Chapter 16

We were marched a short way along the fence of the IG Farben site in the bitter cold and dark and I spat farewell at those diabolical towers and chimneys, the steel gantries, the gasometers and the miles of piping. Then we turned away towards the south-west, avoiding the town of Auschwitz and leaving the mounds of frozen earth and misery behind, never to return.

No one told us where we were going. I have no memory of passing through that community where so many of the civilian staff had lived. I thought of the Jewish prisoners I had known, of Ernst, whose sister in England had perhaps dared to hope he might survive, and of Hans about whom I still knew little. There were many others but they were faces without names.

We hadn’t gone very far when I saw a roll of rags lying in the road and gathering snow up ahead. As we got closer I recognised the lumps of stripey sacking, now dusted white and hardened by frost. Then there was another and another. There was no mistaking them. We stepped around the stiffened corpses and kept on going. Some had been shot in the face and dumped in ditches, others lay on the track where they had stumbled and had been killed. What heat they’d had in their frail bodies had long gone. The bullet holes only told half the story.

I should have realised it wouldn’t be over so soon, that there would be more to witness. Now I wasn’t sure who would survive to tell the world. For weeks I had tried to second guess how it would end. Now I knew. The Germans had marched off their Jewish prisoners, thinking they could wring some more work out of them. But if their slaves faltered, that was it. It didn’t look like many had made it.

Their bodies had been left where they fell to stiffen in the ice. They had begun the march starved and exhausted and many had succumbed rapidly to fatigue and cold. Some had collapsed and never got up again.

‘Death begins with the shoes,’ Primo Levi wrote later of his time in Auschwitz III-Monowitz. It was true of the concentration camp where the chafing of crude wooden clogs caused feet to swell and suppurate, slowing people down, bringing decline, beatings and death and it was true out there in the snow.

He, I learnt later, was one of those who had been too ill to leave Auschwitz III-Monowitz and so he had avoided the death march and survived.

We were walking over frozen bodies for days. I knew then there would be few survivors. There were so many stiffening corpses. Ernst, Hans, and the rest were surely dead. If I got home to England I had thought I could perhaps find his sister Susanne, tell her what I’d seen, but there seemed little point now. For the moment, I put them out of mind, they were dead and that was it. Now I had to survive. Like I say, without number one there is nothing.

Our guards were Wehrmacht and not the SS but still we didn’t know what they planned for us. There was one particular soldier I recall, a veteran from the eastern front. He had faced the Russians in action and had a false leather hand to prove it. He had every reason to head west. I couldn’t resist the taunt. I got alongside him after miles of striding over corpses and in the best German I could muster I said to his face. ‘Ihre Zeit kommt noch’ – your time will come. He went rigid. He knew what I meant.

He spat something back at me and I understood: ‘I’ll shoot you first.’ He probably would have done too. Fears were fears and fingers were on triggers. After a while I stopped seeing bodies. I knew it wasn’t because the murder had ceased. We were simply on a different route.

Food was very scarce and most of what we ate was stolen from the fields. Some nights we slept under guard in barns, on others we had no choice but to lay out in the snow. I was exhausted but with no greatcoat for warmth, to sleep at night was to die so I struggled to stay conscious.

After a few days I could see mountains ahead and we began to gain altitude. As we climbed the temperature slid further. We were told it touched minus thirty degrees centigrade. The snow scoured my face and ice froze into balls around my ears. It was a long miserable ascent. I began losing the sensation in my feet; frostbite was setting in. I heard later of lads pulling off their boots and leaving parts of their toes inside.

On and up we climbed until the route began to level out and then drop away into a long and winding descent. The snow stopped coming down and the drifts around us became shallower. Patches of vegetation began to poke through and as we struggled on, the snow thinned and began to disappear.

After many hours we were ordered to stop for a break in a field by a river that was in full spate. Then the sun broke through the clouds and the water was instantly energised, sparkling with a thousand points of reflected light. It was fresh, pure and beckoning, and I thought at once that it would cleanse me of all the filth, suffering and mental anguish. It was raging melt water from the icy hilltops and perilously cold but its beauty disarmed me. I knew if I plunged in all my trials would be over. It was a moment of destructive serenity and I had to struggle to resist.

