So there I was at the beginning of the
next stage of my life: a long-haired, bearded matelot in
khaki shirt and shorts, somewhat soiled, a naval belt and
a few photographs, a sixpenny piece with a hole in it,
socks and boots, at the mercy of my captors. I
hadn’t seen any Germans since the capitulation, but
from somewhere word came to us to stack all weapons
without damaging them; that would be treated as sabotage;
steel helmets would also be collected. Bolts from rifles
literally rained into the sea so the rifles would not be
operable and bayonets were snapped to pieces, good only
for scrap. Next came word from somewhere that we were to
make our way north, back to Suda Bay.
Having dashed down to the sea to effect
my ablutions, I had lost contact with the rest of the
crew and, being a stranger among thousands, I began the
treck north. Some of the Army bods were carrying packs
and aluminium dishes, called ‘tin gear’. I
passed numerous dead bodies and it never occured to me to
take the ‘tin gear’ and eating irons - out of
respect for the dead, I suppose. One thing I should have
collected was a water bottle; the day was turning out to
be a hot one. On the trail German paratroopers were
stopping and searching, breaking the blades of the
soldiers’ penknives and lifting wristwatches. One
took my wristwatch, given to me by Mabel several years
previously as a birthday present. The watch was not
working through immersion in the sea all those hours ago,
but there and then I vowed that one day I would seek
recompense in the watch department. Several times on the
trek I was stopped to relieve a soldier who was digging a
grave for a corpse. Dig so much and then move on when
another P.O.W. stopped to take over. Occasionally at a
burial point I asked for tin gear and a water bottle from
the growing pile of dead men’s effects, but no luck;
this was going towards the German war effort, I expect.
At end of that long day, the first in
captivity, and I just lay down in the grass. I remember
looking up at the sky, dotted with millions of stars,
presenting a clear picture of infinity and thinking to
myself, "What is up there?" The next I knew it
was daylight and I had been awakened by the voices of men
trekking by. Everything pointed to another long day and I
followed the herd. I remember a copse of trees where
Jerry had set up a water tanker, which was greatly
appreciated. Because I had no water bottle I had to drink
from my cupped hands and I was allowed to douse my head
under the running water. What a treat that was; the sun
was beginning to play on top of my head. From the copse
came a terrible smell and on passing I saw the body of a
Maori soldier in a crotch in the branches of a tree. The
body was swelling, filling the spaces between the
branches, and looked huge. Somebody was going to have an
unpleasant job when burial time came for that corpse.
That evening at another checkpoint we
were told to keep going; there would be ‘Essen und
Kaffee’ at the camp. I spent another night sleeping
in the grass, to resume next morning walking towards Suda
Bay. About noon the camp came into sight. It was in the
grounds of a hospital, already wired in with barbed wire.
We were shepherded in by armed guards, who were drinking
juice from tins of pineapples, obviously from York’s
Stores. Nobody was allowed to touch the discarded tins;
captivity had begun. As we entered the camp we were
forced to form into lines of sevens; at one end of the
line a loaf of brown bread was issued and we had to scrum
around the holder, in order to receive a share. The
difficulty was finding a soldier who had a knife with a
blade, after Jerry had enjoyed breaking the blades. One
did materialise and the loaf was hacked into seven pieces
and shared. I stuffed my piece into a shirt pocket and
wandered around, hoping to find a member of the crew.
Amazingly I discovered a group of Naval bods, and amongst
them was a signals bod named Ted Collins, who had also
attended King Street School, so I joined the group.
Materially speaking we were all in the
same boat. We had very little between us so the first job
was to scrounge and pool. Now, my children have often
laughed at me for storing items which could ‘come in
handy’, so here must have been the beginning of that
apprenticeship; when starting with literally nothing,
anything acquired would come in handy. The first item was
a small marquee tent, which some of the sailors had
liberated from the large building in the grounds. Part of
this became a hospital in which the injured, wounded and
sick were treated. At least we had accomodation, but very
little else. So some matelots were detailed to scrounge
around the building and Yorks Stores. In the
compound area the part bordering Suda Bay was not wired
off, so swimming was allowed, for reasons of cleanliness,
I suppose, but for a time I and many of my companions had
had enough of swimming and strangely enough not too many
soldiers seemed to want to indulge. So Jerry sort of
relaxed the guard in that area. Now around there in early
June were rows and rows of tomatoes, all green, but not
for long. We decimated those rows in no time at all and
then paid for it.
