Authors: John McCallum
We three discussed the pros and cons of escape and decided that in the first year it would be impossible, as I had to rebuild strength and mobility in my shattered ankle. A prime requirement for
such a venture is physical fitness. It is strange, however, how the mind works. During the next few years we listened carefully to any stories we heard of where the escapes went wrong and a pattern
began to build up: the same mistakes were being made time and again. They kept trying to travel at night and, as there was a curfew on, they were easily picked up. Some contacted the Polish people
for help and almost always were turned over to the Germans. Subconsciously, this type of information was filed for future reference.
The camp slowly assumed the identity of a small town and in time the layout became familiar to everyone. If you wanted to go shopping you went to the swap-shop area, where it was possible to
barter one thing for another. In the beginning, the trading was fairly primitive, but as time went on it became more and more interesting, especially after the Red Cross parcels began to
arrive.
On a good day you could take a walk up to the Canadian compound and enjoy hearing a change of accent or, if you were feeling naughty, you might slowly pass the Married Quarters compound, which
always led to a heated debate about the problems of homosexuality. Thank heaven we didn’t have AIDS to worry about in those days. The energetic could congregate at the football field and
perhaps get a game. The less energetic could always watch. Quite often it was worth watching as many good players had been captured, including a number of professionals.
You could visit Johnny the Barber and get your hair trimmed. If you were lucky there might be a cup of tea thrown in. After a tidy-up, a visit could be made to the theatre area, where one of the
bands might be practising a piece worth listening to. Failing all else, you could just sit around and talk about your favourite food and drink, which, considering the circumstances, was a pretty
stupid thing to do – but it was indulged in with great gusto and relish. It certainly made a contrast with our daily diet of soup, three or four potatoes and three hundred grams of bread.
Writing about it may make it sound like a holiday camp, but there were drawbacks – barbed wire and armed guards, for example. The limitation on movement was the real soul destroyer. This
was what drove men in the main camp to volunteer for working parties.
After a desperately hard winter, in which we experienced the biting cold east winds from the Russian steppes blowing straight through us, came the slow, miserable, messy
Silesian spring. The warmer weather brought the terrible affliction of ‘itchy feet’. This was our first spring in prison camp so we had no precedent to compare it with, but as the years
went by it became something to look forward to, wondering who it was going to strike and how it would affect them. There were those who began to huddle and plan escapes which never came to
fruition, and others who wondered how to wangle themselves onto the repatriation list. Others decided to go out on a working party or to switch to a different one. It was like the restlessness
nowadays when winter turns the corner, only our options were rather more restricted – no dithering between Majorca, the Costa Brava or Bournemouth.
Jimmy, Joe and I had a long and serious talk about the importance of the next step. Should we give up our cosy jobs in the cookhouse and gamble on one of the working parties? We could end up
regretting our decision for the rest of the war. Eventually we decided to give it a go and volunteered to go out as replacements on an existing working party. We got a right kick in the teeth.
We ended up in a railway construction job on the Polish border: a more desolate area would be hard to imagine. I can’t remember what kind of working party we were supposed to be joining,
but the lure was usually that you were told you were going to a chocolate or jam factory, which invariably turned out to be something completely different and horrible. There were a number of other
parties in the area and we were warned that when the overall control officer visited the camp and gave an order, we should obey it as fast as possible. He turned out to be a German Army
Sergeant-Major and obviously the job had gone to his head. He was so brutal that he achieved a place on the Black List back home. His nickname ‘the Killer’ was given to him after two
recaptured escapees were brought back to their camp where, in front of the other prisoners, he prodded and goaded them until one of them retaliated – whereupon he shot them in cold blood.
The work was hard and heavy. Handling the rail sleepers was back-breaking, with no machinery or equipment to help. Everything was done by muscle power, which wasn’t easy on our type of
rations. One consolation of this gruesome period was that we had never been so fit or healthy. I don’t suppose it is so surprising, since we had no drink, drugs or fornication to upset our
systems. Without fail, we were early to bed and early to rise. With our regular but limited diet, there wasn’t a pot belly or spare tyre to be seen anywhere.
