.
On 27th May, I was in a dugout in the third line trenches when an officer came round and said that there might be action tonight. I'd not been under bad shellfire before and I was almost sick with fright as we waited, just waited until all hell broke loose. When the guns opened up, the shells were falling, causing tremendous explosions and destroying not only the trenches above our heads but the stairs leading down to us. We were told to leave the dugout and we scrambled up. Gas shells had been falling all night and saturated everything, covering our masks with a film. You couldn't see. I felt faint and sick and had to spew up, forcing me to take the gas mask off and vomit as best I could. I was absolutely terrified for hours. I'd never experienced anything so terrible in my life and after only a month in France!
Casualties were being suffered and we could hear them shouting for stretcher bearers. I thought “Oh my God, I'm going to die, I'm going to die!” Then Corporal Collins came along. He was panicking and said that the Germans had broken through and we were surrounded. “Every man for himself, everything has collapsed,” he said, “there's no chance, we must get out of it, otherwise we shall get captured.” As I stumbled from the trench I dropped my rifle, it was panic, you didn't know what was happening fifty yards on either side of you, the noise was terrible. I was weighed down by my pack, by ammunition, by my entrenching tool, the earth was all blown up all around and I couldn't see. Then a shell burst close by and I was suddenly wounded in the leg. It wasn't bad, we had puttees on, but I saw my leg was bleeding and I remember having a towel to staunch it. I couldn't walk, so another chap said we'd better crawl for it, to try and get away.
I could see the Germans running across, scores of them, I was so confused, and turned and saw this German with his fixed bayonet standing over me; I thought he was going to kill me, I thought he was going to bayonet me. He shouted at me “Halt, halt, halt!” and then he motioned, “or else”, and then he grabbed me. I was petrified, I put my hands up. We were told in the newspapers a few months before, that the Germans weren't taking any more prisoners, so you can imagine what I thought. He grabbed me and ripped my spare ammunition off.
There had been absolute panic. We could see the Germans in their grey uniforms, with their rifles and fixed bayonets; I had never seen a German before. I never saw an British officer, there was no command of any sort, we had to act on our own. A lot of the boys ran away to get out of it. You must remember that we were nearly all boys of eighteen and we were up against seasoned veterans, and when you see a lot of Germans coming with rifles and bayonets, well, I think you'd be a very brave man to wait until you were bayonetted, and they were big chaps, they looked so formidable in those big grey helmets. We were lads of eighteen, just boys.
I had to remove all my equipment and take off my gas mask and steel helmet, then, after about a quarter of an hour, they came along with some ground sheets and those who were not wounded carried us back to the German lines. We were not out of danger, as one of our own shells burst only fifty yards away at one point. I could hear it whizzing and saw the explosion, but thankfully nobody was hit, but it made me think that our own bombardment was nothing to deter the Germans. When we stopped, a German asked us if we were American or English, then he said “Don't worry, we are not going to kill you, but if you show any resistance or try and run away, you'll be shot,” and that put our minds at rest. I was carried to a little dressing station about half a mile behind the lines where they put a bandage on my leg. We were all dazed, sort of shellshocked, the drum in my ear had been affected and I had difficulty hearing anything, it took a while to collect myself. I felt awful because we had been running away, but there was no alternative, the lines of communication had been cut, there was no command. For a couple of days we slept out in the open, and then they took us to a village called Abbey Fontaine, not far from Laon, and put some barbed wire around us and eventually an electric light was rigged up to see that we did not try and escape at night.
We had no food, and we couldn't speak German. After a few weeks my leg was getting better, so I was put to work carrying water in billy cans and digging latrines. Each morning we simply had a bit of black bread and then a few potatoes with their jackets on – well, fair enough – only glad to have them, but we were always hungry and always filthy dirty. One day in seven we were given off, when we were able to take our shirts and pants off to kill the lice in our clothes, but we stayed in our khaki for months, not until I was in a camp at Bremerhaven were we given clothes.
