An Unofficial 'Cease-fire'
The
‘Christmas Day Truce’ between the opposing armies in 1914 has, quite properly,
been remembered and celebrated on this centenary year. Nothing like it, so it is said, was even
attempted in World War II. The reason
is, I think, because nowhere were the soldiers of the opposing armies quite so close to each
other as they sometimes were in World War I. However, something rather like
that ceasefire was observed between the British prisoners of war in the little
German town of Zittau
and the local Germans, during the final eighteen months of the Second World
War. Prisoners of war are instructed to
divulge only their army number, rank and name to their captors, to maintain
their enmity, and to seize any opportunity of escaping. Number, rank and name was all that was ever
required of me. They could always discover our home town by noting the address
on our out-going mail!
It
had been easy enough to maintain our enmity to the Italians in the large
concentration camp in northern Italy
in which I spent my first eighteen months of captivity. We were half-starved, louse infested and
bored out of our minds – frozen in the winter and roasted in the summer. Transported to Germany
on the collapse of Mussolini’s government, I found myself in a small
Arbeitskommando (working camp) within the town of Zittau . There were only 30 of us. We were
employed, in parties of two to six, on loading and unloading railway wagons,
and any other work in the area that required brawn rather than brain. While working we mixed and (when we had
learned some basic German) chatted freely with the German civilians and the
Russian and Ukrainian conscripted ‘slave labourers’ who were our
companions. It isn’t easy to maintain
enmity with people you meet daily and whom you realize under other
circumstances could have been good friends.
Our guards were neither the brutal bullies nor mindless morons of film
and fiction. They were remarkably like ourselves, had served on the Eastern
Front and had either been wounded or frost bitten to an extent that made them
unfit for front line duty. Their only
ambition was to ‘keep their heads down’ and survive the war. That, as it happened, was our ambition
too. It would have been easy enough to
get away. Usually only an elderly
civilian wearing an official armband was ‘supervising us’. I remember one occasion on which I cut my
hand quite badly. I said to our civilian ‘boss’ that I needed to go back to our
‘lager’ (the building in which we lived) to have it washed and bandaged. He said he couldn’t leave the truck that was
being unloaded, so I said that he needn’t bother. I’d find my own way back. And so I did, walking boldly through the
streets of Zittau with no-one raising an eyebrow. The guard, when I hammered on the door, was
just a little surprised to see me unattended but he washed and bandaged my
injured hand – and I took the rest of the day ‘off’.
None
of us ever attempted to escape. Take a
look at a map of central Europe and you’ll see
how far Zittau is from any then-neutral country. The Eastern front was quite near as the war
came to an end but none of us was sufficiently fool-hardy as to try to get
through both the German and the Soviet front lines! Furthermore we had neither the time, nor the
opportunity to plan an escape. We were
usually exhausted when we returned from our day’s work and our guards lived
almost ‘on top of us’. I think though that the main reason no-one attempted an
escape was the knowledge that, whether or not successful, the lives of those
who remained would have been changed for ever.
Our easygoing guards would have been sent to the Eastern Front and
replaced by fanatical Nazis. Our every movement would have been observed by an
armed guard. There would have been no
more bringing back from work coal for our stoves or potatoes to add to our
rations; no more cosy chats with the guards about the stupidity of war!
We
maintained a friendly relationship with the troops stationed in the local
barracks. I once had a very painful rash
round my waist. I thought it was a sweat
rash but it was obviously more than that. A
guard and I walked across the town to the ‘Kaserne’ (the barracks). The army medical officer
was most interested in my condition and said I was suffering from ‘Girderose’ (I
may have spelled it wrongly) which I learned
was shingles. He gave me some vitamin B Tablets and eventually my rash, and the
pain departed. He certainly treated me
as effectively as any British Army MO
During the winter of 1944/’45 in the
middle of the night, one of our number was accidentally killed by a runaway
truck on a railway siding. I was with
him at the time – only a foot or so away, and it was a traumatic experience. No doubt there was an enquiry about it but I
never heard the outcome. I do know that
he was given a full military funeral.
Looking as smart as we could manage, we slow-marched to the
cemetery. A Minister, presumably
Lutheran, said a few words as the coffin was lowered into the grave. We all walked round the grave throwing
sprigs of yew that we had been given, onto the coffin. A firing squad from the local barracks, fired
a volley over his grave. I don’t suppose
that that funeral would have given much comfort to his parents and girl-friend
but I think that we all found it very moving.