We marched about twenty miles each day and the weather soon became colder again. We were usually in open country but we were under armed guard all the time and escape was impossible. Where would we go? What sustenance could we find in that wintery landscape?

The food situation was already dire. At one point a guard allowed me to swap my watch for bread with a civilian during a rest stop. It had to be done but I resented the guard taking his share.

When we stopped I saw the soldiers setting up their machine guns on tripods. That always made us jumpy. We didn’t know what they had planned for us. After all, we had witnessed Auschwitz. After a while we noticed the guns were facing away from our tiny column and we relaxed. We were in partisan territory and they expected an attack.

The guards had a vehicle carrying their packs, some of their weapons and what supplies they had to feed us. When it broke down they abandoned it, commandeered a horse and cart and transferred the entire load to that. The animal was knackered from the start. They were soon beating it mercilessly. After all the murders I witnessed in Auschwitz and all the corpses I had stepped over on that march, the plight of the beast still affronted me. The way it was being whipped it wouldn’t live long. In my mind there was no lower being than one who mistreats a defenceless animal. People can rebel, animals can’t.

I knew about horses from the farm. I could handle it better but I had to convince the guards. If the old nag died I told them, they would have to carry their kit themselves. If they let me lead the horse, I could keep it alive. They relented.

I took the reins and with the snow driving in my face once again I spoke gently into the horse’s ear. Domesticated animals have no anger in them. Earn their trust and they respond. Treat an animal well and it gives nothing but help. I got it walking again and it did another fifty miles in the drifting snow for me. Then the guards shot it in the head and strung it up in a barn. By then it was the right thing to do. Its misery was over.

I picked up a blade and sliced a piece of flesh from the rump and ate it raw. The guards took the rest and I never saw what they did with it. They probably cooked it. I couldn’t get any back to the lads.

We stopped there for a couple of days giving us time to rest. And then it was on with the trudge. On one occasion we slept the night in a normal prison with iron bars and the lot. It was shelter and better than a windy barn. On another occasion we slept in a malt house.

There was a small gang of lads that hung around me on the march. I guess I bossed them about a bit. Bill Hedges was one of them and Jimmy Fleet, of course. It’s strange to say but I think Jimmy saw me as having more mental strength than the others. He suffered a lot on the march and I was able to support him. I still owed both for hiding Hans during the swaps but that was already history. We had troubles of our own now and I avoided the tangle of deep friendships, the desert had taught me that. Tomorrow I could easily be shovelling snow or earth over their bodies, why make it worse? I kept my distance but Jimmy and Bill had covered for me, and I would look out for them.

We operated as a unit and developed a system of our own – a modus operandi. At the end of a long, hard march we were shown a place to kip and left to it. Military rank meant nothing in captivity and less still on that trek. People gravitated to those who knew what to do. If there was respect, it was earned. I tended to give the orders and we fanned out rapidly searching for food, mangelwurzels if we were lucky. The others scouted out the best corners to sleep in. I checked out where the guards were and what their routine was, to see what we could get away with. That system got us through.

I remember us searching one barn but the hunt for food turned up nothing. I flopped down determined to enjoy the one thing there was in quantity, the piles of beautiful fresh straw to sleep on.

My weight compressed those pale yellow stalks that had once supported grain. I was obsessed with thoughts of the bread it had produced. On the march we thought of nothing but food and as we slept we dreamt of it.

Now I couldn’t sleep or get comfortable. There was something lumpy beneath the straw. I dug down and found I was lying on a stash of potatoes. We’d struck gold. Someone was trying to help us, I was sure of it. I shouted the lads across. There were about six pounds of spuds in all. We lit a fire, cooked and ate what we could. It was a veritable feast, wonderful. We carried the rest with us when we moved. We never found anything like it again.

We had passed through Ratibor in Silesia and on into Czechoslovakia. As days turned to weeks we headed deeper into Bohemia, passing through Pardubice on the river Elbe and on through the outskirts of Prague to Pilsen. In parts of Sudetenland, where you might say this whole sorry mess began with the German occupation which started the war, local people – Czechs rather than ethnic Germans – threw bread to us as we passed. The guards stepped in and tried to stop them but we still got some. It was appreciated.

