The march took about six or seven days and unfortunately I did not record details of it. There were no serious incidents during the march and, taking place during the night, not much could be seen. It was more of a trudge along, than a march. As they were not main roads it was quiet, no German troops or armour moving north and no hoards of refugees moving south. There were no towns and only a few villages that we passed through. I don’t recall crossing the Danube, but this would have been a natural defence for the Germans, as the Americans advanced south. I understand that pockets of SS troops were active in the forests around Eichstatt, but we did not see or hear any as we moved south.
In my Wartime Log, I did make a sketch of an open barn and farmyard which typified the sort place we stayed in, after each night’s march. These farms would have been spread around a village and we were allowed to wander anywhere on parole status. This meant that we would not try to escape. Not that there was any point in escaping at this stage of the war, with the risk of being caught up in a local SS fire fight and the war almost over. Some of the chaps did wander around the farms and houses, trading with locals their cigarettes, for bread and eggs etc. On one occasion I went into a local church and I found a memorial card for a German soldier who was killed in 1941, ‘gefallen fur Deuchland’, which I kept as a reminder that, in a war, every nation’s youth was sacrificed for some so- called national cause.
One event I do remember clearly, in the fading daylight as we moved off one evening. It was two old men just completing a new ornamental wooden fence around their front garden. Each pale had a cloverleaf hole, carefully cut in it at the top with a bow saw. They were so immersed in their work, they didn’t notice us as we passed by. Even though much of Germany was in turmoil, the war could have been a thousand miles away, or never even happened, as far as they were concerned. They were just getting on with the remainder of their lives!
On 22 April we reached StalagV11A and it was nearly the end of the war.
Stalag V11A was started in September 1939 for 10,000 POWs and grew to enormous size over the war years. After the collapse of France, the evacuation at Dunkirk, and the invasion of Russia in 1940, prisoners from 72 nations had passed through the camp. Towards the end of the war there were about 80,000 POWs, 2000 guards and administrative staff, with another 80,000 prisoners with 8000 guards on outside working parties. No doubt these numbers were swollen by the intake of prisoners from other camps likely to be overrun like ourselves. In the final stages the Commandant requisitioned tents for 30,000 prisoners, but we were housed in huts when we arrived.
The huts were like those in Stalag1VB, but probably more dilapidated if that were possible and the whole place was flea ridden. This would have been a shock for our colleagues from OflagV11B having had tolerable living quarters for some years. However we only had a week to suffer until our liberation.
On the morning of 29 April we were assembled for roll call. However there were no guards to count us and no guards in the watchtowers. Then we heard the rumble of trucks and tanks getting steadily nearer the camp and pass by, a short distance away, but we could not see them. There were a few light explosions and some small arms fire as the column approached the town. This stopped, and in the distance we could see the American flag, the Stars and Stripes, go up over the Town Hall - our war was over! What a ‘Holywood ending’ for us to experience.
Shortly afterwards an American jeep from General Patton’s 3rd.Army entered the camp with a soldier standing, holding aloft the Commandant’s revolver which had just been surrendered to him. You couldn’t see the rest of the jeep for people trying to climb on to it. The camp was now in a state of euphoria.
I have learned since that Colonel Burger, the German officer responsible for the defence of Moosburg, wanted to hand over the camp to the advancing Americans and for the Americans to by-pass the town. By this means Colonel Burger would ensure the safety of the camp and the town. However Colonel Burger had received orders to deport all the 15000 POW officers in the camp, and to send as many of his own men as he could afford to defend Moosburg. The local command of Moosburg was then taken over on 28 April by an officer of the SS, who was tricked into believing that Burger was going to carry out the deportation orders. When the SS officer left, Burger informed the more senior POW officers, in the presence of the Commandant, of his decision to hand over the camp en bloc to the approaching Americans. On the night of 28 April, under a flag of truce, a delegation including a Swiss delegate, two POW colonels and the SS officer, contacted the Americans to persuade them to go round Moosburg. The Americans held on to the SS officer (as Burger knew they would), declined to go round Moosburg, but accepted the plan to take over the camp from noon 29 April. The plan was carried out with only token resistance in Moosburg (as I actually witnessed) and there were no casualties in the American take-over of the camp.
(I have often thought since, that the reason the German SS wished to hold on to as many officer prisoners as possible, was to use them as hostages to trade for their own lives when the end came!)
Now we had been liberated, all we wanted was to catch a ’plane and fly home. But this was a prodigious task and some organisation obviously necessary before this could happen. The first thing I can remember, was that a number of American ladies assisting the Red Cross appeared, all highly made up as if they were going to a party. They were distributing doughnuts and white bread, which after eating the German bread for 15 months tasted like cake. It was a nice gesture, but I think we would have appreciated more, a field kitchen with some thick soup and American army rations!
The Americans were concerned that in such a large camp with so many nationalities, discipline would weaken, and the inmates would breakout and ravage the town. So we, the British officers, were required to patrol on the outside of the wire, in pairs, in the hope that we could maintain order. We had no weapons and luckily no breakouts materialised. I was very relieved when they withdrew this operation, as we could not have prevented any trouble, and instead we could have landed up as being post war casualties.
Plans to fly us out were fairly rapid and I was scheduled to fly to Brussels on 3 May, but this was cancelled. On 6 May I wrote an American air letter home, a rather sad letter, as now I was disappointed about the delay, and conditions in the camp were terrible. Glad to say this letter didn’t arrive home until I had been home several weeks!
Eventually a number of us were moved on 8 May to a grass airfield (adjacent to Moosburg town), where some 40 American Dakota transport aircraft were due to arrive to fly us to Brussels. None arrived and we spent all day in glorious sunshine on the airfield, which meant we would all arrive home sunburnt as if we had been on holiday!
The 8 May was VE Day, the day all Germany surrendered to the Allied forces. Since we were released on 29 April, in the space of nine days, German forces had surrendered in Italy, Hitler had committed suicide, the Russians had conquered Berlin, the Americans and Russians had met, officially, on the river Elbe at Torgau (which was near Stalag 1VB), and the Germans in, Holland, Denmark and North Germany had capitulated to the British Army.
At the end of the day on Moosburg airfield, American soldiers took us over to some houses on the edge of the airfield (which they had requisitioned at short notice), so we could ‘bed down’ for the night. I felt sorry for the owners of the properties, as they had been moved out at short notice and had to leave everything as it was. I for my part just slept on the floor, and at any rate there were too many of us to use the beds. The next morning, early, we had to return to the airfield, but I’m sorry to say not before some of our party had rifled the drawers and cupboards for souvenirs. I felt disgusted by this despoilment of someone’s home, by apparently otherwise disciplined men who were now shortly to be reunited with their own families and homes.
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