Dunkirk: The Men They Left Behind Part 10

In the summer of 1944 the prisoners were struck by news of a landmark event that helped lift their spirits to new levels. The announcement of the D-Day landings marked a turning point for the men who had been in captivity for four years. After so long waiting, the British Army and its allies were back in France, working hard to advance through the landscape that had seen its defeat back in 1940. Now, it seemed, the soldiers who had escaped at Dunkirk were returning to liberate their comrades who had been left behind.

There was another sign that helped spark the realization that Germany must finally be defeated. From 1944 onwards, those men employed in the factories of the Third Reich saw an increasing weight of bombs dropped on Germany by the Allied air forces. The very thought that high in the skies above them were their own countrymen, bringing the war to the heart of the Reich, lifted their spirits. However, each pound of high-explosive may have helped hasten the end of the war but, for those on the receiving end, it also ushered in a period of mounting danger. Eric Reeves, who had last found himself under bombardment in the fields around Abbeville in 1940, found the industrial complex he was working within was one of the major targets for the bombing campaign. He was unfortunate to be employed at Blechammer, where synthetic fuel was manufactured for the German war machine: It really got hit! The first time was in June 1944. They hit the place while we were working but we weren't allowed in air-raid shelters. Then they bombed us each month until Christmas. At that time the Germans were so desperate for manpower that we were working every day for four weeks then having a weekend off. We'd just finished our s.h.i.+ft and got back to the camp on Sat.u.r.day afternoon and over the bombers came and hit our camp with five bombs. That's when we lost blokes.

With the commencement of the bombing raids on Blechammer the whole atmosphere changed for the prisoners: The civilians you used to talk to stopped saying 'good morning'. The offices were all at one end of the camp. They had a line of buses waiting for the air raids. So as soon as the sirens went all the boftins could get in the buses and get away. We were working near there one day and as the sirens went we waited for the buses. When they turned the corner we ran out and climbed up the ladder that took you on to the roof rack. We went about ten miles out while the camp was being bombed we had a grandstand view of the bombing from this hill. But one time we did it and the bombers actually bombed all round the hill we were on. They were bombing the antiaircraft sites around us! This German said to us, 'You will have to walk back!' I was cheeky, I said to him, 'Yeah, and from here we can run away.' So he let us back on the bus to go back to the camp.

Although the air raids helped to rea.s.sure the prisoners the Allies were winning the war, they also put them under the psychological pressure of worrying that bombing might turn the guards against them: You were always in a certain amount of danger that one of the guards was going to run amok. One of the guards went home on leave and previously he'd treated all the blokes well. He'd been fair to them, they'd even given him f.a.gs and coffee to take home. But when he came back from leave he was a broken man because his family had been destroyed in a bombing raid. He was a different man after that. He was spiteful to the prisoners. You could see the difference in him. It wouldn't have taken much for them to turn on us.

By 1945 there still remained thousands of POWs in varying degrees of health who had been in captivity since the dark days of 1940. Almost to a man, they had developed a 'stalag mentality' in which their prime concern was for their personal survival. They had grown cynical and increasingly accepted anything the world threw at them as long as their own lives were not affected. Les Allan recalled how, in the latter days of the war, long-term prisoners would feel less bitter about violence by the guards, pointing out that the victim had probably brought the violence on himself by his behaviour. Effectively, they had developed a protective s.h.i.+eld that helped keep them sane in a world that had grown increasingly mad. As Jim Pearce remembered, as their fifth year of captivity drew to a close: 'Life was getting tough and the Jerries were getting tough as well!'

The discovery of just how mad the world had become would include a final trial that was to be faced by the victims of Dunkirk it was a trial that allowed them the right finally to return home.

CHAPTER TWELVE.

Going Home I met him just after the war and he was a very cynical, very embittered young chap.

Patricia Wagstaff on the effect of five years' captivity upon her husband

Everything you do in life leaves a scar and those five years left many scars . . . There were about twelve people captured with me and only about six of them came back home.

Peter Wagstaff on the psychological impact of five years' captivity As 1944 drew to a close the men left behind at Dunkirk were deep in the midst of their fifth winter in captivity. For six months, since the joyous relief of the D-Day landings, the prisoners had waited for the army that had escaped in 1940 to repay the favour and rescue them. If the summer and autumn of 1944 had been filled with good news, as the Allies advanced on the German frontier, the winter was very different. Every winter had been a miserable experience for the prisoners. Working prisoners spent days out in the bitter cold shovelling snow, cutting ice, digging sugar beet from frozen ground. With no protective clothes they wrapped themselves up as best they could and prayed to avoid frostbite. Yet this final winter was something else.

With Germany facing defeat, its economy was slowly collapsing. Rations deteriorated, often falling back to the starvation levels they had known in the sickening summer of 1940. Back in their first year of captivity they had been saved by Red Cross parcels, but by late 1944 the supply of parcels had begun to dry up. As the Allied advance cut through the supply routes previously used for parcels, the prisoners' future began to look increasingly bleak. With the icy hand of the war's worst winter gripping the prisoners, they once more began to face the awful realization that if something did not happen soon they might not live to see liberation.

What did happen was not something any of them would have hoped for. In early 1945 the stalags and workcamps across the eastern regions of the Reich East Prussia and the former Polish and Czech lands began to close. For all the prisoners had long dreamt of camps closing so that they could head home, this was not the end they had hoped for. While five years previously they had been crammed into stinking cattle trucks for the journey east, the journey west would be different. This time they were heading west on foot. There was an irony in these circ.u.mstances. In 1940 they had endured the blistering heat of summer as they marched into captivity. In 1945 they were again sent out on to the roads, this time on roads deep in ice and snow. Yet, though the weather conditions were so different, the prisoners soon realized their real enemies were the same starvation, exhaustion and the murderous behaviour of some among their guards. It was a journey that drove the prisoners to the very brink of survival.

Most of the prisoners knew that their camps would have to be evacuated. Those in the east could hear the guns of the Red Army as it blasted its way westwards. Those working on the railways had long seen the trains crammed with wounded Germans heading home and then watched as increasingly young and nervous soldiers headed east to face their nemesis. Yet when the word finally came that the camps were to be evacuated it still came as a shock to the prisoners. At a workcamp in East Prussia Les Allan and his mates were called out in the middle of the night for a roll-call. They lined up in the biting cold huddling deep into their overcoats desperate to get back in their bunks. Then the word came they were leaving. No warning, no time to prepare, just line up and march out of the gates. All they had were the clothes they stood up in.