I am going to tell you a story which
will illustrate mine. An old lady’s pride and joy
was her elderly cat, which became badly constipated. So
she took it to a vet, who confirmed the condition and
prescribed a laxative: one teaspoonful of the mixture to
be given in food three times a day. The lady
misunderstood, so instead of using a teaspoon she used a
tablespoon for the dosage. On the second day her cat
disappeared and she frantically searched high and low,
but to no avail. Later, she asked the postman if he had
seen her cat. "Yes," he replied,
"it’s on the common with three other
cats." "Whatever are they doing there?"
she queried. "Well, m’dear," he answered,
"one is digging, another’s filling in and the
third is looking for fresh ground."
And this is exactly what happened to
us, except that green tomatoes were the laxative and
there was a working party enrolled to dig trenches, fill
in and mark out plots far from the living area. So it was
once again a case of dashing to the sea, where swimming
had suddenly become very popular. Thank goodness this
time for the hot sun to dry the shorts quickly! Perhaps
for you, the reader, this story is unpleasant, but all I
can add is: try starving, then feast on green tomatoes
and manage without toilet paper! I hope the sea will be
warm, should you ever experiment!
Our gang of captive sailors began to
turn up with liberated bits and pieces, including a metal
tripod with a hook and a fairly large iron pot. So we had
means of cooking, but nothing to cook. I decided to walk
along the beach and follow the headland in an effort to
enter the village at Suda Bay. Much to my surprise, there
were no guards to stop me and entering the village was
easy. Lying on the ground in the square was a dead horse,
at which a number of Cretan women were busily hacking,
but not making much of a job of dismembering the animal.
There was a lack of men; I learned they had gone into the
hills to avoid Jerry and, presumably, to continue the
fight. The outcome was that I finished up with the
horse’s head, which seemed to be quite heavy. I was
taken into a house and given wine and cake, which was
consumed in no time; the whole household was so sorry for
me and I sat in an old armchair and promptly went to
sleep. When I awoke I found I had the horse’s head
in a pillow case, together with a large supply of
raisins, half a loaf of bread, an empty tin and an old
kitchen knife. The elderly lady, who could have been the
grandmother, was gesticulating for me to leave because
anybody sheltering one of the enemy would be in serious
trouble from Jerry. It seems that the old horse had been
brought into the square and shot. The Germans told the
people to help themselves, which was where I came in. And
so I tramped back along the coast and at the marquee
there was a fire under the pot, with lots of
miscellaneous items being cooked. So I dropped the head
in and we waited for the soup ‘à la
Pferd-Kopf’ to materialise. How wealthy I was,
owning a tin and a knife, with raisins for desert.
Every day Jerry held roll calls and we
were made to form up in rows of seven; there a loaf of
bread with a small tin of bully beef was issued to the
end man, and of course there followed the scrum by the
other six around the possessor of the eats. For me this
did not last for very long; one morning a batch of us
sevens, instead of being given the customary loaf and tin
of corned beef from the York’s Stores, were
marched down to the jetty in Suda Bay. Here was berthed
an old Italian tramp coaster, loaded with coal. We were
issued with all types of containers: baskets, bags,
wooden boxes, ammunition containers and anything else
that would serve. There were two gangways to the coaster
and we formed two lines and started unloading the coal. I
had had experience coaling the Fumerole and was
pleased that I had not been detailed to go into the hold
to load the coal into the make-shift containers. We had
had no daily issue of food and Jerry kept promising that
eats would be forthcoming. ‘Kaffee und Essen’
was the chant behind the rifles of the guards, but none
came, the only concession being a tub into which water
was flowing from a hose, and nobody was allowed to linger
very long there. We toiled all day unloading that
coaster; hungry and fatigued, the line moved slower and
slower, harangued by the guards and becoming familiar
with two new words: ‘Los’ and
‘Schnell’. Finally the coal was moved from the
coaster into lorry after lorry and I was looking forward
to the promised ‘Kaffee und Essen’, so
frequently promised, and then a cleansing swim, once we
were back in the compound.
But not to be. Some lorries drew up,
loaded with bread and tins of bully beef from the York’s
Stores and we all thought that this was the recompense
for the day’s toil. Well, it was in a sort of way.
We lined up in single file, each to be given a loaf of
bread and a tin of corned beef, doubtless all thinking
that Jerry wasn’t such a bad fellow after all. Upon
receiving the victuals we were marched up the gangway and
down into the holds of the coaster. The hatches were
battened and we could feel that the thing was under way!
