| Gerhard in British captivity |  I was a dispatch rider (Kradmelder) for a newly rearmed Nebel Werfer Abteilung and Flak Batterie called SS Werfer Batterie 500. We were always on the move going from one hot spot to the next. One day we received orders to go to a Panzer Division staging area and proceed to Berlin. We found the staging area but not the Division and continued toward Berlin. We mostly moved at night due to the constant air plane attacks and also at that time you never knew wether the guy around the corner was friend or enemy. Very often it was the "other guys". A standing joke was "careful when you fire a Panzerfaust so you don't hit the other front with your back blast".
Anyway, we never reached Berlin. Finally just about closed in out of ammunition and rockets for our Nebel Werfers, our CO ordered everybody to try and return to our staging area. Also we were told Hitler was dead. The road to the West was under heavy fire, bodies everywhere, only a motor bike was able to make it between burning vehicles. I had the Sergeant Major (Walter) on the back seat of my motor bike and I am certain we were the only ones to get through. A problem on the way back was our own Military Police, they always executed anyone without written marching orders. Which we did not have as our CO was far too busy trying to stay alive then writing orders. We saw many soldiers hanging on lanterns and trees with a sign "Deserter or similar remarks" pinned to them.
By avoiding towns and heavily manned road blocks we made it back and found the skeleton detail we had left behind had gone. NSDAP (Nazi Party) officials were driving around in cars loaded with weapons and grenades offering those to anybody who would take them, including children.
We waited until one day, I believe the 9th of May 1945, somebody told us the war was over. At mid day we heard a commotion and found the street of the Village choked with mostly refugees, all going West. The village consisted of only about 40 or so houses on both sides of the street and at one end of the street stood a T 34 (Russian Tank) and at the opposite end was a Sherman (American Tank) and several Jeeps.
As the T 34 started to move, on the motor bike, we left the street and headed north on a sandy trail going through a forrest. At one time we were chased by a some kind of armored carrier which we lost without any trouble. Surprising how fast one can go when a few bullets are flying around. I am not sure who's it was, it could have even been one of ours. The next day we eventually reached a road and sometime later a road block. Several American soldiers stopped us, took our motor bike and watches.
We had thrown our guns away when we drove on to the road. A little later they stopped a Wehrmacht truck, took their watches also and told us to get on it and said to the driver "go home". The truck was loaded with all kinds of food and we visualized getting home with all those goodies.
No such luck, the day after we came to another road block. This time British soldiers. They made us get out .After tearing off our medals we received our first beating and locked us up in a nearby house. Because we were SS they told the us "we would be shot in the morning". Needless to say, we did not sleep much that night. The next morning, instead getting shot we were put on a truck and taken to a Prisoner of War transit camp. Before entering the camp, we were interrogated and had the living daylights beaten out of us. I was literally thrown into a smal section of the the camp, I never saw Walter again. He was a good man and I hope that he survived too. The transit camp was just a big square in an open field without any shelter surrounded with coils of barbed wire . The food consisted 0f 1/2 pack of hard Biscuits and a small lump of Corned Beef per day. There we were told, by order of General Eisenhower we had no longer "Prisoner of War status", instead we became "Disarmed Enemy Forces". As such, not entitled to Red Cross support or covered by Geneva Conventions. I was interrogated several more times by men speaking perfect fluent German and told "as a SS man I could expect a hard time" and was later admitted to the main camp. By the way, in all the years spent in a P.O.W. Camp I have never seen a representative of the International Red Cross.
A few weeks later we were loaded into cattle cars, so many we could not sit or lay down. We were on this train for a little over two days, without food or water no means of sanitation and this was the summer of 1945. Then we arrived someplace in Belgium. At each door of the train stood several soldiers with shovel or axe handles, shouting "schnell you f*/*g bastards" and hitting us as we stumbled off.
After a short march we entered a Prisoner of War camp. I do not know what happened to those which were clubbed unconscious or fainted during the march. There at the camp at least we had tents to sleep in, 12 men per tent. We had very little to eat but altogether it was not too bad as we all were hoping to be released and going home in the near future. This hope did not last long. Again we were trucked to a train and under the same conditions as before we were taken to some other place in Belgium, I am not sure but I believe that was camp 2228. The camp consisted of 20 compounds with about 2000 prisoners in each compound. Unlike the other camp we were 14 men per tent. The tent was over a hole in the ground. We slept on the bare ground even in snowy , icy weather with only one blanket per man. We had to be on parade every morning at 6:00 AM for the head count which sometimes took till noon. Every supper time we each received a pint of a thin watery soup and 1 loaf of bread, 2 cans of Sardines or a similar amount of canned meat, our daily ration for 14 men. In the morning, after parade, we would get a pail of coffee, no sugar or milk. A big problem with the coffee and soup, very often there was so much Diesel oil in it a lot of men, due to stomach cramps fainted during morning parade. They made the soup and coffee in big kettles heated by burning Diesel oil and dripping water, that's how the taste and Diesel oil got in. When you are hungry you eat anything, needless to say we were always hungry. The one thing plentiful was toilet paper and tooth powder. We were not allowed in the tents before supper and just kept walking around and around. The few of us who had pencils were writing Diaries and would you believe it, RECIPES. I had a great recipe collection and a very detailed diary but unfortunately toilet paper was not made to last, it disintegrated before long and with it a accurate account of my stay in Belgium. There was a big tent in the center of the compound used for lectures. If anyone gave a approved lecture or a religious service they received a pint of soup for it. Needless to say, we had many lectures and countless services.