Hunger hurts. It had been a tough day. The lads were all bedded down in a small barn for the night when I noticed that the dividing wall stopped short of the rafters. It was eight feet high and after a few attempts, I managed to climb up and swung my legs over, dropping down the other side into a ramshackled outhouse.

I began exploring and found a bowl of solidified, rancid fat possibly for the animals. I considered it then gagged, put it down and shinned back over the wall and hit the sack. I thought about it all night. When the order came to leave the next morning I jumped up without thinking, leapt over the wall and found the bowl. I ate the lot without pause and managed to keep it down.

The mind conquers everything. I forced the most appalling things down my gullet on that march and each time I convinced myself that it was a Christmas dinner. It’s how I survived.

From Pilsen it seemed we were being taken towards the Austrian border. By now I was desperate. We weren’t getting any food. I wasn’t going to starve to death as a captive. I might as well be on the run fending for myself.

I decided to go alone and never told a soul, not even Bill and Jimmy. If I had said anything it would have put pressure on them to come along. If I died, they would die. I wouldn’t take that responsibility. I operated better alone.

We stopped for the night somewhere south of Pilsen where we were ordered to sleep in a large barn full of straw. The guards made their patrols but they were growing sloppy, their hearts weren’t in it. I watched and waited. I noted the gaps in their nightly routine and at the first opportunity I made a run for it.

I crossed fields and scrubland, half expecting the hue and cry, worse still the bullets. I kept going until I was a safe distance away. Then I plunged into a ditch and slept until first light.

There was no time for relief. I was in charge of my destiny again and I risked being captured and shot. Making a home run required a plan. I didn’t have one. I thought that mattered less, now the war was grinding to a close and the western allies were approaching. I did have a simple map, it would have to do.

I still had to eat. I came across a house, watched for a while then approached and found the door unsecured. Fear evaporates when you’re hungry. Had anyone got in my way that would have been it. They didn’t. I got away with a wheel-shaped loaf about a foot across. I found somewhere safe, hid myself away and ate the lot.

I set-off in a south-westerly direction, using the stars and the sunset for rough navigation. I walked mostly at night and lay low during the day. I was still in my battle dress and I could have done with a coat to hide it at least but I never found one. I kept away from settlements and off the roads and crossed the border into Germany over wild, open country.

I stole what food I could and took anything from the fields that might be eaten. It was no worse than on the march. I was getting deeper into Germany all the time and after countless nights of walking I made it as far as Regensberg.

I stumbled across a sprawling rail-marshalling yard and began searching the labels on the wagons in the vain hope of finding one heading north. I had it in my head to try and get to the British lines.

It was then I heard the drone of large planes overhead and the bombs began to fall. I knew with goods and troops on the move a railyard like the one I was in was a strategic target. I began to run and managed to get out and across a cemetery and kept going and going. I could hear the flak going up, the whistle of bombs coming down. One fell in that cemetery soon after I left.

I skirted along a hedgerow and came up against a well-camouflaged flak position. I managed to get around it and out into an open field. I thought I was safe. I wasn’t.

I heard planes overhead again and dived to the ground. I rolled over on to my back and saw an American Flying Fortress coming down in flames with one wing blown off. There was a whooshing sound above followed by a thud, I thought it was a bomb but there was no blast. Something from that bomber had smashed into the earth a short distance away. I went to look when the raid was over and found a baseball bat sticking out of the ground. I guessed it had been carried by one of the bomber crew, possibly for luck. It hadn’t helped. There were no parachutes in the sky that I’d seen. I pulled it out of the ground. This was one souvenir I would bring home.

I didn’t try the marshalling yard again and headed north instead on foot. I usually did things the hard way. That was just me. I reached the outskirts of a city, which I hoped was Nuremberg. I thought I might try my luck on the trains again and made one foray towards the town but the bombers had got there first. It was devastated. In some neighbourhoods there were hardly two bricks standing on top of each other. I retreated the way I had come and began to circle around the city before pushing on north.

I thought I was getting closer to the allied lines all the time but I had hardly seen any German troop movements so perhaps I was wrong.

I had almost got as far as Bamberg before my luck changed. I emerged from a copse of trees to find a tank unit deployed and ready for action with at least a hundred yards between each one. They were Americans. I approached carefully but in the open and trusted they had good binoculars to see me coming.

