Dunkirk: The Men They Left Behind (36 page)

At 10 p.m. on 16 October 1943 the ships sailed for Sweden, carrying 4,156 repatriates. The men on board were swept by a wave of emotion as they realized that after more than three years of waiting they were finally free of the Germans and were actually going home. It was difficult for them to comprehend that they would soon be seeing their loved ones again. Arriving in Gothenburg three days later, the prisoners were amazed at the twinkling lights of the port after their world of blackout. Leaving the Swedish ship they were soon transferred to another vessel. On their way they exchanged friendly greetings with the similarly wounded Germans who were heading in the opposite direction and for whom they had been exchanged. The British Legation in Stockholm reported back to London on the behaviour of the British soldiers:The troops were unanimous in expressing their delight at the reception given to them by all the Swedes whom they saw or met. They were the object of enthusiastic demonstrations the whole way from Trelleborg to Gothenburg and the press was full of photographs and sympathetic anecdotes. To me the most poignant memory is of a Swedish band on the quayside playing ‘Home Sweet Home’ with hundreds of our soldiers hanging over the sides of the two big liners singing not boisterously but from the bottom of their hearts.
²⁹

Waiting in Gothenburg were two British ships. The hospital ship
Atlantis
was used for the most badly wounded of the soldiers, including the blind, stretcher cases and the mentally ill. The transport ship
Empress of Russia
was used for protected personnel. A third ship, the Swedish
Drottningholm
, was also used for the repatriation of protected personnel. The British government had arranged a grant of £2,000 to be spent by the embassy in Stockholm to purchase comforts from the Swedish Red Cross. This money went on apples, razors, sweets, matches and illustrated newspapers for the returning men.

After the comfort of the liner, many of the soldiers were disappointed to see the troopship that the British had sent to collect them. Rather than beds they were supposed to sleep in hammocks – a difficult enough operation for a healthy man, let alone a man with one arm. Also, the steep ladders meant the men with legs missing found it almost impossible to reach the lower decks. Yet these were small concerns; all that really counted was that the ship was British and they were heading home.

Norman Barnett remembered the journey home: ‘It was wonderful. But when we were off the coast of Norway the Captain came over the tannoy to say we had to get offthe gun platform or else the Germans would open fire.’ During the crossing each repatriate received a letter explaining what would happen following their arrival in the UK. The returning men were pleased to see they would be given twenty-eight days’ leave as soon as possible after arrival. They were each to receive an advance of pay of £4. The soldiers were also issued telegrams and postcards which they were able to send free of charge to alert their families of their safe return to the UK.

On 25 October the ship finally docked at Leith in Scotland, where the disembarking soldiers were greeted by women who handed out tea and sandwiches – ‘char & wads’. There were no family members waiting to greet them upon arrival. The army had deliberately kept families away until the men had been debriefed at a hotel at Turnberry. Geoff Griffin had just one thing to say about his treatment by the Germans: ‘I only hope that the Germans involved were found and punished.’
³⁰

The process of bringing home wounded POWs and attempting to facilitate their recovery and rehabilitation was not an easy one. In two cases families who were overjoyed at the news their men were coming home had to receive the tragic news that they had died during the crossing of the North Sea.

There were also important concerns about how much the press could reveal. Special efforts were made to prevent publication of ‘lurid horror stories’
³¹
about the treatment of prisoners that had been proposed by the
Daily Mail
and
Daily Express
newspapers.* The fear was that such exposés could jeopardize any future exchange of prisoners.

