Charles Waite - Survivor of the Long March

We were mainly employed on farm work, providing agricultural labour for anything and everything that needed doing to get food to the German nation. We went out on work detachments locally and further afield, depending on what the work was. Day in, day out, month in, month out, the seasons came and went and the years passed in this vast, desolate wilderness of East Prussia. Fields were ploughed and sown; crops planted and harvested. Fences were mended and roads cleared. Coal unloaded and timber cut down. We turned our hands to whatever was needed. No matter the weather, we were out working away with our bare hands and a few basic farm tools. Muscle power and stamina were what was needed; not brains.

I was happy being out in the fresh air. Perhaps, ‘happy’ is too strong a word. Rather say ‘pleased’ because you couldn’t really be happy imprisoned where we were in those conditions. It was wonderful receiving a letter from home, a parcel of clothes, extra rations and cigarettes in a Red Cross parcel. It was a miracle and cheered us up but I never felt happy. I was grateful that I wasn’t down a coal mine or lying sick or injured somewhere. But not happy.

In spite of the hard physical work, I thought I was freer and healthier than if I had been stuck indoors at some of the other places. Doing nothing but look at four walls of a hut with the occasional bit of exercise round the yard to break up the monotony. Keeping busy during the day helped to distract my mind from thinking about what was going on around me and what the future might bring; but at night dark thoughts haunted me.

We went out on work detachments except for two chaps who volunteered to stay behind to cook and clean. They did that all the time I was there. They had to look after the kitchen and the supplies, which usually came from the village and improvise if there were shortages. Their job included bringing lunch, usually soup, out to us, carrying it in a milk churn on a cart if we weren’t working too far away. They had to have supper ready for us when we got back. What we ate depended on what was available.

Monday might be split pea, Tuesday, barley, Wednesday, potato and so on until you came back to the beginning again. Our daily routine was simple. We got up at 6am, had a mug of ersatz coffee (you got used the awful bitter taste of roasted barley) and wash, if it wasn’t winter and the tap was frozen. We went out to the farm yard where we assembled in front of the officer who counted us and then divided us up into five teams.

Work schedules were given out – so and so to go there and so and so there, and we walked with our guards out to our various jobs on the farm. Some work lasted weeks, some just days, depending on the season and what was needed. We came back at 6 or 7 in the evening, washed, ate supper, which might be soup or bread and butter and perhaps some sausage and then went to bed. That was the routine pretty much from then onwards.

I was lucky working with the same fellows most of the time. That’s when I got to know my four new pals. I think we must have made a good team not to be split up. Sometimes when you first meet somebody, you feel at ease with them and there is an instant bond. It was like that for me and my pals. We shared the same room and our bunks were close together and then we found ourselves out working together. We talked about the usual things men talk about – home, families and jobs. Even though we had different backgrounds and personalities, it didn’t matter when we had so much in common: being far from home and loved ones and hating the Germans.

Laurie, Laurence Neville, who came from Prestiegne in Radnorshire, was in the Royal Artillery and had been taken prisoner somewhere near Saint-Valery-en-Caux. He was a butcher and his knowledge of animals and ways of killing them was to come in handy. We got on well and liked to share a joke or two. Heb or Hebby, Albert Hebner, who came from Perth, had his head screwed on tight and was always willing to help you out if you were in a bit of bother. There was Sid, Sidney Bentham, who came from St Albans. I wasn’t as close to him as the others. He seemed a bit different, a bit aloof. I think he was from a better class family, possibly even been to public school but we got on all right and he stuck by us.

Then there was Jimmy, James Sellar, who really was the Boss. We none of us could have done without him. He was a great chap. Great, not just because he was tall and well-built, a real asset when you are doing hard physical work together, but his strength of character, common sense and kindness helped see us through the war. He really watched out for us; I’m sure we wouldn’t have survived without him.

He was in the Queen’s Own Cameron Highlanders and, like Laurie, had been captured at Saint-Valery-en-Caux. When the weather improved he would put on his tartan trousers and black Glengarry cap with red check band. I can picture him now on The Long March, two black ribbons swinging from his cap, as he marched proudly along. He was a gamekeeper on a large estate near Dalwhinnie in the Scottish Highlands and a natural man of action. Which was just as well, because I could hardly understand a word he said in his thick Scottish accent. His resourcefulness and skills proved invaluable throughout our stay and during our long journey to our final liberation.

When people talk about prisoner of war camps now, they have a picture in their mind of Colditz and The Great Escape but I was never an inmate in a place like that, locked up with thousands of other men behind electrified fences, with tall watch towers and patrolling guards. We had no concert parties or officers planning escape routes and digging tunnels. We were an Arbeitskommando – a labour battalion, mostly prisoners of war from the lower ranks. It was one of the independent work forces under the command of the main Stalag.

We lived and worked in the local community providing labour for farms, factories, quarries and mines. We were in the middle of nowhere, far from towns or cities, thousands of miles from home, locked in at night, starved of food, worn out by work. We were better off, however, than many of the thousands left behind elsewhere. We were free in our own way in The Great Outdoors. We didn’t always have guards breathing down our necks. Work toughened us up. How do you think I survived those terrible winter months of starvation and marching over 1600km?

People ask me whether I tried to escape. You didn’t think of escaping, even if your guard had gone off somewhere to have a smoke and left you standing in the middle of a frozen field with just a spade. Where would you go? You had no money, didn’t speak the language, locals weren’t particularly friendly, or didn’t dare to be, more like. They feared the German officers and guards as much as we did. If you managed to escape and you were caught what would happen to you? I didn’t want to think about that as it frightened me more than staying put. Keep your head down, get on with the work, and make the best of it.

Farm work kept us busy. The main crops were wheat, potatoes, cabbages, sugar beet and mangel-wurzels. There was always plenty to do: digging, ploughing, sowing, planting, harvesting; clearing up, cleaning out, cutting down, carrying away. We sifted, sorted, picked and packed. Whatever we were told to do, seven days a week during the summer and six days a week in winter.

Funny how things turn out, finding myself forced to work on a German farm, spending my days handling vegetables, when I’d spent the last ten years lugging them about at market and selling them in the family shop. I didn’t like eating my greens back then, but here the only greens I got were stringy bits of cabbage or beet tops in my soup. We were always hungry and on the lookout for something else to eat. What with the hard physical labour we did twelve hours a day, and the poor diet, we were never full and never satisfied.