They wouldn’t waste a tank shell on an individual and why shoot a lone soldier heading towards them? If I was the enemy they’d have another prisoner.

I got close enough to shout out that I was a British POW and someone popped his head out of the nearest tank and greeted me. He disappeared again and I imagined he was on the radio. Then he jumped out and said I should follow him. We headed across the fields and after about 200 yards we got to another tank where the commanding officer was waiting.

He was out of this world. He had a couple of pistols and a knife down his boot. He came straight to the point. ‘Where are these goddamn Krauts?’

I couldn’t really tell him, I’d tried to avoid them myself. I had come from near Nuremberg, I told him, and I hadn’t seen much. He took another look at me, turned to one of his soldiers and said, ‘Give this man food and water.’ I’d been liberated.

I devoured the rations instantly. I have no idea what they were but they tasted wonderful. The tanks were soon on the move and I was ushered back down the line. Eventually I was put in a vehicle and driven some miles back in the direction of Nuremberg to a small airstrip in a field. I was told that a number of former POWs would be assembling there and that planes would arrive in a few days to fly us out.

I climbed out of the vehicle, and waved the Americans off as they left to rejoin their advancing units. It had been a brief interlude. I’d enjoyed their rations and now I was alone again. Had I really been liberated? The place looked abandoned. There were no other POWs. It was just a field. It was back to surviving again.

I circled the area until I found an abandoned house on the margin of the site and managed to get in. It was shelter at least but I don’t remember any beds. I curled up under a blanket on the floor. I had travelled hundreds of miles across central Europe on foot and scavenged for food. Even in my darkest moments I had hoped for a more uplifting liberation than this. I searched the house for something to eat and didn’t find much. There were no signs of planes. I sat tight.

As I waited, I wondered whether the other British lads on the march had been herded into another camp or whether they were still out there hiking cross-country at gunpoint. It was years before I learnt that the guards had marched them on until they too ran into the Americans. One of the lads then grabbed a gun from his liberators – the story went – and the German NCO Mieser was shot dead on the spot. He wasn’t the worst of them but I understood. I suspect leather-hand just slipped away. As for the Jewish prisoners, in my mind the men I had known – Ernst amongst them – had to be dead. I had seen so many corpses. I stopped thinking of them.

I sat on a wall at the end of that neglected garden and watched the sky for planes. I waited and waited, but none came. Perhaps I had been abandoned. After a while a small group of German girls walked past. I took a chance and called out to them. To my surprise they came across to talk. The girl who chatted most to me was blond, about twenty-two years old and very beautiful. They recognised I was a foreigner straight away and they wanted to know where I was from.

I explained that I was English and a former POW who was waiting to fly home. I didn’t tell them where I had been captive. Already it felt like Auschwitz was another universe. The experience couldn’t be carried into normal life. Even in Germany my experience didn’t apply.

We talked for a while as best we could and I asked if they had any food. They produced a sandwich of sorts, which I took gratefully and ate straight away. Looking back it was probably their lunch.

We were in allied occupied territory but there weren’t many troops around. The war was not yet over and they took a risk in being civil to me. They were curious and after talking a while they came in to see the abandoned house that was my temporary home. The girl who spoke most gave me her address in Nuremberg and her name, Gerdi Herberich. I promised to write and thank her when I got home and to send a food parcel. I am sorry to say I never did. By then I had other things on my mind and my world was twisting out of shape.

The friendly atmosphere in my shelter was soon shattered by the arrival of a group of Americans including some former POWs. The girls left quickly and I never saw or heard from any of them again. It was a small thing – just a sandwich or Brötchen as the Germans called it – but a human gesture to an enemy soldier and not without risk. They never asked for anything in return.

The atmosphere became more boisterous, but the new arrivals told me I was in the right place. I had stolen four tins of food from another empty house nearby and I kept one for myself and let the Americans have the others. They had no labels on them so when the Yanks opened theirs and got meat I expected the same. When I prised mine open it was a watery vegetable of some sort. I couldn’t have been more disappointed but it helped get me though. Nine or ten of us were kipped down there and all we could do was wait.