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Ernie and I were walking along this sort of an embankment along the foreshore, and there were a lot of tracers going past us. You know tracer bullets just sort of waft along like� moths, they don't go fast like that � they just sort of float along. It must be the incandescence.� The bullets probably disappeared, it's just the phosphorous or whatever it is.� And we thought it was our blokes firing, they were firing right down the road we were walking on� we discovered that they were two German machine guns, and� I think we were quite bomb happy.� There were heavy explosions going on. We even got covered with sand and stuff and we thought it was delayed action bombs, but it was six inch mortars they were firing.� Then somebody yelled out from the dark, 'Get off the road, you stupid bastards, there are Huns up there!'
We just whoof! like that and crawled across the road.� An Australian officer called out for volunteers who could use automatic weapons and that we were going in to take on the Jerries, so Ernie and I hopped on this 15-hundredweight and they gave me a tommy gun and some ammo and he got some too and we went in.� We actually got involved in the street fighting.� That's where Jack Hinton got his VC, that night. Jack Hinton's sister was in my class at school by the way - Bunty Hinton - and Jack Hinton came from the same place, a place called Tokanui in Southland. I didn't know him � I knew Bunty. He and my mate Clem, they were both sergeants, and they both ended up in prisoner-of-war camp together and� I heard that they were father and son to everybody in camp.� They were both older men. Clem was always called Pop or Dad and he was much more mature and apparently they used to console people who were losing it.
�I wasn't close to Jack Hinton but the Germans had put sangers out across the street
What's a sanger?
They were a sandbag sort of wall -a low wall, and they were sheltering behind them, but they were made of filled sandbags.� I saw one bloke�I think he was ASC [Army Service Corps] or something�he'd had no training in bayonet, and he stuck his bayonet at a- obviously German who was behind a sanger - but he didn't know how to pull it out.� There's a knack in it - you've got to jerk it and put your foot in.� It was desperate. We realised we had to beat these Germans before we could get away.� It ended up we all sorted - we had about 70 German prisoners right at the wharf edge, and we fully expected to still go - get out - and then a destroyer just zoomed past.� It sort of semi-circled and turned and went away and loud-hailed us: 'Sorry boys, it's late.� We've got to go.'
Not long after that we got - word circulated- word of mouth - that the brigadier, whoever he was, a Pommie, I think, had unconditionally surrendered to the Germans, who had offered him annihilation bombing if he didn't � didn't surrender immediately and that was something like 7:30 in the morning.� We were to consider ourselves prisoners at 7:30 and in no time flat, the German tanks came in and went right round us in a circle and put swastika flags on top of their tanks and their bombers flew in at just that time and when they saw the flags, they veered off and went away but they were just going to start bombing.
Can you remember how you felt?
Yeah.� It felt bloody awful. Excuse my French� That's mild.� It's the heart-sinking sensation of the world.�
See you were entitled to rations of so much rice and so much bread and so much sugar and so much per man, per day.� Pretty skimpy.� Based on �it was supposed to be based on the host nation's rations of the lower order�whether they were or not it was doubtful. � So the Red Cross supplemented, so that's why they put the vegetables and the stuff that could be combined into one mess and cooked and [this] was used to supplement meals. Then you got stuff like butter, biscuits, chocolate, things like that individual �and milk, condensed milk.� People used to operate that in a funny way.� Your system craved for something sweet in those places, so people would take cocoa and mix it up with the condensed milk and some of them would take it in one go - did the whole lot in one thing, otherwise ... some would take a bit each day you see?. And tea, of course you used to get tea. That was the sort of saving grace of the whole lot really, but� the stuff that was to be yours individually, like butter, that you didn't use all the time, was kept in the store room in your name so you could store it without� you could get it when you wanted.
Apart from chess, what other things did you do to keep yourselves entertained?
Well we actually had our own university in the camp.� We used to teach languages, philosophy, logic, all kinds of things.� There were a lot of talented people in there�artists from the French particularly,� also we had a marvellous section of actors and they put on plays.��
We did shows by Wilde, 'The Importance of Being Earnest', always something with a comic touch.� Guys, they knew how important humour was� They didn't need � they were all humorous anyway .� We all liked to laugh�that was what kept us going, I guess.� That and the sport, but this entertainment�they'd put on a show for a week you know, at a time.� They made all the stage props, marvellous stuff, just out of cardboard and packing cases, and debris that was around the camp.� They'd paint it up.� It was lifelike.� Marvellous.� And the shows were really good..