Les Allan cursed his luck. He had been fortunate to survive when the convent at Hazebrouck had collapsed on him back in 1940. Then he had no idea what lay ahead. This time he knew what to expect only this time it would be colder. He well knew that he would need every ounce of his energy to survive. There was one problem. When they were called outside, Allan had left his boots beside his bunk. When they went outside they only took things they thought would be stolen; as a result Allan had taken his chess set. He knew no one would dare steal his boots since they were marked with his name. To be caught stealing a man's boots would have been far too risky. If caught, it would have resulted in a severe beating or worse. As a result Les Allan found himself facing a march of hundreds of miles along icy roads wearing just a pair of rough canvas-topped clogs.

As the men left they soon realized they were not alone on the roads. There were thousands of German families who were also heading west fearful of the revenge they would face from the Poles and Russians once the German Army had retreated. There was also another vast wave of humanity forced out on to the roads alongside the POWs. As Graham King left Thorn he first noticed them: On the 19th January 1945, we were very rudely awakened by the shouting of our guards. We were to get our things together, food for three days as we were to move out of this camp to another in Germany. We could take only as much as we could carry and rations for three days . . . We fell in outside the compound on the main road, quietly smoking and chattering away. There was a feeling of suppressed excitement as individually we realized that we could be making our first few steps towards Blighty and home. Not far from where we stood was a column of people who appeared to be dressed in striped pyjamas, both s.e.xes. We moved towards them but they retreated and their guards shouted at them to move away. The guards wore Browns.h.i.+rt uniforms and one kid about sixteen had a whip with which he started beating some of these poor sods, so we took his whip away and threatened him with it. He and his friends shouted to our guards who told them shove off, or words to that effect. We discovered later that they were from a concentration camp. During the next months we were to see many abandoned by the roadside.

The columns of marching men soon discovered the conditions had conspired against them. One night, Graham King was told by a guard that the thermometer on a farmhouse had read - 35C. He later described how, as the moon rose and the temperature dropped he could hear the ominous 'crackling silence of a land freezing under a Polish winter'. Such temperatures would have tested even the best prepared of men, let alone a bunch of men tired after five years of captivity. Many found themselves dressed in nothing more than their battledress and an overcoat. Some had blankets they could wrap around themselves like a shawl. Some had hats, gloves and spare socks, others had nothing. They simply turned up their collars, stuffed their hands deep into their pockets and shuffled along in hope that they would survive.

By night they slept out in the open, unless they were fortunate enough to be herded into a barn. Those with blankets wrapped themselves as best they could, sc.r.a.ped away some snow and curled up, just hoped for the best, as Calais veteran Bob Davies remembered: 'You just stopped in a field, dug a hole in the snow to keep the wind out and with a bit of luck you woke up in the morning!' After a day's marching, with snow swirling around them, they dropped to the earth as their desperately exhausted bodies fought a perplexing battle with their minds. What mattered most rest or food, sleep or protection from the cold? Was it better to take off their boots and risk them freezing or should they keep their boots on and risk frostbite as a result of poor circulation?

Having left his final working party, Jim Pearce joined the march and spent ten weeks on the road. He remembered the conditions: I wore two sets of clothes and had a blanket over my head like a shawl no gloves it was shocking. My boots soon started to wear out. I remember the first time I took them off next morning I couldn't get them back on, they were frozen! I fainted so a bloke rubbed snow on my face to revive me. I never took them off again after that. We slept outside every night, we tried eating raw sugar beet but it was too bitter. I thought I wouldn't survive. People were dying with dysentery. Sometimes they dug latrines but men sometimes fell into the pit there was nowhere for them to was.h.!.+ Some men dropped out and they got shot; you'd see bodies by the roadside. Maybe it was better they did shoot them, otherwise they'd have just frozen to death. We despaired we didn't know what was going to happen to us. Some days we didn't care if we lived or died life was finished.

One of the men who gave up the will to live was Ken Willats. Always a reluctant soldier, Willats lacked the physical strength to endure the plummeting temperatures of the Polish winter. After his first night sleeping out in the snow he was unable to continue: The first night was horrendous. We walked all night and all day. Then we were marched into a field late at night. The temperature must have been 30 degrees below zero. There was no cover . . . When we got up in the morning I was so exhausted I could hear music playing and see houses I was hallucinating. I saw these houses that weren't there. It was then I decided I would sit down and have a sleep . . . My survival instinct was gone. It was as if I had been anaesthetized. I was at the limit of my endurance.

Fortunately for Willats he had not been forgotten. He was part of a group of five, including Gordon Barber, the regular army gunner who had been captured at St Valery. Though men from very different backgrounds, the two had become firm friends during the two years they had spent on a Polish farm. When Barber noticed Willats was missing he turned back to find him: He was by the tree. We got hold of him, he was f.u.c.king cold. His teeth were chattering. I said, 'You'll die if you stop there. You won't be tired any more.' So we put our arms round his shoulders and off we went and caught the others up. We were lucky that night we found a barn to sleep in . . . The next morning it was sunny. I went out and found a horse-drawn wagon the Germans were carrying the sick on. Ken was just frozen so we got him on this wagon and they went. I never saw him again until we got home.

As medics, Graham King and his mates knew something about circulation and survival. To cope with sleeping outdoors they implemented a rotation system devised by explorers in the Antarctic: It was essential to clear the snow from the ground, lay down a covering on which to lie as this would act as a kind of insulation. The party then lay down in a row like spoons and covered themselves up. Every fifteen minutes, the guy at the right of the row got up and moved to the other end and everybody moved one place to the right. In that way everyone spent some time being sheltered by the rest of the group and so kept reasonably warm, although sleep was at a minimum. To ward off frozen feet, it was essential to slacken off all fastening so that the blood circulation would not be hindered, in fact it was even better to remove shoes and socks, dry off the feet and wrap them loosely in some item of dry clothing. Next morning, of course, the damp socks and boots were frozen solid . . . however, you get frostbite only when feet are frozen. If your boots and socks are damp then the temperature is above freezing and you need not fear frost-bitten feet. I explained all this to the group from 16 and, amazingly, they all followed this routine. Of course to thaw out the socks you had to use the warmth of your own feet and gradually ease them over the old tootsies and pull them on, then slowly force on the boots. This took about an hour. Once shod we began to move around to get the circulation going in order to move on the way.

