Dunkirk: The Men They Left Behind (35 page)

Unfortunately, the nature of modern warfare meant that there were lengthy delays and initially the British government found it was difficult enough to negotiate for repatriation with the French authorities, let alone the Germans. In March 1942 the French recorded turning back forty-three British internees due to be repatriated via the border with Spain as retaliation against the British for the bombing of French factories contributing to the German war effort. The War Office responded: ‘It is intolerable that the Vichy government should give expression to their annoyance at what they well know to be a legitimate act of war on our part, by inflicting further suffering on those unfortunate men.’
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Later the French changed their reasons, stressing that the refusal to repatriate the wounded Britons was related to the British government’s failure to allow some French officers to return home. The Frenchmen, members of Air Mission B, were liaison officers based in London who had earlier been given access to military secrets and, as such, could not be safely returned to France.

Those men badly wounded during the battles in France were possibly the most piteous of all the prisoners of war. Among them were the men who had lost limbs or been blinded, or suffered debilitating stomach wounds. They did not face the prospect of recovering in the comfort of a hospital where they might be visited by their loved ones. Coming to terms with the knowledge that they would never fully recover was burden enough in any circumstances, but to face treatment by doctors who were pitifully short of supplies only served to deepen their discomfort, both physically and mentally.

The British medical staff desperately needed drugs and bandages, let alone false limbs and crutches. Furthermore, the conditions of imprisonment meant that wounds took longer than normal to heal. Due to the cold, damp, unsanitary conditions existing within many hospital facilities, wounds failed to close properly, continuing to weep or tearing open when they should have been fully closed. Infections were also difficult to prevent in hospitals where hygiene was almost impossible to maintain. If that was not enough, the medics also had to deal with diseases that swept through the masses of healthy prisoners who were living in filthy, cramped conditions.

Despite the stipulations of the Geneva Convention, it took three years for the first men to be repatriated. It had also been hoped that some of the more senior POWs would be allowed home. In 1941 a request was sent via the Americans that all prisoners who had also been captives during the Great War should be released. Another request was for the return of all prisoners over the age of forty-eight who had been captive for over eighteen months. Both requests were turned down. However, the subject was raised again in 1943 when Major-General Fortune asked that all 1914-18 POWs be allowed to go home. By this time those in government circles believed that no such move should be made until the seriously wounded had been allowed to come home.

Before any of the wounded soldiers could be repatriated they first had to be assessed by the Mixed Medical Commission, representatives of the protecting powers whose job it was to identify those men whose wounds were too severe to allow future military service. In some cases, such as blinded soldiers and amputees, it was clear who should go home. Many of these had already been assessed by the Germans as unfit for service,
Dienstunfahig –
DU – or as the patients referred to it ‘definitely unfit’. In other cases, such as those with stomach wounds or serious diseases, the rules were less well defined. By December 1941 the Red Cross in Geneva had reported that of the 984 men they had examined 411 were suitable for repatriation.

While waiting for assessment in the town of Treysa, one group of prisoners were appalled by the treatment given them by the Germans. They complained they were treated as prisoners rather than patients and described the care as ‘disgracefully inadequate’.
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Such was the paucity of rations that the British medical staff began to lose weight rapidly and they were forced to take regular rests while attempting to care for the prisoners. Among the sick men anaemia became a serious problem, but the only iron tablets available contained high levels of arsenic.

The first repatriation should have taken place in 1941. Negotiation commenced between Britain and Germany but they were soon deadlocked. The British requested that a Red Cross ship sail between Britain and either Lisbon or Marseilles. However, the Germans claimed that repatriation by sea was impossible since the waters around Britain were too dangerous for a ship to pass safely through. They insisted the ships should go to Canada, with any prisoners too sick to make the crossing instead being sent to Switzerland to be interned while they received further medical care. When these proposals were rejected by the British, the Germans asked whether it would be acceptable for the wounded of both sides to be transferred to neutral countries – British POWs heading to Spain and German POWs going to Eire. They would then be free to use Red Cross aircraft to transfer the wounded men to their home countries. This too proved to be unacceptable to the British.

With the negotiations deadlocked, a senior British Army doctor, Colonel W.A. Robertson – working at Reserve Lazaret Obermassfeld – requested that all soldiers cleared for repatriation be temporarily admitted to hospitals in Switzerland. Like so many who were aware of the plight of the wounded POWs, he was anxious they should be allowed to receive first-rate medical care in conditions that were not prejudicial to their health. He was not the only one pressing for action. Relatives of the men listed for repatriation were angered by the apparent procrastination of the authorities. As the Foreign Office admitted: ‘Some of them even believe that the reason for the delay lies in the fact that the government does not take a sufficiently active interest in them.’
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In September 1941, in anticipation of repatriation, groups of badly wounded soldiers were transferred from their hospitals to camps in France. There was little doubt in the minds of many wounded that the journey home had become imperative. One wrote home from Stalag 9C: ‘There are many wounded who need special treatment in England, and if they don’t get home soon they may be ruined for life.’
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Rumours swept through the men as they realized they were being moved for a purpose. Back in London it seemed the scheme would go ahead and two hospital ships – the
Dinard
and the
St Julien
, were earmarked for the transport of the wounded men. It was proposed that the ships would sail between Newhaven and Fécamp, on the northern French coast. To prevent attack by air both the RAF and the Luftwaffe would be forbidden from coming any closer than ten miles from the two ports and a twenty-mile-wide corridor was to be established across the English Channel. The proposed date for the operation was 4 October 1941.