Now, the quiz shows, would that be like inter-hut competitions?
Yes, exactly right. It was�.
And the university that you had there was this something that was informal or..?
It was formal, had proper timetables and tutors and that�� I taught Italian and French, as I say, with a vocabulary of about 200 words!� But it went over and worked.
You've got to have some way of cooking if a Red Cross parcel comes in because, for instance, the tinned meat, you could eat it cold but if you wanted to eat it warm, you've got to warm it. Now that means, there's no fuel in the camp � not at all - so what you do is you turn around and� you'd get a block of wood�now that's where the bed boards came in handy because when they make, when they build the bed they put slats across the beds so you get one bed board off someone and you cut that piece out. Now down here you get some canvas or something. It might be some � if you could have part of a tent or something, you'd turn it around and you'd anchor it to the bottom and anchor it to the top and you'd have a bellows.� Now that would be the method of putting the wind into and there'd be a pipe to the actual burner, which was going to hold the pot. Now to get that through there you've got to have a � tin tappers as we call them.� You had to make the pipes out of Red Cross parcels.� If you can imagine a tin of beans at home, and you're going to tap it until it was flat and then roll it up side ways till you'd made the size of a pipe, because from that bellows to there you can't stand over the flame so you've got to have the pipe so they'd make it out of Red Cross tins. The actual container that holds that was also all made out of tin tappers.� Then you pumped away with your bellows.
Now you're going to want fuel so every time you walk out for a walking party or anything you'd pull a branch off a tree and you'd put it down your shirt so that when you get back to camp you'll get into the camp with your bit of wood. And if you come to the stage where there is not enough wood on the marches then you take some more bed boards off. And when you think of bed board every bed's got all these lattices � you know when you go to the shop today they sell them � I see them advertised locally and when you think they are only about 2 inch-3 inch bed boards � they cut up very nice. Now, the next thing - we ran out of bed boards so the next thing you do, you put someone up in the ceiling and you can take any of the supporting timber that's holding the roof and you can bring that down into the room as long as the guard's not about�
As I say you've got no saws, no hammers, no chisels, the only thing you've got is tin which they've hammered and to get the tin they got � someone's got a bit of steel from somewhere out on a working party, bought it home and shaped to a hammer � to a flat piece of� - use it as a hammer. And when you go into the ceiling it's bolted so you have to turn around and either undo the bolts, or have someone who can tap with something like a knife for long enough to cut the timber � you can break it � and then you bring it down and everybody chips it up.
Now one day, in [camp] 52 it was, the Ities were working and they took a telephone � they were taking the telephone poles down through the camp and they took one telephone down and � a wooden telephone pole � and they dropped it on the ground and went to dinner. When they came back there was no telephone pole and the guards searched the huts and never found it. It had been chopped up. How they did it I wouldn't know yet.
I presume other camps had radios, they must have done, but in our particular instance we had a very clever Englishman who spoke French fluently and also a shorthand typist and another French Canadian, I think his name was Abraham Levi, but never mind. He was also fluent in languages, and where it came from, I don't know, but they found a crystal and they � we had a little wire with a crystal it.� Where they got the ear-phones from, I don't know - better not to know - and it was set up and every night at nine o'clock or thereabouts we'd have a news bulletin.� If it was in French it was easily translated and so we got the B.B.C. and of course the crystals, you can't always pick the right station.� Sometimes you'd get a French station or a Spanish station and...�
There were a lot of clever fellows in that prisoner of war camp. This chap, a friend� - I say a friend of ours � a chap in the next bunk, he was a tinsmith and he made a� waterproof box, which slapped down and went down into the cess pool when anything happened -that was where it [the radio] spent most of the day� This man tapped away. He straightened out milk tins - we had milk-powder was one of the famous things from, especially from Canada, and you got all the � straightened it out and you got all the solder off and solder all round it � ingenuity.
Now the 'Tiki Times' was - every week � was put up on the notice board in the huts and it was news from all round the world that we gleaned out of the 600 men's letters that we got. We got the racing results in New Zealand and Australia � the Melbourne Cup was won by so and so � the rugby results and that's all been put in here plus articles and when you're very very hungry your brain becomes very sharp and some of the poems in here are really out of this world. I mention the doctor � Captain Seaford� - Could I read it to you?
Yes do, that's very nice
This is Captain Seaford RAMC.� [reads] 'It is my inner most hope that this is the final Christmas you have a way from home. My message to all you all is � with God's help may you soon see you loved one's your wife, your mother, children and sweetheart' � could you read the rest of that?