We had been told nothing, just the interminable
"Los, los!" as we were chivied into the holds.
The hold into which I had descended, filthy with coal
dust, was illuminated by a couple of deck-head lights,
enough to sort ourselves out and create enough space to
lie on the bottom of the craft. My knife and tin were in
the marquee, so once again I had very little in the way
of possessions.
The deckhead lights were soon
extinguished. For my part, I was too tired to eat and
there was nothing else to do but sleep. Early dawn saw
the hatches removed and containers of fresh water lowered
into the hold. We grouped together to share a loaf and a
tin of bully beef, washed down with the water. Later in
the forenoon came the turn of our hold to be emptied. We
were allowed on the upper deck to stand under hoses
jetting sea water. We certainly needed it - and to use
the stern of the coaster for bodily functions, where
crude iron bars fashioned as seats served for the
purpose. While drying in the hot sun, German parachutists
came around with notebooks, asking for the names of our
girlfriends. They told us that when they dropped on and
captured England they would look after our girls, because
we had been honourable opponents! There were some strange
names and addresses put into their books.
We discovered from those able to speak
English that we were heading for Greece. We were to be
allowed on deck once a day and that we must be sparing
with drinking water. The hatches would be left off, but
nobody was to attempt to climb the ladder from the hold.
On top of the hold sat a guard festooned with
long-handled grenades. The next day we scrounged a brush
and a couple of buckets from the crew and, when it was
our turn on deck, brushed up the coal dust as best we
could and bucketed it out of the hold and over the side.
That period under the sea-water hose was heavenly.
After several days the coaster reached
a harbour and we discovered that we were in Salonika, a
port in the North of Greece. We disembarked and it seemed
as if Jerry didn’t know what to do with us. We were
frequently rounded up and counted and spent the rest of
the time sprawled out on the dock-side, hemmed in by
guards. Our bread and corned beef had long gone; because
of the heat, the meat had been literally poured from the
tins and the bread had become rock-like. The need for
water far outweighed the interest in food. By late
afternoon Jerry seemed to have become organised, because
the shouts of "Los, los" began and we were
formed up to begin the march off. After another count we
moved out of the dock area and through the town, where we
were clapped by people lining the pavements. We went far
outside the town and by now all resemblance of marching
order had vanished; we just straggled along, every so
often chivied by the guards and rounded up by Jerries on
Norton motorcycles - spoils of war, of course.
While on this straggle an amazing
incident occured. As a child one of my delights was to
spend a halfpenny on what was called a "Lucky
Bag". This consisted of a paper bag containing a
metal puzzle, a tin whistle or a tiny packet of playing
cards, always accompanied by a ‘Locust’, which
looked like a dried brown kidney bean, but which was in
fact dry, hard and extremely sweet. Now back to my story.
In the middle of the road stood a short, fat Greek lady
holding out the corners of her apron loaded with dry
Locusts, inviting anybody to help themselves. But those
beans seemed to be uninviting to the stragglers who, like
the Pharisees and the Levite, passed by on the other
side. Me, I recognised those beans for what they were,
unbuttoned my shirt and rammed as many as I could around
my body, nodding my head and thanking her. When others
saw what I was up to, they asked what the things were
and, learning from me, her apron was soon emptied. If
you, reader, ever come across a stick of Locust you will
appreciate why I am rambling on so. I wonder if they are
still obtainable. If so, be careful when you bite on the
bean; when dried it becomes almost like stone. Bon
appétit!
Eventually we came to a Cavalry
Barracks, enclosed in barbed wire; we were escorted in to
find places in the huts and crash down on the floor,
which was sparsely covered in straw. Darkness soon came,
and with it sleep. Early next morning, when that infernal
sun was up again, we were all out on the parade ground to
form up in sections of four lines to be counted,
seemingly argued over, counted several times again and
then just left to stand there. There seemed to be nobody
on our side senior enough to act for us and so the four
large sections of P.O.W.s just sat down on the hot parade
ground. Next to me was a soldier who had helped himself
to some of the Locust sticks, so we found ourselves
together, chewing Locusts. When he learned that I had no
kit other than what I was wearing, he dug into his and
pulled out a type of cloth forage cap and gave it to me.
