Blitz Kids (38 page)

As he rescued some American nurses from the water, pulling them safely on to his landing craft, he noticed that one was familiar. He discovered that the nurse, Ruth Hindman, was someone he had rescued from the sea when the
Newfoundland
had sunk.

The horrors of war had a profound effect on the youngsters. Having experienced being torpedoed in mid-Atlantic and the desperate rush for the lifeboats, John Chinnery found there were moments onboard a ship in the middle of the ocean that made him think clearly about his situation. Standing on deck on watch, he was struck by how alone he seemed. Staring out to sea, with nothing to see but the horizon, made him realize he couldn’t be small minded. For him, the sea was like a rite of passage: he had started the war as a twelve-year-old boy and had grown up quickly. He had learned to accept the ways of the men around him, learned to live with their foibles and accepted the role he had chosen. He kept this in mind whenever tempers frayed. He realized how, on long and arduous journeys, a terrible atmosphere could engulf a ship. He watched vicious arguments erupt among men who played games of Monopoly that lasted for days. On one trip, a sailor was lost overboard. It was officially an accident but the teenager feared it was murder, the result of arguments among the crew. For a boy among men, it only served to increase the tension he felt.

In 1943, after four years at sea and aged just sixteen, John Chinnery decided he’d had enough. He had braved U-boats in the Atlantic and the ice of the Arctic convoys where he had suffered frostbite on his
eyelids. He had escaped from the decks of a flaming tanker. Following a stressful Atlantic convoy, which had left him shaking with fear and unable to work, he knew that enough was enough. Back in Edinburgh, he found himself standing on a bridge looking down and feeling that he just wanted to throw himself off and end the incessant psychological pressure. It was the final straw. He returned home and informed his mother he would not return to his ship.

But the decision was not his to make. After a few days the police arrived to return him to the ship. He refused to leave, was arrested, taken to court and jailed for one month. Whilst detained, his fellow prisoners were appalled at his treatment: here was a courageous boy, whose nerve had gone, being treated like a criminal. To protect him, his fellow prisoners arranged for him to work in the prison library, where he was able to rest and finally experience some peace.

Freed after a month, John was sent to a rehabilitation centre on the west coast of Scotland, where he spent three months on a farm. As he later admitted, it was one of the best periods of his life. He loved the fresh food – devouring the platefuls of swede, mashed with butter and pepper, that the farmer’s wife served for him. After enduring the horrors of the war at sea he delighted in getting close to nature: just watching as piglets were born helped him to reacquaint himself with the beauty of the world. It allowed him to reconnect with a more peaceful way of life after the stress of the Atlantic convoys. But it could not last forever: his three months were soon over and he returned to the Merchant Navy. Like so many of the boys in the Merchant Navy, he had volunteered and – despite his youth – he was no longer free to make his own choices.

With teenage boys active in every campaign of the war – on land, at sea and in the air – it was little wonder some under-eighteen year olds found themselves in the uncertain world of German and Italian prisoner-of-war camps. The world endured by POWs, of all ages, was far removed from that they had earlier known. Those who had served time in civilian prisons or spent their youth at boarding schools, knew something of the enclosed atmosphere, but life ‘behind the wire’ in a POW camp went a step further.

An almost constant threat of death hung over them and, as many stressed, even inmates of civilian gaols knew the length of their sentence. The inmates of POW camps had no idea how long their ordeal might last; no idea when they would next see their families; no idea when they would next walk freely down the road arm-in-arm with a girl. Added to this was the burden of work, often in appalling conditions, something that was endured by all prisoners under the rank of sergeant.

Following the defeat of the British Expeditionary Force in France in 1940, some 40,000 British soldiers fell into the hands of the enemy. They joined others already captured in Norway earlier that year and by a constant stream of sailors and airmen. By war’s end nearly 200,000 servicemen had endured life in German captivity. One of the
first boys to arrive in a prisoner-of-war camp was sixteen-year-old John Norman, who was captured in France in 1940. He had attempted to reach a boat off the coast at St Valéry, only for it to be attacked and sunk by the enemy. He swam to the shore and was taken into captivity. After arriving at Stalag 8B after days of travelling in a cramped cattle truck, John was exhausted, hungry and uncertain of what fate had in store for him.

After being registered as a prisoner and allotted a bunk in a hut, he attempted to settle down to his new life. Youth had its advantages and disadvantages: being young he had no wife and children to worry about; he had the mental stamina and adaptability found in people too young to truly understand their situation; he was also fit and healthy and able to endure hardship, unlike some of the older prisoners whose bodies had been weakened by the hardships of the depression. Soon after arriving in the POW camp, John was selected for a working party – an
Arbeitskommando
– sent to mine in the nearby coalfields. For nearly five years, from the age of sixteen to twenty-one, he worked as a coal miner.