Ok, '..you have made me welcome and my stay with you has been made happy by your cheerfulness. I ask you to have patience a little longer and to use all the tact you have for as each day brings our victory nearer so does the temper and powers of reason of our enemy become shorter. I shall be proud to march with you and I want all of you to be there when our captivity ends. To me E353, (which was the camp at Milowitz) will be a reminder of friendships made and hard times shared together during Christmas 1944. Good luck to you all. God save the King.' That was the issue of 20th December 1944.
That's when they set out on the march and they marched and they marched until V.E. Day � till May.
So the 'Tiki Times', was that produced by hand?
All hand-written. Max Wallace did that � he was a sign writer.... He died not so long ago too, Max Wallace.
How did it survive on the march?
Jack had the whole manuscript on a back pack.
So you say Jack � is that Jack..?
Gallichan � he was the editor.
�So he packed that up in his pack and he carried that..?
Carried that until it was blown off his back at Regensberg and then it was put aboard, after the shambles � they had a wagon with a horse that took the sick and this chap who'd been wounded and was one of the sick and he swapped it for his pack and it got to England.
The promise had gone out that we would go to a rest situation and �some days after that we did get to the rest situation and it was in a brick kiln, four storeys, huge and.. the storeys of course were for drying bricks so they were slatted �with narrow stairways going up to the different stories and �a most dreadful place...It wasn't helped at all by a report of a couple of corpses lying�ready to be taken out, close to the entrance door. So obviously there had been troops ahead of us and a couple had died there. That didn't help at all. So anyway we got ourselves established.� I think we were on the second floor, if I remember, and made a little cubby-hole and shifted a few bricks and found a place to lie which wasn't too bad, same as everyone else was doing.� The orders were that no-one, no fires were to be lit whatever. We were already very hungry, of course, as we had been regularly all the way � pretty well � and of course the order not to light fires was impossible to maintain but you had to watch because guards would come through. And so we, along with others, boiled up what stuff we had, which was probably mangolds [type of beet vegetable]. And during the early part of that time the guards had come up and the South African group directly behind us had made themselves a little place �and the guards came up and they hadn't been careful enough to watch and one of them brewing up was shot dead. Illustrating the fact that the shooting was just � just across the way from -oh - almost immediately behind us, one or two bricks away.� Our condition was easily assessed because we never moved from our sleeping position.�
It started fairly abruptly—the Russians were breaking through, once again from — and getting fairly close and getting very close and the next time we were on the road...so before we knew it, we had orders to get our gear together and get out. The next time we were on the road. I've got a map [interruption while map is obtained] � Now — The march out from G�rlitz, VIIIA, covered from G�rlitz to Blankenberg am Harz which is near the town of Gottingen, where Gottingen university is. The towns covered in order were: Gorlitz to Bautzen to Kamenz to Koningsbruck, Meissen where they made the ceramics. We slept in the Meissen works which was lovely and warm, and Borna, Gotha Eisenberg, Stenditz, we spent the night in a stone quarry in the freezing rain, Jena, Schonstet, Halberstalt, Erfurt, Erfurt was where they made the ovens for the Jewish holocaust Duderstadt, Gottingen, Blankenburg am Harz, the Harz mountains were there. That covered 24 days — 3 and a half weeks�
We did that march out and we also saw the column of Jews from our march at one period, which I'll describe...No, we weren't [able to talk to them] Had we been able to we'd have been shot. Our guards, when we saw the Jews to the north, our guys started to look over—they were very curious as to what was going on and our guards were terrifically nervous and even menacing. They knew they'd be in trouble if we were allowed to contact the Jew column. The column was very long and it stretched right back to the horizon behind us. The figures were just pyjama-dressed Jews in their striped, thin uniforms. They carried nothing. Each person had nothing to carry, but in front of this huge column was a small cart drawn by six people laden presumably with their belongings, whatever their belongings could have been. As night fell we lost contact with them and never saw them again....
[Conditions on march]. Usually at night they'd find a farmer's big barn or something like that where we could stay the night but the reason we had to sleep in the stone quarry was that a column had gone through before us and rifled all the farmer's spuds or apples or something and the mayor of the town said let them sleep in the bloody stone quarry so that we spent the night there. It was dreadful— all these horrible rocks and rubbish and pouring freezing cold rain so� We did get issued with — I think— a loaf —this little bun, loaf and a few stews at night when we stopped at night on a farm, soup. Actually any food we saw on the way — fruit or vegetables or stuff — we pounced on and ate.