We also had a friendly football match with German soldiers from the local
barracks. Folded jackets (khaki and
field grey) served as goalposts and our biggest worry was of the ball getting
kicked into the nearby fast flowing river Moldau.
They won (3 – 1) I think; but then they had a couple of hundred from whom to select their team. We had just 30, and
I wasn’t the only one who was useless at football!
The
most remarkable example of wartime Anglo/German co-operation was with the local
branch of the Hitler Jugend (Hitler Youth) whom we all thought of as being
fanatical Nazis. Their office was next
door to our ‘lager’. We had a gramophone
and some records, mostly jazz, presumably from the Red Cross. Hitler banned jazz as being decadent and the
young men (mostly teenagers) listened to the sounds from our lager with
envy. Eventually they summoned up the
courage to ask our guards and our ‘confidence man’ (official spokesman) if we’d
agree to a swap – some of our jazz records for some of their officially
approved folk songs and dance music. To
make sure that nothing about this arrangement became known to higher authority,
only those who ‘needed to know’ were told of the swap. I, for instance, knew that there had been
some welcome additions to our record library – but it was years later that I
learned how it had come about. I think
that we did the better out of the exchange.
I never missed the jazz records but several of the German ones were
memorable and enjoyable. I can remember
the tune and much of the words of one of them – it was, I think, ‘top of the
pops’ in Germany sometime
in the 1930s : Regen Tropfen, die am dein
Fenster klopfen, das merke dir, die sind ein Grüss von mir. (raindrops, falling
on your window, seem to you to be a greeting from me.)
I
now have good friends in Zittau and have been to see them on several occasions
in recent years. In 2014 they all came to Clacton
for my 93rd birthday celebration.
It was the culmination of a
friendship that began before any of them were born!
Impartial BBC?
I
have been – and to some extent still am – a strong supporter of the BBC. I would hate it to have to depend on the whim
of advertisers for its finance. For over
twenty years I wrote a weekly Tendring
Topics column for a local newspaper.
Nobody told me what I could and couldn’t write – but I did know that the
paper was dependent for its existence on advertisements for new or used cars
and homes. My survival instincts
therefore ensured that I thought twice, and then again, before writing too
strong a criticism of either estate agents or car salesmen!
The
BBC is pledged to impartiality on controversial topics and in some fields leans over backwards to ensure that their
viewers and listeners are presented with both sides of any argument. For instance, the world’s leading scientists
are all but unanimous on the urgent need to counter climate change (global
warming) by phasing out fossil fuels (coal, oil and gas) and seeking out and
developing sustainable sources of energy.
However, whenever the BBC has an experienced meteorologist on a
broadcast programme explaining the importance
and urgency of combating climate change you can bet your life that
they’ll find some has-been politician with no knowledge of the subject, or an ‘expert’ with interests in the oil, gas or
coal industries, to give an opposing view.
How
very different is the BBC’s attitude with regard to foreign affairs. With regard to the situation in the Ukraine for instance, you’d never guess that
the overwhelming number of inhabitants of Crimea wanted to be part of Russia . But I remember before Russia ’s ‘annexation’ the difficulty that BBC’s
and other reporters had in finding a single Crimean who wished to remain within
Ukraine . The impression is given that the pro-Russian
rebels (urged on by Vladimir Putin) began the civil war. But I remember seeing news shots of the men
women and children of eastern Ukraine
passively resisting the tanks of the Kiev
government, before the fighting started.
BBC
bulletins have ignored the fact that the shelling by the Kiev government forces of the area of the
Malayan airliner’s crash delayed the UN inspectors from carrying out their
investigation. Nor have we heard how the
relentless shelling of residential areas occupied by the rebels, has destroyed
hundreds of homes, killed a great many innocent civilians and caused thousands
of eastern Ukrainians to become refugees in Russia . No wonder elections held by the Kiev government produce
comfortable majorities for the supporters of that government – tens of
thousands who would have opposed them have been killed or driven from their
homes.
But
there – the BBC depends on the government for its licence fee, and the
government unquestioningly supports the Kiev Government. He who
pays the piper calls the tune.
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