Of course, not all the marching men were aware or physically capable of looking after their feet in this manner. As a result, frostbite became a severe problem for them. Graham King helped as far as he could: At this time another bloke asked me to look at his feet. I asked him what was wrong and he replied he could not feel anything. He took off his boots and socks, displaying a pair of feet as black as ink. I felt them and they were as cold as icicles, frost-bitten right through and would be gangrenous very shortly. He needed emergency surgery or he would die. Unfortunately we had no means of carrying out what he needed. I asked his friend if he would let the patient put his feet on his bare body under his jacket in the faint hope that this might get some circulation going. Next day, pa.s.sing through a small town we left him at a civilian hospital where the nursing sisters of a religious order promised to care for him. Before leaving, I asked him when he had last taken off his boots. Not once since we had left Thorn . . . I never knew what happened to this poor chap; I hope he got home eventually.

Not all were so fortunate. Plenty of men, their feet ravaged by frostbite and unable to march another step, simply collapsed by the roadside. The lucky ones were dragged along by their mates, others were ignored by the men around them, each one of whom was engrossed in his own personal battle for survival. The sound of rifle fire became an increasingly common factor in their lives, as men who had fallen out were executed in cold blood at the roadside. Hardly bothering to look up, the prisoners simply trudged past as the snow covered the corpses of their murdered comrades.

As the marchers moved on, the effects of the shortage of food began to bite just as much as the wind. In 1940 the problem had been thirst, with the Germans refusing to allow them access to pumps and ponds, yet they had survived by stealing whatever was growing in the countryside around them. In the winter of 1944/45 the situation was reversed. They had no shortage of water, since there was an endless amount of snow that could be melted. The difficulty was that there were no vegetables growing in the frozen fields. As Graham King noted: 'Signs of malnutrition were now appearing. Sunken cheeks, haggard looks, baggy clothing and tickling throats all spoke of the lack of essentials in the diet. In effect we were walking ourselves to death and there was little that could be done.'

It was not long before King had his one personal encounter with the dangers of marching week after week on starvation rations. In desperation he picked up a small piece of frozen carrot from the roadside. Knowing that even the smallest piece of food could help ward off hunger, he rapidly consumed the carrot. Minutes later he was gripped by an agonizing pain in his stomach. He fell out by the roadside, unable to move any further. One of the guards, accompanied by two English soldiers, soon arrived to hurry him on: He told me to move on, I refused. He told me again, still I refused. He drew his pistol, c.o.c.ked it and told me to move or he would shoot me. I blew my top, ripped open my battledress blouse, bared my chest and told him to shoot; I'd had a gutful of Hitler and all the b.l.o.o.d.y stupid n.a.z.is and didn't care any more. He looked at me, slowly secured his gun and placed it in the holster. 'The SS will be along soon,' he said, 'they'll shoot.' And off the trio went. About ten minutes later, I started to retch and suddenly out popped two small, hard pieces of semi-frozen carrot.

Although the prisoners had grown hard during their time in the stalags, some events still made a distinct impression upon them. During the march Fred Coster and his pals encountered a group of Jews marching away from a concentration camp: We had this Jewish soldier, Freddy Freid, with us. These women came past us, just in their loose-fitting dresses. So we were slipping them food, so the guards couldn't see. But Freddy was doing it openly, speaking Yiddish to them. I tried to stop him. The women couldn't believe it. He gave all his food away. The two guards waited with us when the column pa.s.sed. Then came this very old Jewish woman, she could hardly keep up she was at the end of her tether, she could hardly walk. This German officer was with her, pus.h.i.+ng her along, prodding her in the back with his pistol. As she reached us she stopped. So the officer shot her in the head and she slumped to the floor. We had to hold Freddy back. This b.l.o.o.d.y officer just marched off, all proud of himself. But we'd seen a lot by then, we were pretty hardened. Even now I feel hardened about death. You are sorry about it, but you can't do anything about it.

Such were the conditions that some of the prisoners decided they would not stay on the march. After nine days Seaforth Highlander David Mowatt decided he would escape with the intention of reaching the Russians: The wind and snow made it b.l.o.o.d.y cold and we'd had nothing to eat or drink for nine days. We stopped for the night and there was this big ditch beside the road. One night I was at the back of the column I thought 'I'm going to die on this march' so I dived into this big ditch. Within minutes I was covered by snow. In the morning I could hear the guards shouting for us all to get up, but I laid there until everything was clear. I thought I was going to freeze to death. When they'd gone I crawled out. Two other bods crawled up as well. One of them was also a Seaforth.

The three men made the decision to head towards the Russian lines, figuring they would be safer there. They were on the loose in the Polish countryside for two weeks, killing and eating farm animals and sleeping in the beds of German farmers who had fled the area: 'One morning we woke up to the noise of tanks. We thought "Good G.o.d! We're in the front line." By the time we got dressed all the doors had been smashed in. We were expecting it to be the Russians, but it was the SS! They put us up against the wall with a firing squad of five men. It's dreadful to think about it even now! Then an ordinary Wehrmacht officer appeared. "Lady Luck" was on our side he stopped them.' Saved from the firing squad, Mowatt and his mates were taken into the care of the officer, who arranged for them to be sent to Danzig, where they were put into a compound with other POWs.

Despite the extremes of violence shown to some sick marchers, others were offered a measure of care. On some marches horse-drawn carts were available to carry those too sick to continue. Elsewhere, they were able to leave the sick in civilian hospitals. Eventually the marchers began to reach POW camps where medical facilities were available. Graham King reached Stalag 2A at Neubrandenburg where he set to work again. Under the supervision of US Army doctors, his duties focused on treating the feet of the pitiful wretches who had shuffled all the way from East Prussia: 'In this ward most had already lost part of their feet, or all. Gangrene was rife and the sickly smell took some getting used to. The American surgeon demonstrated cutting off the dead bone with rongeurs. No anaesthetic was necessary; the bone being dead, there was no feeling.'

One of the men who understood the depth of suffering endured during the march was Les Allan. Having left his workcamp wearing a pair of clogs he had been ill-equipped to deal with the icy roads. Just a few days after departing, he slipped on the road and fell awkwardly to the ground. Despite the pain there was little he could do but strap up his ankle and carry on. In all he had marched nearly 600 miles by the time he reached Stalag 11A at Fallingbostel, south of Hamburg. It was soon discovered he had fractured his ankle when he fell but had somehow managed to march through the pain to reach his destination.

