Library Reference Number: 071
The Long Years in Captivity
lain Macdonald ended his account in "Shot Down over Benghazi" by suggesting he may write more at some point, relating to the long years spent as a prisoner-of-war, lain continues:-
"The long years commenced the moment I bailed out of my stricken Wellington aircraft at 1 a.m. on the morning of 7th September,
1941. Being passed into the hands of the German Army by Arabs who had befriended us, was described in the account mentioned above. I
was then about to find out that Allied prisoners taken either in North Africa or Italy were transported to Germany, and this account
relates to incidents during, and between those journeys. Being tricked into losing my flying jacket, I was soon to learn was only
the first in a series of personal indignities and loss of self-esteem I came to expect as a prisoner. In the early stages, the
outward shows of being friendly, then the other extreme of harsh sleeping conditions on hard floors, interrogation, locked in
solitary confinement for days, then more interrogation with each one becoming more threatening, finally ended when I was reunited at
last with the other members of my crew. We were then considered suitable to join the number of other prisoners in a compound - after
the initial month of being a prisoner, isolation, and gruelling individual interrogation.
Considering the hardships we were to endure later, the initial journeys to reach Germany were shared with German troops travelling by JU52 aircraft, and then by rail. Taken to Crete, then Athens and on to Frankfurt, we eventually reached Stalag 8B at a place called Lamsdorf close to the Czech border on 6th October 1941. The camp also contained Army personnel (many of whom were Dunkirk survivors), and although they were taken out daily to work on the land, aircrew prisoners were considered to be the 'bad boys' and thought to be too much of a risk to be allowed out as members of a working party.
We were kept securely behind the barbwire, which was the case until the end of hostilities for all RAF personnel. Housed in brick constructed, concrete floored & concrete roofed buildings, we had been issued with a thin grey blanket on arrival. Bunk beds had condensation dripping down from the concrete roof, and the lower bunks had to endure some loose straw or wood-shavings running out of the upper palliasse fillings. I had been given an old Greek greatcoat, but eventually the compound received via the Red Cross, a supply of RAF tunics and trousers. We also had the Red Cross to thank for food parcels, which were greatly appreciated. These supplemented the daily ration of one loaf of bread we received between 6 prisoners. The daily ritual of dividing this one loaf caused a great deal of friction if shares were thought to be unequally divided.
A compound close to ours had been empty, until one day a party of Russian prisoners arrived in a pitiful condition. The Germans had no Geneva Convention with Russia, and these new arrivals suffered very harsh treatment. Their food rations were so inadequate that they were dying like flies from starvation. The Germans collected their corpses by horse and cart every two days, after their colleagues had stripped the Russian bodies of clothing or any other collectable items. We could not even guess what the Germans did with the corpses, as they had no respect for the Russians.
Losing track of war news, and being deprived of information of what is happening, is one of the frustrating features of captivity. This was partially overcome by trading some of our Red Cross cigarettes with German guards, who acquired some wireless and crystal set parts in exchange. One fellow prisoner assembled our 'radio' while another jotted down in shorthand any news received by this means, and yet another transcribed the short-hand into plain English, to give us some indication of what was happening in the outside world.
One highlight of this early part of our captivity was the news that due to the attack on Pearl Harbour in December 1941, America was about to enter the war. Hopes ran high that with United States intervention, the war would soon come to an end. Witnessing Christmas arriving and several Christmas Days departing however, our years in captivity stretched out to 3 years 7 months. Soon after this first ray of hope in 1941, we were on the move again. This time in a two-day & night journey in cattle trucks to arrive in Stalag Luft 3, Sagan, on 13th May 1942. This camp was a little more bearable, as we lived in wooden huts, which appeared more spacious as we now had two-tier bunks. One of those huts was allocated for community or theatre use, although the whole area was surrounded with double barbwire, machine-guns and searchlights. We were also well warned that anyone stepping over a certain line would be immediately shot.
Christmas 1942 had arrived and departed, and the camp continued to fill up, as more Allied planes were shot down. New arrivals were badgered for days for news about people, families, squadrons, progress of the war etc. On June 10th 1943, we were on the move again by the usual cattle truck method. This time we were so packed in, that we spent two days and nights standing up, as there was not enough space to sit or lie down. One situation that I recall after moving to Stalag 6 (Heydekrug) was in the winter of 1943/44 when the Gestapo arrived at 6 a.m. and turfed us out in the snow still wearing our night attire. Before allowing our frozen bodies to return inside, they had turned our bed and belongings upside down, and the black-leather-coated 'gangsters' left with their supply of loot. More cattle truck journeys and long marches were to follow during my 1,305 days imprisonment, and along with poor conditions and ever decreasing food rations, it was inevitable that when finally released by the 'Desert Rats' on 16th April 1945, I was suffering from malnutrition - but glad to be on the other side of the barb wire - and free.!"