The outside fence of the camp consisted of 2 barbed wire fences with a gangway in between, which was patrolled at night by soldiers with dogs. At the corners and every 100 yards or so was a tower with search lights and a machine gun. About 10 yards in front of the inside fence was a single wire 2 feet above the ground, if you crossed this wire they would open fire. Twice, during stormy nights I wormed through the fences and pulled several beets (fodder beets I guess) in a nearby field and returned to the camp. There was no sense trying to escape as I had learned by experience it was saver in numbers. The lone man surrendering or escaping was usually killed. Somebody else tried it and was shot when returning. After that they increased the patrols. One day while walking and miles away in my mind, I passed a English officer and gave him the Nazi salute. Remember in the SS we did not have the Wehrmacht salute, outstretched hand to the hat. The Nazi salute came automatic, especially as I was in deep thought. He screamed like a stuck pig for help and I got a beating and couple of weeks chained in a deep hole. We dug those holes to be used for latrines. At one time for some reason we did not get the usual rations instead we were given 3 boxes of C rations per tent. Each box containing a days food for two men. In those boxes was a can filled with a mixture of tea, powdered milk and sugar. As we did not have hot water we shared this mixture as we did everything else and promptly ate it. That night not many in the camp slept because we were all busy going to the latrine and several died with what we thought, heart attacks.
As we became more and more malnourished anybody getting sick simply died, there was no medical help. All hope had vanished and we were just getting resigned. Sometimes someone would cross the wire, not to escape just a way of committing suicide. Eventually Dysentery broke out. Anybody affected was taken to a cleared compound. The only treatment there, we could stay in the tent all day, did not have to go to morning parade and had our daily rations brought to the tent. We had 3 men die in our tent and did not report it so we could share their rations. They bulldozed 2 cleared compounds, I can guess why. Finally, I assume the death rate rose too high. Some of us, including me were taken to a British Military hospital. I was not ill but faked being sick and figured anything would be better then that hell-hole. In the hospital we thought this was heaven, a bed with several blankets, warm water and food. It did not last long. After about a week, a Polish doctor came to see us and first checked if anyone had a blood group tattoo under their arm (all SS-men had this mark). Of course my A was there. He told the nurse to throw me out and said " I will poison you before giving you medicine". He did not know it but he probably saved my life. I was sent to a transit camp and joined a shipment of POWs to go to England. This was almost 2 years after wars end. Before disembarking in England, we had a medical inspection. The medics and the new camp commandant were shocked when they saw what condition we were in. They called in doctors to give us all a further medical examination and had us weighed. All of us were in poor shape, my weight was 89 lb. I am over 6 feet so I looked like a skeleton. We heard and this was only a rumor, the staff of our last POW camp was court martialled for misappropriating food and supplies. I found out later, all camps were equally as bad. Then we were trucked to Aldershot to a Army barrack. We were taken after dark in closed trucks so people could not see us and the condition we were in. On arriving we received plenty of blankets also needed clothing. To top it off, sufficient food, medical attention available and no guards. It is amazing how different the English soldiers treated us in England. The following week we were made up into work details. A friend and I won the super price, we became helpers in a cook house for a map unit of Royal Engineers. After a little time we moved in to their quarters and became their cooks. The Sergeant Majors wife taught us how to make tea, the English way and Yorkshire, bread pudding etc. We had a great time. Unfortunately sometime later this unit moved and my friend and I were transferred to a POW camp near Reading.
There we worked on farms and eventually were allowed to go outside the camp. The local people and camp guards were mostly friendly, especially at Christmas time. We had more interrogations to determine our status, Nazi, Mitlaufer and Anti-Nazi.
Because I told the interrogator "the POW camps of the Allies in Belgium were as bad or worse than Hitler's Concentration Camps, I was classed a Nazi. A joke if you realize
I was 7 years old when Hitler came to power, 13 years when the war broke out and 17 years when joining a SS training regiment as a Kanonier in 1943. In fact I was too young to vote but not too young to fight. Anyway in 1948 they started slowly to repatriate us and that was when I was discharged from the German Armed Forces and released from the Prisoner of War camp. As a final joke, they charged me for my army boots and POW issue clothing. In the end I found England and it's people very warm (not the weather) and nice, in fact that is where I found the girl with which I spent the last 52 happy years and hopefully more to come. |
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