Jim Reed's war came to an end in a hospital camp in Germany. He was one of the lucky ones who had been taken sick during the march back through Poland and had been allowed to complete his journey by train: One of my pals died on the march, he was a Cornishman in his thirties. The conditions were too much for him. He was found dead in the cold. People were just disappearing like that no one knows how many died. I had a hole in my shoulder, the Germans took me to see a medical orderly. You could have put your finger down into the hole and they just poured iodine into it! I was calling him all names I could. They sent me to a camp at Schwerin. I was all bandaged up nice and neat. There were half a dozen British in the camp, but there was nothing in that camp and no food whatsoever. I saw men sitting on the beds cutting gangrene out of their legs with a penknife.

With German resistance collapsing, increasing numbers of POWs found themselves behind the Russian lines. Sometimes they were simply bypa.s.sed by the advancing army, elsewhere the Red Army arrived to announce they were free and told them to head off into villages and towns to find their own food. At some camps Red Army officers even asked for volunteers to join them to fight the Germans. Only a few of the most adventurous types accepted the offer. Graham King witnessed the aftermath of the Red Army's advance in the area around the stalag: 'After two days we were out wandering around Neubrandenburg seeing what we could loot. Not much, the Red Army had already been through and taken most of value. We saw lots of bodies lying around, especially later when we wandered around the woods and parks. Signs of rape and suicide. Hanging from a tree branch we found three generations of a family; Granny, wife, three kids about nine, six and three plus Dad . . . Some had been shot, others bayoneted.'

Despite the violence displayed in some German towns and villages, other prisoners witnessed a disciplined army whose officers and NCOs enforced order with extreme measures they shot anybody disobeying their orders. d.i.c.k Taylor, a veteran of the defeat at St Valery, had an eventful journey to freedom after his liberation by the Red Army. He approached a female tank commander and asked her what they should do. She simply told him, in surprisingly good English, that they should head to the port of Odessa. He was amazed; Odessa was hundreds of miles away and he was given no idea of how to get there: I and one or two of the other POWs in the surrounding area got together and organized things. I was able to speak quite good German and make contact with a Russian who could speak German. He got us walking in the right direction. The Russian guards had no idea where they were; until he organized us we went round in circles. But we were on our way home. The Russians treated everyone the same they were a rough lot. They'd had millions of casualties and they were on their way to Berlin no one was going to stop them! It didn't matter what anybody said.

On his long journey to freedom he witnessed all the violent madness of modern warfare. One of the first places he pa.s.sed was a farm whose owners he knew from his time on working parties. On top of the manure heap were the corpses of the seventy-year-old farmer and his wife, having been executed by the advancing Russians. Elsewhere were the corpses of people who, fearing Russian revenge for Germany's crimes in the Soviet Union, had chosen to take their own lives. Everywhere were the bodies of soldiers either those who had fallen in battle or those executed after they had surrendered. The corpses of German refugees filled the roads where the Red Army had simply obliterated everything that had blocked its way. For the men who had witnessed the German bombing of refugee columns back in 1940 these scenes were wearily familiar. As d.i.c.k Taylor remembered: 'You just get used to it. Once you've seen it once, seeing it again doesn't make much difference. It's just one of those things you have to accept it. It's self-preservation, you're looking after yourself, you're not bothered about anybody else. One more dead person doesn't make any difference. It was the same as the march in 1940, when men broke ranks and got shot as long as it wasn't me.'

After days of marching east, Taylor and his fellow ex-POWs were sent by train towards Odessa. At least the Russians had taken care to fit stoves inside the wagons to allow the men some heat. Basic as the trucks were, it was still better than any transport the Germans had made them ride in. The journey was an eye-opener for the British soldiers: 'There was nothing left, the whole place was flattened everything. You'd come to a village and there was hardly one brick on top of another. That's why there was no shelter for us as we went through. Absolutely nothing we were travelling through a wasteland.'

Arriving in Odessa they were put into a large house surrounded by barbed wire. There was a sense of foreboding for all the ex-POWs to be behind barbed wire again. However this time the ordeal did not last for five years. One morning, without warning, they were told to gather their gear and march to the port. There, waiting for them, was the pre-war liner d.u.c.h.ess of Bedford. They were going home.

While the prisoners who had been working in East Prussia headed for northern Germany, the prisoners who had been working in Silesia headed west through Czechoslovakia into southern Germany. Their marches had started later, which meant they missed the worst of the weather. They were also fortunate that they did not have quite so far to march. Many took advantage of the hospitality of the local population and escaped from the columns to make their way home under their own steam. Bill Holmes was one of those who escaped, making his way back to the Allied lines via Prague, aided by members of the Czech Resistance.

Also on the run in Czechoslovakia was Eric Reeves. His group had left Blechammer at the end of January and headed through the mountains into Czechoslovakia. It didn't take long for him to decide the conditions were against them. As he marched he had his greatcoat collar up and his hat pulled down. He noticed that not only had his hat frozen against his collar but there was also thick ice on his gla.s.ses that had frozen to his head: My mates Ted Kane and Flash said to me, 'You'll either freeze to death, starve to death or get shot which is the quicker?' So after an hour or two debate I decided to go with them. They said they were only taking me 'cause I could speak German. You could hear the Russians breaking through in Upper Silesia, their barrages sounded like rolling thunder. We rubbed our hands and said, 'The Jerries are copping it good.' That was how we thought. We survived by going to smallholdings we'd take the food that was hanging under the eaves. The Czechs were helpful. The youngsters could speak German, they told us what they were going to do once the war was over they were going to hang the German Burgomeister. But we survived by scrounging dripping sandwiches.

The end came differently for each. There were the men liberated by Americans in southern and central Germany, by the Russians in Poland and eastern Germany or by the British in the north. The final days of war saw the prisoners marching amid scenes of utter devastation. One scene became imprinted on Fred Coster's memory: the sight of a German sentry box with the bottom half of the sentry's corpse in the box and the top half blown off and lying in the road. Coster thought to himself 'poor sod' as he stepped past the severed torso. Gordon Barber's most vivid memories of the final days of war reflected the desperate situation they found themselves in. Having eaten some pigs they had found dead in a bombed train, Barber became violently ill: 'I can still remember sitting at the latrine they'd dug. The bloke sitting beside me said, "Ain't it terrible. Do you think we'll make it?" I said, "Yeah." We sat there watching the American bombing raids, knocking the s.h.i.+t out of this town. All we could see going down into the pit was blood. We had dysentery and malnutrition. I said, "I wish they'd drop a bomb on us." . . . I felt so weak and so horrible, every time I moved I s.h.i.+t myself.'