At least I now had some sort of head covering. The fellow
on the other side of me, also chewing Locust, dug into
his pack and fished out a white cotton tee-shirt and gave
it to me - a sort of thank you for introducing them to
those black beans. They were from the K.K.R. Regiment,
all of them Territorials, which had been formed, I
believe, from Barnet Gas Works. Bob Towsey and Sergeant
Fred Holt subsequently became known as ‘Eight and a
Half’ in our Arbeitslager - Work Camp. Later, I will
explain why. They were full of gratitude to the Navy for
the way they had been treated when evacuated on a
destroyer from Greece to Crete. Of course we were
starving, so the conversation had to get around to food -
Navy food, the soup and bully beef sandwiches, together
with sippers of rum and ship’s cocoa! Listening to
our conversation was another soldier from the Royal
Artillery and when he learned that I was a sailor with
little or no possessions, he gave me the smallest of his
three rectangular aluminium containers with a folding
handle. So I was beginning to become wealthy, thanks to
my compatriots on those evacuating destroyers.
After a long time, Jerry seemed to lose
all interest in us, so we slipped away from the barracks
square and found one of the numerous horse troughs,
filled with water. I was glad to strip off and wash all
over, albeit without soap. I rinsed my khaki shirt and
donned the tee-shirt, hung my wet shirt on the barbed
wire fence and sat in the sunshine, watching the shirt
dry. Buzzes abounded throughout the barracks: when the
food was coming, what it would be; the Red Cross
representatives were there; Red Cross parcels had been
seen being unloaded; almost all buzzes appertained to
food. Upon reflection, Jerry must have been caught with
his trousers down, with so many captives continually
being brought into the barracks. The only contingency
must have been to lock us up; food must have been very
low on the list of priorities. We had plenty of fresh
water in the horse troughs, but for me, my stomach began
to think that my throat had been cut! Towards the end of
that first day we were made to return to our barrack
rooms and form up once again with others into sevens. We
were counted and counted; the fellow at the end of each
seven was given a loaf and, once more, we packed around
him as he somehow shared out the ration. Next, in came
some German soldiers carrying a dustbin containing what
they called soup. Lucky me, who had a receptacle, had a
ladle-full of something or other, and, accompanied by the
bread ration, it didn’t touch the sides going down!
There was nothing left but to bed down on that meagre
layer of straw, using my somewhat clean shirt for a
pillow.
I was awakened next morning by a word I
was never to forget; a German soldier carrying a rifle
with fixed bayonet, screaming as loudly as he could:
"‘Raus! ‘Raus!" and threatening to
poke anyone who didn’t move quickly enough. Everyone
made sure to take all his belongings; I put my shirt on
and, carrying my dish, went to join the others around the
perimeter of the barracks square. Once more in lines of
four, it seemed the numerous German soldiers were having
counting lessons, judging by the number of times we heard
"Eins, zwei, drei, vier" and so on. Like the
previous morning we were left standing and eventually
sitting. It was here I discovered I had a horrible itch
around my neck and under my armpits. All around me blokes
were taking off their top clothing and I did the same, to
discover that my tee-shirt was riddled with lice around
the neck band and in the seams of the sleeves. Right well
did James Hilton write: "No man has lived until he
has starved and had lice crawling over his body."
Boy, I was living! This was my first confrontation with
those transparent, repulsive insects, mainly discernible
by the blobs of blood to be seen in their bodies - my
blood, incidentally. It seemed that everyone on that
barracks square was occupied in the same job of work.
Killing lice! I can picture the scene now. I was delving
into the seams of the tee-shirt around the neck and arms,
finding them and squeezing them. I remember one wag
shouting: "Never mind the big ones, it’s the
little buggers you want to go after; the big ones are
full up!" I don’t know whether or not we
laughed; I just concentrated on the killing fields. When
satisfied that I had decimated all the lice in sight, the
next job was to wash the vest and myself in a horse
trough, using the vest as a flannel, then putting it on
the barbed wire and standing guard until it had dried in
the hot sun. But simple washing was not good enough. Like
the others, I had forgotten the eggs laid by the
‘big ones’ and each morning saw us carrying out
a manual delousing routine. Pardon me if I have a little
scratch whilst writing!
The hunger pains began to make
themselves felt and I later learned that lice can always
be found on undernourished human bodies. There was an
issue of food only at the end of each day: seven to a
loaf and a ladle of what Jerry called soup; it could have
come from a horse trough and been warmed up. Recollecting
the bread issue, I am reminded of the first time I saw a
loaf of sliced bread and was immediately struck by the
fact that all through the years of captivity the bread
ration was no more than the equivalent of four of those
thin slices. As the days passed hunger became the
scourge; after each morning parade and being counted,
delousing became the occupation, something at which I
became skilled. Squeezing lice was one thing, washing the
clothes was another, but it could not remove those damned
eggs. Thus the daily routine became the same - as well as
seeking the shady side of the hut. It was as hot as hell
in the hut and as hot as hell in the sun.