As soon as it was humanly possible we transferred out of this hell-hole. There followed a couple of other working parties, none of which could be recommended for food or accommodation. We soon
realised that something was wrong, and the three of us sat down to work it out. We realised that we were operating at the wrong rank level: the answer to our job problem was that we would have to
have Stalag promotions and become NCOs. So Jimmy was to be made a Sergeant and Joe and I would be made up to Corporals. This proved surprisingly easy. We were allowed to write a certain number of
postcards home and we used them to tell our families to start using our new ranks when sending us mail, which they duly did. Slowly the new ranks became accepted and in time both the German
authorities and we grew used to them. One of the advantages was that NCOs could, if on a working party, ask at any time to return to the main camp.
In 1942 we decided that we had done our share of work in the hard labour camps and that it was time to test our stripes, remembering of course that they were self-awarded and only on our
uniforms. We duly applied for a transfer back to Stalag VIIIB and were quite astounded when we were returned without question.
The three of us were in agreement about the strangeness of being back in total captivity again. On a working party you are almost out in the normal world, although not actually
part of it, whereas in the main camp you suffer total segregation, which is a punishment that no one in their right mind would want. It was in Stalags like ours that the abbreviation BEF took on a
new meaning. Properly, it stood for British Expeditionary Force, but to the fifty thousand left behind by Lord ‘Tiger’ Gort, it now meant the Bastards England Forgot. It proves the
adage that if you’re stupid enough to get caught, then you must take the consequences, and that was exactly what we were doing. Next time we would be off like a shot and to hell with the
barricades.
We circulated around camp for about three weeks, renewing our contacts with Signal associates and all the other friends we had made in the last two years. They were glad to see us and there were
interminable ‘bumming schools’ as we brought them up to date about what had happened to us on the outside. They, in turn, filled us in on the latest intrigues in camp, and so a few more
hours dribbled through the time machine in this game of waiting for release.
But all good things come to an end and we began to attend to the purpose of our return to camp, namely to find a good NCO working party where we could live happily ever after. We were delighted
to hear that twenty NCOs were required for a holiday village in the mountains. All the able-bodied men there had now been drafted into the army and the local jobs had to be filled to keep things
going. To us it sounded very much like the old chocolate factory story, but there was only one way to find out if it was true. So we put our names down and were accepted – but for what?
About a week later our party was mustered and with all our worldly possessions in a bag we moved out, after having said our farewells again to everyone; parting in those days was often
terminal.
It was a short trip from the camp to the railway station and by the time we were on the train we knew we were on our way to a place called Bad Karlsbrunn, which was indeed a holiday village in
Sudetenland. We had heard many stories before the war about this country, which originally had been part of Czechoslovakia and later was colonised by the Germans, but we knew little of its real
history. To me the name Sudetenland was just a name, like Persia, Albania or California – exotic places which I knew existed but were unlikely ever to be part of my world. Yet here we were on
our way to a place which for two years became a real ‘Shangri La’.
As the train laboured slowly southward away from the Silesian industrial belt, the landscape improved with every mile that we travelled until, on the horizon, the foothills and mountains of the
Altvater range became visible.
You cannot imagine our feelings as the scenery became more and more like Scotland. The last part of the journey by bus from the railhead at Wurbenthal to Bad Karlsbrunn was a steady climb
through the forest and halfway up the mountain. Finally, we reached our camp, which was sited at the side of the River Oppa, over two thousand feet above sea level.
The number one man in our Bad Karlsbrunn working party was Sergeant Bill James – a famous surname you will remember from the main members of the notorious ‘James
Gang’, namely Frank and Jesse. They were reputedly the toughest outlaws who ever lived but, believe me, they would have been regarded as sissies compared with our Bill.