For some, the threat from the air continued to be very real, as Peter Wagstaff soon discovered: For five years you thought of how and if you were going to be liberated. It was most extraordinary. They marched us south from Eichstadt, in a long, tattered, straggling human line. The column was about a mile and a half long. Then we saw a couple of American Thunderbolts. They had spotted a German convoy on the other side of the valley and attacked it. We sat down and roared with laughter. Then they saw us and thought we were Germans they went up and down, then 'strafed' the life out of us. They killed twelve of us, including one of my best friends. I raced across the road out of the sun and found myself cowering with a German guard and an Italian chap. Again, the death of my friend didn't affect me. Things like that happen as a POW. It's difficult to explain. I had become conditioned to seeing death. You don't have time to a.n.a.lyse things and there is nothing you can do about it. The human mind is a most peculiar animal.

For David Mowatt liberation came in the port of Lbeck. He travelled by boat from Danzig, sailing the dangerous waters of the Baltic in the knowledge that Russian submarines were active in the area. The journey was a repeat of the one he had made down the Rhine in 1940. Again he was travelling in the hold of a coal barge, little knowing what his fate might be. This time he was safe in the knowledge that if he survived he would be going home. Arriving at Lbeck, they were held in a cattle barn in the docks. While they were there, the Russian prisoners continued to be held on boats in the port. Unable to leave the s.h.i.+p, the Russians grew so desperate they turned to cannibalism in order to survive.

After an aborted attempt to send the prisoners to Hanover, Mowatt found himself back in the cattle barn: 'We were there a couple of days then the British turned up and liberated us. It was a unit of Seaforth Highlanders! My own mob! I think it was the 10th May two days after the war had ended.' They were flown home the following day.

Eric Reeves was liberated by a Russian patrol who simply sent him in the direction of the American lines. Effectively he was free but was actually in no man's land between the Russians and Americans in an area still full of German troops: It was chaos at that time. We were strolling along it was May 9th, a lovely day we thought 'We've won the b.l.o.o.d.y war!' Then we saw a Hanomag tug like a big tractor it was pulling these two trailers full of German troops. Teddy said to me, 'Reevo, you stop 'em.' I had an uneasy feeling about it but I stood in the road and shouted, 'Halt!' It stopped and a German sergeant major stuck his head out and said, 'Who are you?' Ted said, 'Tell him we're the b.l.o.o.d.y British Army! We won the war!' So I told him and he started laughing and asked where we were going. I told him where we were going. When I said we were going to meet the Americans they told us to get on and take them with us!

After a few hours they reached the American lines, where the troops were disarming arriving Germans. As they pulled up a corporal shouted up at them: He said, 'OK, Krauts, get your a.s.ses off the vehicle.' So I translated for the Germans and told them to get off quickly. So they poured off leaving Ted, Flash and me. The Yank looked up and said, 'Are you Krauts going to get your a.s.ses off or am I gonna come up and get you?' So Ted Kane said, 'I'd like to see you try mate!' We expected the Yanks to welcome us with open arms, but they arrested us and locked us in a barn! They didn't know who we were, so they said we'd have to wait till they interrogated us in the morning.

The experience of liberation was very different for those soldiers who were still within the stalags. In many cases their guards had disappeared although, in some locations, the guards were attacked by prisoners celebrating their liberation. Released prisoners went on the rampage within some camps, looting food stores, ransacking the guards' quarters and pinching anything they fancied. Some made straight for stocks of alcohol while others quickly armed themselves or reclothed themselves at the expense of their guards. While some went in search of loot others only wanted basic souvenirs. Jim Charters took nothing more than a comb and his POW registration card, complete with the photograph taken on his first day in the stalag.

Wherever and however their war came to an end, after five years behind barbed wire they were struck by the emotion of the moment. For many it was difficult to put into words. The prisoners were stunned by freedom, it meant everything just to have survived finally they could return to their families. Jim Pearce remembered his liberation by an American combat unit who were embroiled in battle: We marched into a village, where we were stealing and eating seed potatoes. We knew the end was coming because the Germans didn't try to stop us. At night we were in this big barn. We could hear tanks but we didn't know if they were American or German. Everyone was tense. Eventually the American tanks came. I hid behind this big tractor wheel because they were firing I don't know what they were firing at. The crews gave us cigarettes and food. Men were getting food and wine men were flopping down drunk. They couldn't take it! A couple of the men wanted to take revenge against the Germans. The Yanks had taken the guards away but some of our chaps wanted to shoot them. If the Americans hadn't taken them away our chaps would have set on them. That ten weeks' march had done it for us they didn't care any more. But when I got released I didn't want to kill anybody. But you can't really describe what goes through your head when you are liberated. It was a wonderful feeling it had never seemed possible 'I'm going home' tears were running from my eyes as I stood there touching the American tanks.

Following liberation most ex-POWs did their best to get home as swiftly as possible. Some of them 'liberated' vehicles to head west in the hope of reaching anywhere where they might cadge a flight to England. Others waited for transport to be arranged. The majority of British prisoners congregated at air fields around Brussels and were then flown home in bombers and transport aircraft. It was an emotional journey for the men who had last seen the UK during the phoney war. As they flew over the waters of the Channel the same waters they had all hoped to escape across back in 1940 they were seized by a sense of awe. After five years of uncertainty they were finally returning to see their loved ones. For many the highlight of the trip was to look out from the aircraft to see the fabled white cliffs of Dover. Like the bluebirds of the song they soared high above the chalk cliffs, a potent symbol of freedom and the sense of the nation's survival against all the odds.

Yet this was just the beginning of the emotional impact of freedom. The realities of life 'beyond the wire' of the stalag had yet to grip the hearts of the former prisoners. At first they still existed in a state of euphoria that was soon swept away once they were released from the military's care and sent on leave.

Upon arrival at air fields the prisoners were fed, watered, deloused, reclothed and given a medical examination. Then they were allowed to telephone or send telegrams to their families, although some chose to say nothing, preferring instead to greet their loved ones in person. Once the sick men had been sent for treatment, the rest were allowed home. Eric Reeves remembered his return: 'Getting down from the plane I felt ecstatic going into the meal I felt wonderful, there was music playing, it was civilized. We were kitted out with uniforms and they sewed on the medal ribbons we were ent.i.tled to which weren't many! Then I phoned the local police station to see if my parents were still at the same address 'cause I hadn't written home for a year.' Yet despite the obvious elation, Reeves was unprepared for what happened on his first night in England. Due to travel home the next morning, the prisoners were allowed out for the evening: 'The three of us walked into a pub we stood inside the door and looked at it I was terrified. We'd had five years of "effing and blinding" we'd never spoken to women at all and the pub was full of women. Everybody stopped and looked at us we turned tail and fled back to camp! I couldn't handle it for weeks.'