For weeks, my parents had no idea what had happened to me and this worried me. The Germans did not take our details until July, so all the information my parents received was that I had been reported missing. Not until I was in a German POW camp at Limberg was I allowed to write on a special card to send through Switzerland that Private Williams 757273, 5th Northumberland Fusiliers, was a prisoner of war in Germany and that I was alive and only slightly wounded. We were kept in France for at least two months, so my parents knew nothing until at least August and of course they feared the worst.
The Germans never hit us, there were never any physical attacks, but they used to curse us “bloody schweinehunde”. The Germans used to smoke Turkish cigars, horrible things they were – and then they'd throw their stub ends over the wire, these Jerries, these bloody square heads, they used to think it very funny that these poor buggers would scramble for a fag, for a cigar end. The lads who smoked were so desperate for a fag they used to gather up the leaves in the autumn, cut them up, and with a bit of newspaper make them into a cigarette and have a smoke.
The Germans used to tell us through their interpreter, the Dolmetscher, they called him, they said it was our fault we had no clothes or proper food. “You schweinehund, it's your fault, you're not allowing any food to come into the country, we are hard up, we're starving, the children are hungry, you are the aggressors, therefore you deserve what you get.”
They said there were no clothes in the country, there was no leather, soap, or fats to be had because of the blockade. The Germans told us they were fighting a righteous war, that God was on their side.
I was sent to work at the shipyards at Bremerhaven, at a place called Diestermunde at the mouth of the Weser. I was what was known as a catcherboy. Red hot rivets were thrown up to the side of the ship, and my job was to get hold of these rivets with some tongs and take them to be bolted down, helping to fix the plates on the side of the ship. You had to be careful, these rivets were thrown up in twos and threes and landed on the floor, you'd go and pick them up but you had to be careful not to tread on one and I've had to jump out of the road to avoid them. Mind, you were under their thumb so you had to damn well do as you were told.
By October it was very, very cold. We were living in an old warehouse and there was no heating. We had little underclothing, we just wore a shirt, underpants, trousers, socks and sabots – clogs – on our feet. On Sunday we used to have to wash our clothes in cold water, no soap, and try and get them dry otherwise our clothes would be wet for the next day. I thought if we could get some wood, we would be able to warm ourselves and we could get dry. Myself and a friend, a man called Hughes, managed to steal some wood on a couple of occasions but we were caught in the end and given two days' solitary confinement as a punishment.
On 11th November we had no idea it was Armistice Day. I was in a little hospital in Bremen. I had gone down from twelve to six or seven stone, my leg was giving me trouble, and my head was covered in sores from malnutrition. One night I heard some noise, it sounded like rifle firing and I asked a German guard what was going on but was told it was nothing, “nichts, nichts”. It wasn't until three or four days later that a doctor was coming round and I noticed he was no longer in his army uniform but in civilian clothes. I asked him and he said “There's an Armistice, but it's only for a few days, it'll start again, you'll see.” We didn't know anything else for a fortnight because we were so isolated. We had no newspapers, there was no radio in those days. I was sent under armed guard back to Bremen and carried on working for a few more days before we were told that we weren't to work any more, the war was over.
We couldn't believe our luck that after all this time the war had finished and we should go back to England. But so many of the men were ill, a lot of them were dying from the Spanish flu epidemic. The clothes used to hang off them and their faces were thin. Their arms were thin, their legs were thin, they were not in a position to work, they could hardly stand, some of them. There were men of all nationalities in the camp – French, Belgians, there were some Russians, great big fellows who were now all skin and bones, scores and scores died and we had to dig the graves. In Bremen there was an Australian called Wheatley, he was an engine driver from Sydney, and he was in the next bed to mine. He died and that upset me terribly. He'd been a prisoner for a couple of years and was as thin as a rake, he looked desperately ill – no resistance. It was very sad.