Others had more immediate concerns. The medical branch of the War Office found precious little material on the subject had been printed in the aftermath of the Great War. As a result they were unprepared for dealing with the mental state of the returning prisoners. Efforts were therefore made to gather the necessary information, with what was discovered during the repatriation schemes eventually being put to use when the mass of prisoners returned home. In 1943 Lord Phillimore, who had been a POW during the Great War, wrote to the War Office: ‘Will you take it from me that their psychological state is rather a queer one? First they feel rather ashamed of themselves for having survived when their comrades were killed and for having played so small a part in the war.’
³²

What he claimed was soon discovered to be accurate. Even limbless veterans were found to exhibit psychiatric problems that outweighed their physical handicaps. Initial studies of repatriated men showed ‘mild evidence of depression or neurotic difficulty’ and that over 25 per cent of returning medical staff displayed ‘incapacitating apathy and depression’.
³³
Found beneath the mild symptoms were deeper issues that were discovered to have been masked by the euphoria of coming home. Quite simply, they hid their bitterness and hostility behind a superficial layer of protective cheerfulness. This was partly tied to their dreams of home and their expectations of what life might be. In their minds they had idealized ‘civvy street’ and the comforts of home. In reality, they returned to a country in the deep grip of rationing, one where they could find little escape from war’s domination of their daily lives. One serving officer wrote to the War Office to express his concern for the returning men. He spoke of their likely emotions: ‘disillusionment on return home – the home of the man’s fantasies maybe – is a most appalling factor and the problem affects all men who have been long away from home or very isolated’.
³⁴
Around 20 per cent of all returning long-term POWs were found to have difficulty adapting to life after their return from Germany, noting that the reality of day-to-day life did not match the romanticized version of home they had yearned for while in captivity.

One later wrote of walking down his street yet failing to respond to the greetings of his neighbours – quite simply he was overwhelmed by emotions and unable to react. Another admitted failing to attend a lunch arranged by his father in honour of his return. His reasoning was simple – he did not have to go, therefore he was not going to go. After three years of having his every movement dictated by outsiders he simply wanted to control his own destiny. It may have been difficult for outsiders to understand, but the men needed time to learn to live again. Norman Barnett recalled arriving home on three weeks’ compassionate leave:I got home but Mum was out. I stood at the front door and waited. Then I saw her walking down the road. She came running down. It was amazing. For Christ’s sake, it was something! That night I went out to see my uncle and aunt down the road. It was total blackout – but I could remember every single step down the road. It all came natural to me. But that night I couldn’t sleep in the bed. I slept on the floor. For weeks I washed and shaved in cold water. I thought if I ever got caught again I’d have to learn it all over again. So I couldn’t relax.

Of course, their mental state was not the only concern for the authorities. The returning men had very real physical needs to be cared for. There were false limbs to be fitted, others needed reconstructive surgery or had to learn how to cope with a life of freedom that was restricted by blindness. The repatriated men also had to be treated for their general physical condition after three years of captivity in appalling conditions. Studies revealed that around 11 per cent of the men had developed gastro-intestinal symptoms while in captivity, a result of their poor diets and living conditions. Recovery would not be a quick process for the men who had been wounded during the BEF’s defeats of 1940, but at least they knew it was a process that would take place surrounded by their loved ones.

We were worn out. We weren’t eating. We weren’t drinking. We were just marching.
Bill Holmes, captured on the Dunkirk beaches

I saw a German officer shoot three wounded soldiers.
British soldier quoted in United Nations War Crimes Reports
¹

The crushing defeat inflicted upon the British Army and its allies had shattered the myth of the quick war, ‘over by Christmas’, and the supposed invincibility of the British Army had been swept away by the tide of German military efficiency.

For all the desperate courage displayed by the army during the retreat, they had been pushed back, humiliated, then driven into the sea. Those left in France were exhausted beyond belief, racked by hunger, pitifully dishevelled, scared, bewildered and bitter. Moreover, they were about to face up to life as slaves to Hitler’s dark dream of European domination.

Through May and June nearly 40,000 British soldiers joined the seemingly endless columns of marchers heading towards Germany. Alongside what appeared to be hundreds of thousands of French soldiers – including large and incongruous groups of colonial troops – and groups of Belgians and Dutchmen, the battered remnants of the BEF marched into captivity.