Shocked by how captivity had affected him, Eric Reeves made his way home to Reigate where he hoped to be able to settle down to normality. He would soon discover his concept of normality had been swept away by all he had experienced: It was a strange feeling coming home. A young man met me at the door in the uniform of the Middles.e.x Regiment. He put his arms round me! I said, 'What's going on?' He said, 'Blimey, Eric, it's me your brother!' When I'd left home he was about fifteen. He'd been over on 'D-Day' all grown up! Then my mother cried Dad came home, through the back door, then just looked at me and said, 'h.e.l.lo, you had your dinner yet?' Nothing else. I appreciated it I didn't want anyone falling all over me. That first night I was home my Dad who was teetotal took me into a pub. 'Cause I was a local lad word had got around that I was home. I walked in and the landlord said, 'I suppose you're going to pay us in Pfennigs?' I grabbed him and pulled him over. I said, 'Don't you talk to me about Pfennigs! You're gonna get a punch.' He said, 'Oh, I'm sorry some people are very touchy around here'. I told him, 'So would you be, if you'd been in a b.l.o.o.d.y prison camp for five years!' I never liked that landlord after that. It was the smarmy way he said it!

The reaction displayed by Reeves was a common one. d.i.c.k Taylor was the first ex-POW to arrive back in Berwick, having travelled from Odessa by s.h.i.+p. He refused the approaches of the local journalists who wanted to interview him. At night he would go out but didn't want to do anything even if he could bring himself to go to the cinema he couldn't stay more than ten minutes. As he remembered: 'There was no such thing as a joyous homecoming.' Returning to his parents' London home, Jim Pearce was unable to enjoy his six-week leave: I was very depressed. I used to sit in the front room, which was normally only used for special occasions like funerals. I just sat there I didn't care. There was no one to look after us. I just kept myself to myself. The depression was bad. These days you'd have counselling, but we had nothing. You'd think you'd be glad to be home but it wasn't like that. My parents realized what I was going through. People came to see me but I didn't want to see anybody. I think it was easier for my brother because he had a wife to come home to. I'd spent all my best years in a POW camp I had my twenty-first birthday there!

For some of the prisoners the return home was particularly shocking. Men from the big cities could hardly recognize them when they got back. When Fred Coster had gone to war in 1940, the East End of London had been a thriving area full of industry, street upon street of terraced houses and mile after mile of warehouses: 'I had leave to go home so all my relatives went to the various stations I might arrive at. I got off at Aldgate East and my Uncle Joe was there. I was very thin but he recognized me. I looked along the Commercial Road at where everything had been bombed and all the buildings had gone. I said, "You had a bit of a smacking around here." Joe said how rotten it was. But I told him, "Don't worry, the Germans had it a hundred times worse." That helped ease him.'

Coster's fellow gunner, Gordon Barber, had joined the army in 1938 to earn a decent wage and make something of his life. With his first week's army pay he had bought himself a new outfit, then a few weeks later he even got a new suit. When he came home in 1945 he was ready to make use of the suit again. There was one problem: just as she had done all through the 1920s and 1930s, Barber's mother had p.a.w.ned his only suit. He had to give his mother the money to get it out so that he could go out in something other than uniform.

Efforts were made by the War Office to ensure the ma.s.s of returning prisoners could be slowly eased back into civilian life upon discharge from the army. Although the War Office realized that discontent was inevitable, rehabilitation units were established in which the former POWs were given the opportunity to readapt to life in the UK. The camps were named Civil Resettlement Units CRUs and courses lasted between four and six weeks. They were not obligatory. However, since they did not count against the soldier's terminal leave, they were an attractive prospect. Part of the reasoning behind the establishment of CRUs was the fear that the ex-prisoners would not return to the army after the initial period of leave given to all men returning from captivity. The hope was that by offering activities that appealed to the soldiers the units might prevent them going AWOL. As one officer described it, the camps were 'halfway between the Army and civil life'.1 Those who lived close enough were even given 'sleeping out' pa.s.ses and others were free to go home at weekends. As Jim Reed recalled: 'We had girls feeding us in the morning and officers waiting on us. We were learning how to dance and how to mix with people. We needed it we didn't know how to mix with women. It was the only good idea the army ever had.'

For men used to the basic facilities of the stalags or pre-war British Army barracks, for that matter these camps were a dream come true. There were sheets on the beds and mattresses with springs no more sleeping on straw. Meals were even served in a dining room. Furthermore, the men only had to wear uniform between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m.; for the rest of the day they were free to wear civilian clothing.

These units offered advice on future employment, educational courses, legal advice, medical treatment and a.s.sistance with providing clothing. There were visits to factories and visits to Ministry of Labour training centres to discuss courses. Of the activities initially on offer, drill was the least popular. As one man pa.s.sing through a resettlement unit commented, any regimentation was unlikely to be viewed favourably by former prisoners: We know what war is like, don't treat us like recruits.'2 In the post-war period the only parade the men had to attend was the weekly pay parade. Film shows and sports were the most popular of the activities. Also popular were lectures and discussion groups, as one soldier put it: 'Too many of us didn't think enough before the war.'3 Despite the efforts made to ease the former POWs back into society, many complained that it would simply be better to discharge them from the army. The CRU was only available once the man was due to be discharged from the army. Prior to that, the returning prisoners were subject to normal army discipline. As Jim Pearce, who remained in the army for two further years, remembered, it was like being a recruit all over again, being trained on weapons like the PIAT and Sten gun, that had not even been invented when he was captured. However, Pearce found one good thing about returning to the army after leave: 'At the time I cursed going back, but it did me good. It brought me back a bit otherwise I'd have stayed depressed and remained that way most of my life. Going back into the army I had to do what I was told. Otherwise I'd just have stayed sitting there in my Mum and Dad's house. It was the best thing for me. Of course, I didn't think that at the time!'

Jim Reed also recalled life in an army camp while attempts were made to retrain the ex-POWs: 'We'd changed and the army had moved on. At the first camp an NCO said we were going to be disciplined and someone just said, "Shut yer gob!" There were about fifty of us. They said to us, "There'll be no weekend leave and you will show military discipline!" No one took any notice. Come the weekend, you'd be surprised if there were a dozen blokes in the camp. We cut holes in the fences to get out at night.' As Fred Coster remembered it, the ex-POWs were 'forgotten men' who were told they were being retrained to fight the j.a.panese: 'Our experiences were ignored everything we had learned and done. It was against all decency. Thank G.o.d for the Atom Bomb! I think the boys would have revolted rather than go and do it all again.'

