Dunkirk: The Men They Left Behind (37 page)

Apart from food and drink, there was another important issue. Would they be able to maintain any form of military discipline now that they were prisoners? The issue of discipline was important. The role of their officers in enforcing order and controlling the men was vital. Yet, right from the beginning, the Germans took the definite step of ensuring officers and other ranks would be kept separate for as long as possible.

The prisoners leaving Calais were kept together at the start of the march, being divided up only once they reached the town of Marquise. Here the officers were taken away and then driven on to a barn. The next day saw them driven to the town of Desvres where they were put into a recreation ground surrounded by a high wall. The officers were put into a pavilion where they sheltered to await the arrival of the main body of marchers. Later that day the other ranks arrived and slumped down to relax, having marched through the night. Forbidden to use the tap, the thirsty soldiers had to wait for their officers to bring them water from the pavilion.

The next day both the officers and men were back out on the road. As they marched, they witnessed long columns of lorried infantry, all heading towards the front line. As they passed, the Germans jeered at the marching prisoners and took photographs to capture the misery of their defeat.

Having been soaked during a violent thunderstorm, the column eventually reached the hill-top town of Montreuil. Those still carrying their waterbottles rushed to fill them from the overflowing guttering of nearby houses. Again the officers were given preferential treatment, being sent to shelter in the appropriately named Café Anglais, while the other ranks were shepherded into a barbed-wire enclosure in the town’s market square. With the rain continuing through the night, some were able to take shelter in the local cinema while the rest were condemned to a night sleeping on the wet cobblestones. The following morning the officers were loaded into lorries, then driven to the town of Hesdin. As they waited for the marching column to catch up with them they were fed on bread and high horsemeat. Despite the smell of the meat the ravenous officers consumed it enthusiastically, knowing it might be days until the next meal arrived.

And so the officers’ journey continued. Some days spent marching, on others they were carried in lorries. Some nights were passed herded into the shelter of factories or schools, others spent out in the open. One night was spent in a ditch – formerly used as a latrine – over which the officers built a shelter of sticks gathered from the surrounding countryside. Their misery continued as they approached the Belgian frontier. At Bapaume they were searched by screaming German officers who brandished pistols and took away their razors, pens, walking sticks, steel helmets and money. That night they were herded into a barn while the Belgian troops in the same column were left outside. The officers within had to barricade the doors to prevent a Belgian mob forcing their way inside.

There was an official reason for keeping the officers and their men separate – the Germans were obliged to do so under the Geneva Convention. However, there was another logic behind their actions. Although officers could help instil discipline into the massed ranks, they could also act as a focus for defiance. One of those officers who posed this risk was Captain Ernest Hart of the Royal Northumberland Fusiliers. Hart was the senior officer in a group of twenty-six men captured while holding a canal at St Omer. On the first day of their march a car drew up alongside the column, stopping beside a group of British prisoners. As the German officer left his car he launched a violent assault on the prisoners nearest him, kicking them as if to hurry them along the road. Seeing the assault, Captain Hart intervened, telling the officer he should treat the men as prisoners of war and show them respect. The German’s response was immediate. He drew his pistol and fired three shots into the remonstrating captain. Hart fell dead on the roadside, where his body was left as the column trudged on.

The daily marches varied in length. One man recorded how his group had marched from Boulogne to Hesdin, via Montreuil, a total of thirty-six miles (fifty-eight kilometres). They were given just one hour’s break during the entire march. The Geneva Convention stated the maximum daily distance for any march should be twelve miles (twenty kilometres). As one soldier recalled, whenever he asked the guards how much further they had to go the answer was always the same – ‘Three kilometres’. That became the terrible reality for the marchers – it always seemed that rest was somewhere in the distance, just over the next hill, in the next village, another mile, another hour, another day.

A group whose march began in Calais found themselves forced to march even further. They were on the road for an entire twenty-four-hour period, with breaks of just twenty minutes every three or four hours. At the end of their twenty-four-hour march they were given one hour’s rest, then sent out on to the road for another twenty-four hours. During the entire period they were given no food. Those who fell out from the column were shot. This almost constant marching continued for six days. When the British government attempted to complain about the treatment given to the men in the columns they were brushed off by the Germans. Replying via Switzerland, the Germans stated they had ‘no information regarding charges of bad transport conditions of British prisoners of war between places of capture and prison camps but will investigate further, if the British government can give information as to the date and place of alleged offences’.
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Some groups found themselves marching in circles. Suddenly, after miles of marching, they found themselves back in a village they had already passed through. It soon appeared this was a deliberate policy. They were being paraded through as many villages as possible to show off the fruits of the German triumph and reinforce the notion that the Allies had been hopelessly crushed. One of the circuits, taking in the towns of Douai, Cambrai, Valenciennes, Mons and Hal, lasted a total of fourteen days. A United Nations report later summarized the situation: ‘It shows the state of the German mind in regard to this barbarous practice long since discarded by civilized nations.’
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Overnight stops were made in all manner of locations, a waterlogged field, a dung-covered farmyard, a dry weed-infested castle moat, or a sports stadium, depending on circumstances. In the main, the prisoners had to make do with sleeping outdoors, curled up on the bare earth, hoping and praying it wouldn’t rain during the night. As one witness reported back to London: ‘Men are kept in pens without any protection from the weather.’
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It was not always the rain that proved a problem for the prisoners. At Jemelles 4,000–5,000 British and French prisoners were held in the open air. Under assault from the summer sun, they were forced to scrape holes into the hillside in order to escape its rays.