The work was hard and heavy. The shifts were often twelve hours a day, while all the time the prisoners lived on starvation rations augmented by occasional Red Cross parcels and whatever they could beg, borrow, steal or trade from the German and Polish miners they worked alongside. More than once, John Norman was thrown into solitary confinement, locked up on a diet of bread and water, for daring to defy the guards. On one occasion the teenager attempted to protect a mate who had been attacked by a German miner, who hit the prisoner with a metal rod. John punched the man and knocked him out. For his trouble, he received a beating from the guards who hit him until he was unconscious and dragged him off to the cells where he was left in total darkness. He remained in the darkness for two weeks, with the cell door being opened just once a day as the guards gave him a small ration of food and water – just enough to keep him alive. As he later admitted, at that time his mind was empty of the normal thoughts shared by teenagers: ‘Forget about girlfriends – all I dreamed about was a large plate of bread pudding.’

From the start, British children played an important role in providing home comforts to the prisoners. They contributed to fundraising drives organized by the St John Ambulance, Red Cross
and other independent groups. Some were the children of men who had been captured, others just wished to help. Though many contributions were small, every penny was gratefully received. The Red Cross recorded their efforts: five Girl Guides in Bishop Auckland donated £8 raised from a jumble sale; five-year-old Wendy Watson sold her doll’s cot; a Sunday School in Cumberland donated the takings from a nativity play; William Northmore constructed a model aeroplane, selling it for £7; in Chorleywood three girls, Elizabeth and Jill Sanger and Sheila Buck, put on a production of
Ali Baba
, raising £21; eleven-year-old Betty Frosch of Stoke Newington donated eight shillings, the proceeds of the sale of a tulip she had grown; nine-year-old Norman Hudson raised £3 from a private library. Three enterprising schoolboys in Foulridge raised £20 through a whist drive. They then encouraged their girlfriends to try to match the amount and the girls raised a further £80.

Children also played an active role in supplying something else for the POWs. Girl Guides collected 5,000 used cotton reels. These were handed over to the authorities, without the girls understanding what they were for. The reels were stuffed with small silk escape maps, refilled and given fresh labels and then posted to POW camps to be used by escaping prisoners. But escape maps and other such ruses were part of a glamorous image of life in a prisoner-of-war camp. The reality was far less exciting.

Whilst Britain’s children were raising funds for prisoners of war, they were unaware that some recipients were themselves little more than children. With so many merchant ships lost at sea, around 5,000 men and boys serving in the Merchant Navy found their way into the prisoner-of-war camps of Germany. Unlike soldiers who felt an almost universal sense of dejection upon being taken prisoner, merchant seamen had more mixed emotions. Most had survived the sinking of their ship only to be rescued from the water by their attackers. Thus, their captors were also their saviours. In a conflict where the sea often seemed the real enemy, the survivors of sunken merchant ships had a genuine reason to feel grateful to the Germans who had pulled them from the waves.

One of the early prisoners was Leslie McDermott-Brown, a fourteen year old from Glasgow. In 1939 he had been evacuated to Troon but
had returned home after just two months, describing the town as a ‘one eyed dump’.
1
He had worked in a solicitor’s office and then gone to a nautical school, finding a position with a shipping company as a cadet. On 28 May 1940, he joined SS
Kemmendine
that left Glasgow for Rangoon via Cape Town. On 13 July, whilst in the Indian Ocean, Leslie was below deck heading for a wash, when he heard a bang: ‘My first thoughts were that something had gone wrong down below in the engine room but, when the banging persisted and our Lascar baker came running along the alleyway making his life jacket secure, I immediately followed suit.’
2

Reaching the deck, he saw the quartermaster in his pyjamas wearing a steel helmet. Next he spotted Lascar seamen praying. He knew it was time to get into the lifeboat. Rowing away from the sinking ship, they were taken onboard the German raider, the
Atlantis
, that had attacked them. They were taken below decks where they joined survivors from other vessels sunk by the German raider.

He was soon transferred to the
Tirranna
– a prize ship captured by the
Atlantis
. He was onboard for eight weeks and was nearing France when he was sunk for a second time. The
Tirranna
was torpedoed by a British submarine and Leslie dived overboard and swam to escape the sinking ship: ‘Would I ever come to the surface again, was my thought, as the gurgling water filled my head. It seemed unending but at last my head broke surface.’
3
Whilst the teenager got away, 100 people on the ship were drowned. He began to swim for the coast, hoping he could avoid the wood from the wreck that burst through the surface of the water. He supported himself on a piece of wood, then swam towards a raft, struggling against the sea. He believed it took over two hours to reach the raft and eventually was transferred to a lifeboat that was then picked up by a German boat. Once ashore he was sent to Royan, where he was given an old French Army uniform, and then sent by bus to Wilhelmshaven in Germany. He was held at a navigation school, where he was interrogated. Next he was sent to an internment camp where he was registered as POW No. 1058.