In the end there were so many complaints about the camp Jim Reed was stationed at including letters to newspapers that it was closed down. Reed found himself sent to Scotland, to a holding camp for the Seaforth Highlanders. Once there, his att.i.tude did not change: After breakfast I used to walk out, get on a train and go into Glasgow for an hour or two. All thoughts of soldiering had gone out of my mind. I didn't take too kindly to being told what to do by someone who didn't know what he was talking about. At Christmas I just got on a train and went home. After one week I thought there was no point going back since I was due for a week's leave at New Year. So I went back after a fortnight but no one ever said anything. I was never missed!

At Fred Gilbert's camp, the former prisoners also took little notice of discipline: From Plymouth I could get back home to Coventry with or without a pa.s.s. It depended on who was on the gate. If you were on duty, fellas would come towards you and you were supposed to check their pa.s.s but you didn't. It would be a nod and a wink and the lads would go through the gate. You'd get on a train and there were too many people for the guard to be able to check you. So you didn't need a pa.s.s. At the station I'd wait until there was a crowd going through the barrier and I'd push past with other soldiers. You'd be gone before the guard could stop you. Other lads would get pa.s.ses to go home they'd give their address as towns in the north of Scotland. That meant they could get on a train and go anywhere they wanted to. All they had to do was get on any train if the guard said they were on the wrong train they'd just get off. So they travelled all over the place. Some even got pa.s.ses to go as far as Belgium. When you've been locked up for five years, you want to get out a bit.

The behaviour displayed by the former POWs stemmed from the fact that many felt they had 'done their bit' for their country, then wasted five years of life. This sense of disillusionment was recognized by the War Office: 'The suggestion of discharge is undoubtedly related to the apathy and war weariness of men whose morale was damaged beyond complete repair by the general situation at the time of capture Dunkirk.'4 The failings of the British Army during the battles in France seemed to underpin the disenchantment of those who had paid the price of defeat. They had witnessed the effect of pitting a force with the weapons and tactics of 1918 against an army ready for 1940. They had witnessed the superiority, in both numbers and quality, of German tanks and aircraft. They had seen the Allied armies outmanoeuvred by the advancing Germans, then watched as the rift between the British and French grew until the two armies had gone into captivity as virtual enemies. The celebration of Allied unity they witnessed in 1945 was lost on men who had watched French soldiers marching into captivity in full kit, or who had fought Frenchmen for food during the march into Germany. Above all, there was a sense that they had been let down by a government that had sent them to France in 1940 ill-prepared for modern warfare. As one noted: 'the returned POW has lost the respect he had for his senior officers. He has been in tight corners with them and has seen the way they have acted some were fine but that was a minority.'5 There was one group of returning prisoners for whom resettlement into society was a particular burden. Regular soldiers who were due to return to service after their leave faced issues that were of little concern to the wartime soldiers. As one asked: 'How do you think I will stand up to fire when I next go into action?'6 Yet their concerns went deeper than this. By the time the Dunkirk prisoners returned home the army looked different, carried new weapons, and used tanks and other vehicles that would have appeared fanciful back in 1940. Officers and NCOs who had spent five years behind barbed wire had seen their career opportunities swept aside. While they had been languis.h.i.+ng in the stalags a whole new breed of soldiers had taken their place. By 1945, the man whom Ernie Grainger had replaced in 1939 had actually reached the rank of brigadier. As Grainger remembered: 'When I came back I was made to feel out of place in the sergeants' mess. I was virtually thrown out. They'd been there all the war settled in, they had their wives and girlfriends. They didn't want the likes of me in there, they thought we were after their jobs. They did their best to get rid of us. I was an outsider among those who'd stayed in the UK.'

Men who had never imagined themselves as soldiers were occupying the promotion ladder. War had seen the advancement of officers who had been schoolboys during the Dunkirk evacuation. Now many of the newcomers were senior to men who had spent long years in the army, men who had earned their pips and stripes through years of square-bas.h.i.+ng and service throughout the Empire. If that was not galling enough for the old-timers, the newcomers also had a far better understanding of the modern battlefield than men who had been captured in 1940. While they had been enduring German captivity the British Army had been relearning so much about war.

Despite the general desire to get away from the army as soon as possible, the mental effects of captivity led some men to make the decision to stay on as regulars. The impact of five years of captivity was such that they dared not yet return to civilian life. David Mowatt was among them: My mind was all over the place. I was terrible. I'd been to three different rehabilitation camps. Physically, I was all right, but not my mind. They put up a notice asking for ex-POWs to attend the Nuremburg trials, but you had to sign on for four years. That's it that was the get out for me I wasn't looking forward to 'civvy street' at all. So I signed up. It was the best decision I ever made in my whole life. It was five wonderful years. I couldn't handle being a civilian. I couldn't have gone back to the farm. Life was quite different after five years away. When I went home on leave, I couldn't go on a bus, I couldn't go on a train I couldn't even go into a pub unless I knew one of my mates was going to be in there. I didn't want to meet civilians people asking me all sorts of questions. Lots of other boys said the same.

As the prisoners returned home there was a general lack of understanding of what they had endured. The world had become obsessed by the eventual victory. Even Dunkirk was turned into a victory, eulogizing the escapers and ignoring the rest of the BEF. Whether it was the soldiers surrounded at St Valery, the men who received disabling wounds during the battles, or the men who had been plucked from the sea following the sinking of the Lancastria, the plight of those left behind at Dunkirk seemed like a footnote in history.

When Geoff Griffin returned home he received just a 15 per cent disability rating giving him a pension of 13 s.h.i.+llings a week. His return to civvy street was hampered by the discovery that many vacancies advertised by firms had immediately and mysteriously been filled as soon as he showed his disability card. He remained jobless for some months and was disgusted with the reception he received. He was also unhappy that officials did not intervene to a.s.sist him with finding work.