There must have been a circus at some
time or other in Salonika, because one day the compound
gates were opened and some German soldiers brought in a
camel. They took this ship of the desert to the so-called
cookhouse and promptly shot the beast, whereupon it just
collapsed in a heap on the ground. They knew we were
hungry, they said, and this was our meat ration. Stewed
camel sounded good, and Jerry wasn’t so bad after
all, but then a British Army Medical Officer appeared on
the scene to inform us that camels had a strain of
syphyllis in their systems. So the dead camel was
forbidden to us. The carcass lay there for hours in the
sun, until a Greek civilian came into the compound on a
tractor, hooked up the dead beast and hauled it out of
our compound. Was that M.O. right or wrong? I wonder what
camel sandwiches taste like.
We were shunted from hut to hut while
Greek workers whitewashed the inside walls and it was
here that I learned of a racket being worked. The Greeks
were bringing tins of British Army jam into the
compounds, hidden in the cannisters of whitewash.
"What have you for a tin of jam?" Some of the
fellows had Greek money; there was the odd wristwatch
which had escaped the frequent searches, but for me, no
dice! No jam! In the centre of the parade ground was a
large manhole cover; one day a number of armed Jerries,
together with dogs, came into the compound and the
manhole cover was lifted. After a time some of our
P.O.W.s climbed out and were hustled away. The cover was
over a main sewer which led out to the sea and had become
an escape route, kept very hush-hush. The buzz was that
Turks in boats were receiving rewards for transporting
our lads to Turkey, but it was presumed someone had
tipped off Jerry and that route was closed.
And so the long hot days passed;
louse-hunting in all my clothes, which by now had become
contaminated, soaking and squeezing out the apparel and
watching it dry on the wire, then searching for shade and
waiting for sundown and the Lebensmittel, a seventh of a
loaf of bread and a ladle of something or other. The
constant talk was about food, the army bods always
bringing up the subject of the food given them on the
evacuating destroyers, plus of course the tots of rum.
One humourous event occured. An English-speaking German
officer came among us one day, with a German soldier
carrying a cricket bag, in which was all that was needed
for a game of cricket. He was trying to organise a game
because he wanted to learn the rules, ready for when he
and his lot conquered England. When asked how it was
proposed that England be conquered, he replied that it
would be done by dropping paratroops. When we told him it
would be his last drop, he replied: "Ja, ja."
But I don’t think he took our remark in the way it
was intended. Nobody offered to help with his game of
cricket; the general opinion was that it could become a
propaganda exercise. There was already talk about a
football match being held in another compound, but how
anybody had enough energy in that heat to play football
was beyond me.
And then one day it rained and it
rained; the water came down like stair-rods. Everybody
had the same idea, we all stripped off our clothing and
stood under the roofs of the huts, from where the
rainwater was pouring. We were laughing and shouting to
one another: "After you with the shampoo; pass the
Pears soap; you look like you need carbolic," and so
on. Of course there was no soap or shampoo, just the
exhuberance of being reasonably clean. The sun broke
through the clouds and it soon dried us. But that day
sticks in my memory as a time when my spirits were
lifted, if only for a short period.
Despite the buzzes, nobody seemed to
learn anything from Jerry; perhaps they didn’t know
anything either, but one morning after the interminable
roll-call, the side of the human square on which I was
standing was marched into an empty compound and isolated.
Then the buzzes flew thick and fast; were we on the move?
Again there seemed to be no-one in our company senior
enough to find out what was to happen to us. We were
seemingly isolated. Some of the Army bods had small packs
with them, containing such essentials as shaving gear,
underwear, an enamel drinking mug, the set of three
aluminium dishes and eating irons in the form of a
folding spoon and fork. The Army issue pocket knife had a
tin-opener, the knife blade having been snapped off
during one of the many searches. Somebody would have
scissors, so now and again I would cadge a loan to trim
my beard, or somebody would do it for me. Because of my
beard and being a sailor, which was held in high esteem,
I was called Jack, and that name stuck with me through
the years of captivity.
During that day the skies clouded over
ominously, but no rain came. That evening there was a
special numbering session in the hut and after the issue
of bread and whatever it was we were told that next day
we would begin the journey to Germany, to enter
KRIEGSGEFANGENSCHAFT.