From there he was sent to Sandbostel, ‘a large dismal-looking camp’
4
that was home to 25,000 prisoners. The camp was built on an expanse of sandy ground. This was a world of endless food queues, surrounded by prisoners of all nationalities. On the first night Leslie and the other
men from his ship bedded down on the floor. They then moved into a barrack room, twenty-six feet long, fifteen wide and eleven high. It was filled with wooden bunks in three tiers, built in blocks of twelve. As he later noted, they were each issued with a mug, bowl, knife, fork and spoon. However, he soon realized that a spoon was all he needed for the weak stews and soups that were their daily rations.

Whilst in the camp, Leslie joined in football matches played between crews of ships, in a league where each team bore a ship’s name. Since there were only two others from his ship in the camp, the teenager joined the team formed by the crew of SS
Lustrous
. On 22 February 1941 the tanker SS
Lustrous
had been sunk two weeks into its journey. Among the crew was fourteen-year-old, Newcastle-born John Hipkin, known to his friends and family as Jackie. A keen Sea Scout, he had already told his schoolteacher that he intended to go to sea. One day in late 1940 he was sent on an errand but did not return home until late that night:

Upon arriving home he told his parents that he had signed on with a merchant ship and was going to sea as a cabin boy. As he later recalled: ‘It was just a question of leaving school at fourteen and living on Tyneside. It was a big shipping area, so there was always a demand for seamen.’ Remembering how appalled their son had been when Germany had attacked Poland, his parents agreed that he should go to sea. They believed that this one trip would cure his desire to be a sailor and he would then return home. Their hopes were soon thwarted.

Also onboard
Lustrous
was fifteen-year-old John Brantom. In December 1940 John had had a fight with his brother at their Swansea home. The furious boy mounted his bicycle, rode to the docks where he spotted a ship advertising for a crew. He took his chance, signed on
as a galley boy on the SS
Roy
and went to war. Immediately regretting his rash actions, and putting himself in considerable danger, the teenage thought about jumping ship in North America and seeking his fortune. His thoughts were typical of a generation of boys brought up on the action and adventure of cowboy films and comics. Instead, he left the ship at a far less glamorous location: Newcastle, where he went ashore and accidentally missed the sailing of his ship. After spending Christmas in a hostel for seamen, John Brantom found a position on the
Lustrous
.

The
Lustrous
left Newcastle on 13 February 1941, headed for the Dutch Antilles. Onboard were a total of four boys: John Hipkin, John Brantom, Nicky Holmes and Lewis McMahon. As they headed to sea, John Hipkin was struck by the reality of what he had signed on for:

Heading north, the
Lustrous
joined a convoy that was escorted by a Royal Navy destroyer, but once out in the open waters of the Atlantic, they were on their own. John Hipkin later recalled the shock of discovering their situation: ‘Came up on deck one morning and our ship was alone. The convoy had been split up overnight.’ What came next was even more disconcerting.

Ten days into the journey, one of the lookouts spotted a shape in the distance: the German battleship the
Scharnhorst
. It was part of ‘Operation Berlin’, a campaign to send raiders into the Atlantic to sink merchant shipping and slowly starve the British Isles. With nothing but a four-pound gun to defend itself, and unable to match the battleship for speed,
Lustrous
’s fate was sealed. Coming up on to deck John Hipkin was shocked to see the German raider in the distance. As a youngster on his first trip to sea, John was uncertain what would happen next. Fortunately, one of the older men was quick to react: ‘The cook said to me, “Get yourself back to your cabin. Get some nice warm clothes on. We are going to be in trouble soon!” He was right.’ He rushed to his cabin and pulled on warm clothes. As the order to
abandon ship was given, John Hipkin was still in his cabin putting on his life jacket. With no time to think, he grabbed a carton of cigarettes he had purchased as a present for his father. Taking nothing else, he made his way to the lifeboats, worried the enemy might sink them as well.

The fourteen year old re-emerged on deck just the
Scharnhorst
opened fire. With no means of defending their ship, the crew were told to abandon ship and, as they did, a shell from the
Scharnhorst
hit the radio shack, hastening their departure. As John Hipkin watched the shells from the
Scharnhorst
landing in the sea around the
Lustrous
, he became convinced the Germans had deliberately fired wide in order to force the tanker’s crew to make good their escape before their vessel was destroyed. It was what he later called ‘the comradeship of the sea’. The experience made him realize he was lucky their attacker had been a battleship in daytime and not a U-boat at night. The three lifeboats were hastily rowed to a safe distance as the
Scharnhorst
blasted the
Lustrous
, sending it sliding, bow first, beneath the waves. As the crew wondered what would happen next, the
Scharnhorst
sailed away to continue its attack on the convoy, leaving them alone. To their great relief, she returned a few hours later to pick up the survivors who were hauled from the lifeboats by German sailors.