I first met him when we were both hospitalised after being wounded. He had suffered a nasty shrapnel wound which had cut across the Achilles tendon on one leg. For a while we were in the same
boat, having to learn to walk again. He must have heard that I was a Scot and, having become mobile before me, became a regular visitor and taught me many card tricks, which I still produce to
amuse and amaze my grandchildren. He was a very good friend and looked after my interests while I was immobilised. But I had no idea then what a tough cookie he really was.
Bill was born and reared in the Vale of Leven and boasted that there was only one person in the world who could get the better of him physically – someone who could actually punch harder
and faster than him. Having seen him in action many times in the years that I knew him, I had to ask who this man was. Without a blush, Bill admitted that it was his beloved mother.
It became apparent in the course of time that he had a strong aversion to bullies and braggarts. If anyone tried to throw their weight around, he always had to take them on and the result was
inevitable, with the victim wondering how this eleven-stone pale-faced man could administer such punishment. Putting his knuckles back to where they should be after these bouts was always a
problem, but they always healed in time to deal with the next offender.
Other Scots in the party, apart from Jimmy, Joe and myself, were Big John, Mully Mitchell, Phony and Young Alec. We also had two Kiwis and a genuine Maori, one Aussie, three Merchant Navy lads,
one Air Force Brylcream boy and the rest a mixture of army units, which included Busty Waring of the Royal Artillery. Busty was the type you see at the Earls Court display lifting gun barrels and
wheels over walls, so you know exactly how he looked. With it he was always bright and bouncy. Our Maori was called Charlie, and a more lovable character I have yet to meet, with a good singing
voice and the ability to accompany himself on the guitar. When he sang the Maori farewell song ‘Now is the Hour’, it was a very touching moment for everyone, though we didn’t
often indulge in the luxury of sentiment. Charlie’s singing always made me reflect on what a hard-bitten crew we had become.
The personality mix of our party was intriguing. For instance, take our two Kiwis, who could not have been more conflicting in character – Jim Rowe was the perfect laconic colonial, who
didn’t sit on a chair but managed always to drape himself over it, perfectly relaxed, whereas his oppo, Davey Jay, was always ready to move at any given moment and, when he sat down, was like
a coiled spring waiting to be released. Jim was blond and slim and sported a moustache, whereas Davey was clean-shaven and dark, slightly smaller and thick-set. Davey had been a fairly competent
boxer at home, which, at a later date, almost cost him his life – it certainly cost him his sanity.
Mully Mitchell, or to give him his full title, Motherwell Mitchell, was a cheery, dapper little Scot who was a friend of Bill James – another of the Argylls who had been left behind to
fight the thankless rearguard action. Mully on the football field was every bit as good as Bill in a fist-fight, but his greatest forte was as a naturalist. He showed me how to capture wild birds,
examine them without hurting them and then release them. I had heard of the art of tickling trout but Mully was the first person to demonstrate it before my very eyes, again returning the fish
unharmed to the river. He was a real charmer.
Our tame Australian was called Arthur and was a nice-looking bundle of raw muscle. To this day I can’t make up my mind if most of his stories were boastful truth or sheer romancing. I
didn’t care as they were very entertaining, like the one he told us about the time he was driving a four-horse harvester in the wheat fields. The story goes that his team-mate on the other
harvester hurt himself and a replacement couldn’t be found in time to complete the contract. But all was not lost. Arthur had the brilliant idea of making a special rig so that he could drive
the two harvesters and the eight-horse team by himself. If Arthur had said that the horses were slowing down and that eventually he had to pull the harvesters himself, I would have applauded him
loudly.
Brother Jimmy had been a godsend over the last two years in all the camps we had lived in, as he had an almost phobic tendency towards cleanliness and keeping things tidy. He had imposed his
strong will in this direction no matter how much opposition there was. Some of the squalor we encountered was quite unbelievable, but when we left a camp behind, thanks to Jimmy, it was always
cleaner than when we arrived.