During the breaks in the march many prisoners began to regret the loss of their kit. Many had lost everything apart from the clothes they stood up in when they were captured. As Les Allan marched, mostly surrounded by Frenchmen, he could not help but notice some men far worse off than himself. He may have been wounded in the neck, and have lost all his kit, his papers and his battledress jacket but, compared with some of the British gunners he saw on the march, he was well prepared. They had been manning their guns under the hot summer sun dressed in little more than boots, vests and shorts when they had been captured. A few were even topless. Yet they too, like everyone else, just had to keep marching, desperately hoping they might soon find some abandoned clothing to cover their exposed flesh.

The story was the same everywhere. Some had their steel helmets, but many did not. A lucky few had greatcoats that were a burden in daytime, but made for a comfortable blanket at night. Others blessed the groundsheets and gas capes they had saved to shelter them from the rain. But they were the minority. Those who had not lost their kit in battle had lost it when their captors had searched them.

As a result the soldiers picked up whatever they could find to make their lives more comfortable. For as long as they had the strength to carry kit, many broke into homes in the villages they passed through, taking whatever they needed. Some tied blankets and eiderdowns around their bodies with string, others slung pots and kettles over their shoulders so they might have something to cook food in – if they were lucky enough to find any. One officer, desperate for something to cover himself with in the cold of night, found a discarded greatcoat. This was surely the answer to his prayers. Then he noticed it was heavily stained with the blood of its former owner. He preferred to remain cold rather than be wrapped in something a man had died in and soon abandoned the coat. Days later, the same officer watched as his comrades began to abandon their own coats as they became too tired to carry them any longer. One officer abandoned an almost new sheepskin-lined coat that had cost £10. However, despite the obvious value and use of such an item, no one had the strength to pick it up and carry it.

Weighed down by whatever little they were carrying, the troops craved nothing more than the short breaks and overnight stops that allowed them to rest their aching limbs – if only for a few minutes. Many soon realized there was a trick to ensuring they maximized the time spent resting. As Ken Willats remembered: ‘The column was just one long trail of men shuffling into captivity. The trick was not to be at the back of the column. Because if you are at the back, when it gets to a rest stop you get there last. Consequently those at the back are only just arriving when the front of the column is told it’s time to get moving again.’

The scenes of misery were spread across the region. One witness sent word via Switzerland of starving men clothed in rags held in cattle pens near Antwerp. His report also noted it was clear that the British soldiers were being discriminated against, and the French and Belgian troops were receiving favourable treatment. When the local Red Cross attempted to intervene they were told that if they wished to feed the British they would also have to feed the guards. Elsewhere there were reports of prisoners pushing wounded men in wheelbarrows.

Deliberate attempts to humiliate the British prisoners were also reported by the American naval attaché, who reported seeing British prisoners in the town of Cambrai. Many had had their boots taken away, others were dressed in a bizarre manner including: ‘old bowlers crammed down, women’s hats and articles taken from fancy shops in order to make them look ridiculous’.
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It was little wonder the American embassy soon reported they were forbidden to visit the prisoners despite their position of being the protecting power.

Each night, as they fell to the bare earth to sleep for a few short hours, it seemed as if an awful burden had been lifted from their shoulders. Yet there was a down side to the experience. Though they craved nothing – except maybe food – more than sleep, they had to endure the terrible realization that the night would soon be over. Then they would rise once more and begin to march for another day. As the days passed this became something that weighed more and more heavily on them. The more exhausted they became, the longer it took to recover what little strength they retained, making it increasingly painful to rise from the cold earth and loosen their tight muscles each morning.

The nightly halts were seldom an opportunity for the prisoners to fully relax. Private Watt, marching from St Valery, later recorded: ‘A lot of thieving took place in these camps. Coats were taken off sleeping figures, also boots. Haversacks were being stolen at every opportunity, just in case they happened to contain any food. We always had to have someone to look after our meagre belongings while the rest were on the eternal search for food.’
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There was something increasingly primeval about the behaviour of the prisoners as the marches progressed. In sandy soil, the prisoners were able to scratch small hollows to lower themselves into. When sleeping among trees they pulled small branches down to construct nests. In some places prisoners were forced into partially flooded fields. Here men fought each other for the right to rest at the top of the slope – the area that remained relatively dry. It was a bitter experience for those unable to fight their way to the top – but all now realized what counted from now on was the survival of the fittest.

The prison in the French town of Doullens was one location used for overnight stops. RAMC prisoner Norman Barnett had the misfortune of spending his twentieth birthday there. He arrived to find the prison had already been used by numerous men. As a result it was filthy and there was little food or water: ‘It was a big compound. We were mixed up with these Senegalese troops. They must have been there some time ’cause they were well established, they’d even got food from somewhere. We only got water though. But they were dirty bastards – there was shit everywhere. And you were lucky to get somewhere to sit down. Luckily we were only there one night – I preferred sleeping out in the fields than staying there. I was glad to get away.’

As another column entered the prison, the new arrivals were greeted by the sight of German guards scattering biscuits to them from the back of a lorry. There were only enough for the early arrivals and those at the rear of the column went hungry. Arriving at the prison, some witnessed the Germans executing a sergeant who dared to remonstrate with guards for beating one of the men trailing at the end of the column.

Graham King, the medic who had been captured before he and his comrades had been able to establish their casualty clearing station, was among the men who spent a night in the dubious shelter of Doullens prison: ‘By the time our group arrived the building was packed and we had to rest on the stony ground where we soon fell asleep. In the middle of the night a huge storm broke over us and in no time we were wet through. I thought of my mother and the way she would panic if any of us got wet. I was glad she wasn’t able to see her youngest son completely drenched, no hot mustard bath, no dry clothing. He was on his own.’