From Czestochowa down towards the Odessa � the thaw had started � like it comes all of a sudden � you get a warm wind and the ice starts to melt but on the way down where the German tanks had come over the roads -they didn't bother burying German prisoners � anybody who was on the road was just run over and squashed in the ice and then the slush turned to ice and it became thicker and thicker. One old lady's dead grey hair was in the ice and .. in the run off of the road before us. There were dead bodies of 'stripeys' all along the side of the � you couldn't bury them because you couldn't dig a hole in the ground. It was all like steel.
So that when you say stripeys you mean..?
They'd be from the concentration camps.
So that when you were walking along the road there were just bodies, frozen bodies..?
Just left there. They didn't bother to shoot them, the German guards. They just sat down and froze to death - they couldn't go on any further...�This Russian who was with us he was even eating a raw potato. I gave him a Canadian water biscuit, a Canadian biscuit with plum jam on it and gave it to him. Well I tell you what, he never left my side. He was with me all the time!
We � this is another beaut. There were no bathrooms or anything except a communal bath and shower and we got to Odessa and we were told to take all our clothes off. Take our singlets off that were lousy, throw them away and we had this shower and I had some lifebuoy soap- those days - you can't get it now, can you? � lifebuoy soap - beautiful pink soap with a smell of antiseptic and we were singing - and through the door came about a dozen women, stark as the day they were born and all looked like weightlifters. They had bosoms on them like balloons, they had arms on them like weightlifters and these are the women who were working on the railways and because they had no men and they were doing all the heavy work. And anyway, here they all are, us puny, weak, skinny New Zealanders and Englishmen and all sorts there, and the Russian women just got under the shower too and I handed them my lifebuoy soap. Never saw it again � they'd never seen soap like it.
We were formed up at the top of Odessa and we had to walk down the King Charles [Potemkin] steps to the port and lo and behold in the distance we could see this British ship with a great big Union flag painted on the side of it and that's when we really felt we were home.
It must have been very emotional..?
It still gets me � we were free. And the Tommies started to sing:
[sings] I've got a sixpence, a jolly, jolly sixpence
I've got sixpence to take home to my wife
I've got tuppence to lend
And tuppence to spend
And nothing to take home to my wife
No cares have I -believe me
No pretty little girl to deceive me
I'm as happy as a king � believe me
As I go rolling rolling home
And then the New Zealanders replied with [sings]:�
I'm sick of the army
I want to go home.
And of course we were a hell of a long way from home because we were in Russia and New Zealand was a long way away.
There were guys in there- they had given up hope - and we found that in the cells as well. And they just got thinner and thinner. And we had a whole group of them that would bring out their rice sacks and lie in a row out in the hot sun. And just lie there and pull the thing over them and they just faded away�.They'd come out - there's something peculiar about it. They'd lie down there and they'd pull this sack right over their face, about four or five or six of them, and they'd all lie in a row and they'd just fade away and die. They'd just given up hope, or they had some illness. There were a lot of people with illnesses, which was beriberi, which is a lack of vitamin B so it turns....And you used to get up in the morning and push in the fleshy part of your leg, and if it stayed in and only came out slowly you knew that you were getting beriberi. And so the first thing you did in the morning was push that in. It was pretty bad. There were guys, they would get waterlogged and die.
The Japanese did bring in what they called nuka, which was rice bran, and it was probably one of my early times that I started, I realised how food is so important to your body. And nuka was just the bran because the rice we had was white rice and �the nuka� , some people kept their nuka in bamboo, you know how you can cut bamboo and sort of make a cup out of it�because � they'd got some bamboo. And it was quite pathetic really because some guys that were dying, and even though they were taking their nuka, blokes would make their best friends out of them. They would be saying, 'I'm looking after you', and that sort of thing, and they'd be standing by them and sleeping beside them and be their best mate, but I don't know whether they did it for that reason, I'm probably being a little bit - what ever you might call it..- because as soon as they died they'd grabbed their nuka and their boots, if they still had boots, or their clothing. �You often wondered if they were doing it out of the goodness of their heart or they had their eye on the thing.
Overview essay | Daily life in a POW Camp | Camp shows | ''Tiki Times'' - POW newspaper | Evolution of the camp cooker | Forced marches | List of camps | About the book | Further reading | Sound files
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