When the repatriates were followed home by the ma.s.s of prisoners, the psychological symptoms they displayed were similar to those displayed by the wounded men. The returning men were unable to switch off the 'stalag mentality' that had been essential to their sanity during five long years of captivity. They were found to be restless, irresponsible and irritable. They had a deep disrespect for authority. They displayed a fear of confined s.p.a.ces and disliked being in the midst of crowds. They were also cynical, embarra.s.sed in polite society and quick-tempered. It seemed they suffered a collective crisis of confidence, something summed up by one returning man: 'It's fantastic me, a sergeant major and I can't cross the traffic in Shaftesbury Avenue.'7 For some returning prisoners, the five years away from home had an irreversible effect. They had lost their youth and felt out of step with the post-war world. Peter Wagstaff recalled the effect on one of his friends, a very bright man who was tormented by a deep fear of mental illness: 'A very good friend of mine had spent his time as a prisoner writing a long, long novel. He came back and tried to sell it but he found it was completely out of date. He committed suicide within three weeks of coming home. A lot of us did that or turned to drink.'

Under such pressures to fit back into society, it was little wonder some of the returning prisoners found themselves clas.h.i.+ng with the authorities. Around 70 per cent of ex-prisoners reported having problems with the pay owed to them by the army. Some of the protected personnel reported having used the seemingly useless Lagergeld paid to them by the Germans to light cigarettes. They were then upset to discover this money had actually been deducted from their credits upon their return home. These men felt bitter that, having voluntarily stayed behind in France to care for the wounded, they were penalized upon their return to the UK. As one commented: 'I volunteered to stay behind in France because I felt it was my duty. When I came home I find the War Office quibbling about my pay and trying to pay the lowest possible minimum. This makes a man a little bitter.'8 Another RAMC soldier described the process of attempting to claim the back pay he believed he was owed; it was most easily visualized as: 'a bundle of split hairs wrapped up in miles and miles of red tape'.9 For some, the arguments over pay have continued for more than sixty years. For Graham King, the fight for the money he feels he is owed has never finished. Always describing himself as a protected person rather than a POW, King had money deducted from his back pay in lieu of money supposedly paid by the enemy. Yet since he was not receiving these payments he lost out. Furthermore, King felt he had been denied medals. He believed he was ent.i.tled to the France and Germany Star for service in north-west Europe between D-Day and VE-Day. He was informed by the Ministry of Defence that he was not ent.i.tled to the medal since he had been a POW: 'I pointed out that as a member of the Medical Services I could not be a prisoner of war under the articles of the Geneva Convention. They reb.u.t.ted this reply so I said I would like the money refunded that had been deducted from my pay. The reply was that was impossible as I was a protected person!'

With these arguments continuing for so many years, it was unsurprising that the men left behind in France in 1940 have always felt their plight has been ignored. There was no campaign medal struck for the BEF, meaning those whose war finished in 1940 have no permanent record of their service and suffering, something that has always caused annoyance to so many of the men left behind. As Les Allan has always pointed out, he can spot a 1940 POW by how bereft his chest is of campaign medals. In recent years the National Ex-Prisoner of War a.s.sociation has struck its own medal for former POWs, depicting the dove of peace against a background of barbed wire. However, many felt it was not their role to be making the medals, as Jim Pearce noted: 'It would have been nice for the government to do it. Instead we had to pay for the medal my daughter bought me it for Christmas!' Similarly, Fred Coster noted: 'I think the government should have given us a campaign medal, because we fought behind the lines. I was forever using my ability to speak German to demoralize the Germans. I told my guards, "You don't stand a chance. We'll wipe you out! We'll bomb you with a thousand planes." I made it all up but in the end it was true! They were so demoralized, I ended up feeling sorry for them.'

The story of the miracle of Dunkirk has always revolved around the plucky amateur sailors ferrying soldiers from the beaches. It is a mythology that ignores the plight of those whose sacrifices meant the escape could take place. The neglected veterans include those who kept fighting and dying for weeks after the beaches of Dunkirk had fallen. The forgotten men of 1940 also include those who chose to remain in France to administer medical care to the wounded giving up their freedom in the name of duty. The true story of Dunkirk must also include those who never gave up the struggle, who hid in France, endured interrogation by the Gestapo and yet somehow still managed to get home via Spain or North Africa. Moreover, it should never be forgotten that for every seven men who were evacuated via Dunkirk one man was left behind as a prisoner of war. All the physical abuse and mental anguish they suffered in the five years that followed are part of the Dunkirk story.

Ever since the world's press first celebrated the miraculous evacuation from the beaches, the story has been a onesided affair. The pain that has been omitted from it has always angered the veterans. When Graham King was contacted by the BBC for a programme about Dunkirk he was appalled that they knew little about the rearguard and were once again focused on what happened on the beaches. The subject of the post-war films about POWs also always raised a laugh with the former prisoners. 'A load of c.r.a.p,' thought Norman Barnett. 'They just looked too well fed, they needed to get some skinny blokes in there.'

For Fred Coster the sacrifices of the rearguard need to be more widely known: 'You'd think they'd mention the rest of us. Dunkirk was a great success, but it wouldn't have been a success if it wasn't for the rearguard. Every time the rearguard held up the Germans another thousand men got away. It wasn't a willing sacrifice but we did our duty.' As d.i.c.k Taylor remembered: 'They've forgotten all about us. There were eight thousand prisoners from my Division. We were still fighting whilst those who get all the credit were getting away. We didn't get any recognition. The 51st Highland Division gets forgotten. People think everybody got away at Dunkirk.' Another of the Highlanders, Jim Reed, put it even more bluntly: 'I still believe Churchill sold us down the river, he said "stay behind to stiffen French resistance". It was a load of bulls.h.i.+t.'

One of those left behind in 1940 found his version of events questioned by government officials. Corporal Hosington, who escaped from one of the columns of prisoners marching into Germany, found staff at the Treasury Solicitors Office did not believe his story. They could not accept that the Germans had inflicted so much suffering on their captives. In July 1943 they questioned his account: 'The only thing I don't like about it is the length of time you were either without or with a wholly inadequate amount of food. It is difficult to conceive how a column could have remained on the march for six days under these conditions.'10 The corporal could not accept their protestations, writing back to them that: 'As far as I am concerned it is quite in order and none of the contents are exaggerated.' He later wrote to reinforce what he had told them: 'You will find out when our men return from German prison camps that my statement has not been exaggerated. If life itself is at stake men will, and can, carry on even though conditions seem to make it impossible to do so.'11 With these words Corporal Hosington had unwittingly provided a fitting epitaph to all the men who whether wounded, a prisoner or an evader had been left behind in France in June 1940.

Epilogue.

And so the 40,000 men left behind at Dunkirk came home to a strange, new world one far removed from that they had left back in 1939. After five years nothing had prepared them for this. They had been on rehabilitation courses, retrained, enjoyed leaves, found employment, re-acquainted themselves with their famili