There were numerous columns of men, taking hundreds of different routes. Yet whether they were in the single column, more than 8,000 strong, that left St Valery in the second week of June, or in the smaller, earlier groups captured in central Belgium, all shared the same numbing sense of despair and degradation.

There are few fully coherent accounts of what happened in those bitter days. Few troubled to keep record of their progress. Some made scribbled notes recording the names of the towns they passed through, a handful even recorded the distances they marched, courtesy of the road signs they saw as they trudged from town to town. Even those who had the energy to record such basic details had little inclination to record anything else. Most were too tired and hungry. All that mattered was whether there would be food at the end of the day.

The attitude of the victorious army as they marched their captives into Germany was summed up by what was overheard by Arthur Fleischmann, a Czech soldier captured while fighting in France. Listening to his guards, he heard one say: ‘The English bear the blame for all evil and must be destroyed.’
²
It was a fitting start to what was to be a hellish period for the British captives.

However, for many the marches started as relatively easy. Large numbers reported that their original captors – the front-line infantrymen of the Wehrmacht spearhead – had treated them with sympathy. Tommy Arnott, captured at St Valery, was among a group who received unusual gifts from the enemy troops: ‘On the first day after we were captured we walked a good distance. It rained all day and the Germans gave many of us umbrellas – not normally part of soldiers’ equipment even if it was wet.’ Yet this generosity was short lived. What soon followed was a bitter indication of what was to come: ‘We had to run up hill shouting “Chamberlain!” in memory of our Prime Minister. A German wagon was filming this performance for propaganda as well as trying to humiliate us.’ That night two men were shot attempting to escape.

In the initial confusion of defeat, it took time for the newly captive men to comprehend their situation. Many, though expecting to be executed in the immediate aftermath of battle, had been fairly well treated. There were some executions – some notorious as at Le Paradis or Wormhoudt, others less so, like the executions in the Foret de Nieppe – but thousands of prisoners went safely into captivity. As many found, it was only after they came under the control of soldiers from the rear echelons that they really began to suffer. Having been captured by a perfectly polite, Oxford-educated SS officer, Eric Reeves noticed the changing nature of the guards: ‘Along came the B-echelon troops. They were shoving us in the back and shouting “
Raus! Raus!
” – at that time we didn’t know what it meant. We spent our first night in cattle pens. The next day we marched for six hours to a farm then for the rest of the time we always slept in open fields.’

One of the first observations made by Norman Barnett after he was sent back to the rear of the German lines was just how different everything seemed there. The German spearhead had been ‘a crust’ beneath which a very different world existed. Gone were the lines of modern trucks, the roaring columns of heavily armoured motorcycle combinations, the column after column of heavily armed and vicious-looking young soldiers. In their place came horse-drawn wagons, guards on bicycles and soldiers who seemed much older than those doing the fighting.

To many prisoners, it was the age of the guards that seemed to make the real difference in treatment they received. The younger soldiers, those on the battlefield, may have been more dedicated to their duty and convinced of their cause but they were enthusiastic in their pursuit of war. Once the battle was won they were, in the main, happy to move on to the next battlefield. The older men, many veterans of the Great War, seemed less than happy to have been recalled to the army. They felt they were too old to have been disturbed by this new conflict. They wanted to be at home with their families, not guarding the vast columns of prisoners who were heading to Germany. And it was the prisoners who paid the price for the obvious frustration of the guards.

As the marchers raised themselves from the fields and town squares in which they had been gathered following capture, all felt uncertain. Would they be put into trucks or be sent by rail? Would the defeat signal the end of the war or would they be held as captives for years? And, most importantly, when would they get food? In a field outside St Valery, David Mowatt soon received the answer to some of these questions: ‘We were already on our knees, we were exhausted. We formed up and marched off. We couldn’t believe it – there were thousands of us. There was a van with us, with a loudspeaker. As we passed through a village a voice came over the tannoy: “You are not to accept any food or water from the locals.” So we had nothing to eat or drink.’