The prospect of the journey home raised the spirits of the men. One recalled how the first move had been to a camp where he had the freedom to swim in a lake. It was a great relief to enter the cooling waters after the misery of a stalag hospital – even if he could only swim using one arm. Yet their hopes were dashed when news came through that repatriation negotiations had fallen through. On 26 September the Germans had suddenly introduced new conditions to the exchange. They would only exchange wounded British prisoners of war for the corresponding number of German prisoners. This was unworkable since there were over 1,000 British wounded soldiers or medical personnel in France awaiting evacuation. However, there were only 150 German soldiers in England who had been cleared for repatriation. To make up the numbers the Germans tried to insist that interned civilians should be returned to them. The British agreed that a limited number of civilians would be released, but they refused to agree to the German demand of over 1,000. And so the negotiations foundered. The German wounded, who had already been embarked, were led back on to dry land and returned to POW camps.

In France, the news reached the British soldiers. Geoff Griffin, who had almost had his arm amputated following his capture in France, later wrote of his emotions upon hearing the news that he would not be going home: ‘I suppose that most of us had experienced some disappointments in life, but at that moment there could not have been a more dejected lot of men than us. We slunk back to barracks and I know that I cried my eyes out; many of my comrades did the same.’
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Following this news, the prisoners were returned to Poland, where they were housed in a large warehouse that had been fitted with tall bunks. Orderlies had to organize the allocation of beds to make sure that the men who had to reach the upper bunks had enough limbs to climb up the ladders. Reaching the upper bunks was not the end of their problems, as Geoff Griffin discovered on the first night in the warehouse: ‘We had just dropped off to sleep when there were terrible shrieks coming from the lower bunks, so those of us who could scrambled down to the ground to see what was wrong and found that the place was swarming with rats, and very large ones at that. They were biting the poor chaps in the lower bunks.’
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As Griffin helped to clear the rats from the room his wounds burst open again, resulting in his being transferred to hospital. When he arrived there, the hospital was so crowded he had to sleep in the corridor. For Griffin the long process of recovery continued, with doctors having to once again drain his wounds and remove more bone splinters. It was not until July 1942, more than two years after his arm was shattered by German bullets, that the wounds closed. They reopened the following year, necessitating one further operation.

The long process of awaiting repatriation left the wounded men plenty of time to consider their situation. Most realized they would never return to their pre-war jobs. Included among the wounded were a large number of men in their forties who had previously been manual labourers and who had been captured while serving in the Pioneer Corps. As a result the prisoners began to establish educational classes in order to increase their future employment opportunities with office skills such as book keeping and accountancy.

In the autumn of 1943 the first batch of disabled prisoners finally got the news they had long awaited – they were going home. After three years of wrangling the British and German governments had finally managed to come to an agreement. Following the Allied victories in North Africa, the number of POWs on each side had finally begun to even out. The agreed system was simple: the British transported wounded Germans across the North Sea, while the Germans took a corresponding number of British soldiers across the Baltic, with both countries exchanging the wounded in the port of Gothenburg under the supervision of the Swedish authorities.

One of the medics attending the sick men was Norman ‘Ginger’ Barnett, who had been captured in May 1940 after his ambulance was raked by German machine-gun fire. During his captivity he had built up a large collection of photographs taken at both Stalag 8B and at work camps. The problem would be how to get them home since he knew the Germans would not allow the photos to leave the country. Fortunately, he was a member of the camp band, playing the accordion at the regular concerts. He was able to insert the photographs inside his accordion, thus getting them through the searches prior to departure.

Like many others, Barnett had already been disappointed once, when the repatriation via France and Spain had been cancelled. As a result he didn’t get his hopes up when the news came:We heard rumours about repatriation. At first I thought I wouldn’t take any notice of it. Then the Feldwebel came to me and said, ‘I have news for you. You are going home.’ I didn’t believe him but he told me to get my gear together. The next morning they shipped me off to the Stalag. It was only when I reached Lamsdorf that I knew it was more than a rumour. Blokes were getting all their gear together. I was excited but was it going to come off? We’d been let down once.

After leaving Lamsdorf, Barnett was put on to a hospital train: ‘There was me in this compartment with six berths. I had to look after these six men. The two men on the bottom bunks were strapped down. They were Polish. I was told to give them anything they wanted, so I gave them cigarettes. One of them started burning his forehead with the cigarette, he was mad. But also there were these smart Swedish nurses giving us white bread and milk!’

He had been right not to get his hopes up in advance of departure. As late as ten days before the exchange was due to take place, the Swedish authorities contacted the British with the information that they had intercepted German signals stressing that no decision had been taken by the Nazi leadership to actually allow the repatriation scheme to go ahead. In the final days before the operation commenced there were further practical issues to be covered, with the discovery that one of the German ships had too deep a draft to follow the proposed route and another ship, the
Stuttgart
, had been damaged in an American bombing raid on the port of Gydnia.

Despite these fears, a final date of 19 October was set. Arriving at the German port of Swinemunde, the prisoners and medical staff were loaded on to two ships – the
Meteor
and the
Ruegen.
Other groups, mostly mobile prisoners, travelled via Sassnitz and Trelleborg on board ferries. Some of the repatriates enjoyed the luxury of being placed into cabins. It was a wonderful experience for the men to see stewards bustling around to assist them. It was a far cry from the days of living in rat-infested rooms. Among this first repatriation group was Geoff Griffin:It is difficult to explain our feelings about what was happening but, having all had a luxuriating bath and a shave, we were ushered into a large cabin where a table was set with all sorts of cold meats, potatoes and salad, and we all immediately set to and tucked into the meal . . . we did not realize how small our stomachs had become so we could not do complete justice to the meal, although we were really hungry.
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