Blitz Kids, page 36
At first, the survivors of the Lustrous were sent to Sandbostel. Each morning they were woken at 6 a.m., given a breakfast of bread and water, and sent to work in the fields on twelve-hour shifts. As John Brantom later recalled, if they dared to slack, the guards beat them with sticks. John Hipkin was appalled by conditions at the camp, recalling that although the British were crammed 100 to a room, conditions for Yugoslav prisoners were even worse. It was hard to imagine such cruelty and so he would allow the Yugoslavs to dip their mugs into the British soup as he carried it between compounds. Similarly, John Brantom threw bread rations over the fence to the starving Yugoslavs. On one occasion, John Hipkin watched as a German guard took offence at seeing Yugoslavs sharing British food. He shouted to the prisoners and, as the Yugoslav ran away, the guard raised his rifle, fired and killed the man. As John Hipkin later recalled: ‘I’ll never forget that murder. All over a stinking bowl of soup.’7
Officially, the merchant seamen were non-combatants and should have been treated as internees, not as prisoners of war. Instead, they were placed in a special camp known as Milag Nord or Marine Internierten Lager, at Westertimke near Bremen (Royal Navy personnel were imprisoned in the nearby Marlag camp). In the case of merchant seamen under the age of eighteen, international law stipulated that they could not be interned. Instead, they should be repatriated. However, these rules were seldom adhered to and so Leslie McDermott-Brown, John Hipkin, John Brantom and many other boys were transferred there from Sandbostel.
When the first batch of internees arrived in the camp they discovered that the huts had been made from damp wood that had been left out in the snow all winter. Such was the poor construction of the huts that the wind whistled through the walls. For the incoming seamen, the first winter was a time of cold, hunger and uncertainty. As they soon learned, the loose sandy soil plagued them in the dry summers, coating their clothes in a fine layer of dust. Then, in winter, it soon grew thick and damp as it was churned up by thousands of footfalls from bored internees as they trudged around the perimeter.
Teenage merchant seamen from all parts of the British Isles ended up within the camp, meaning that they could share their time with others their own age. Also, just as most had experienced on their ships, the boys had the protection of older men who looked out for them. The boys met people from all four corners of the globe: aged mariners who had lived all their lives from port to port, fathers and sons who had sailed and been captured together, men of every imaginable nationality, race and religion. For the youngsters, it was an education just to listen to these men. They had travelled the world and their knowledge seemed infinite to teenagers fresh from home. John Brantom grew friendly with an older man, an experienced sailor who was a talented artist and was like an uncle to the teenager. He also befriended a musician who had been sunk the same day whilst crewing a separate ship. Unfortunately, the musician died of cancer and his sixteen-year-old friend had to dig his grave.
Despite this sense of camaraderie, at times the boys found life difficult to endure. Like all prisoners of war they often felt lonely despite living in cramped conditions amidst thousands of fellow seamen. John Hipkin wrote home requesting photographs of his family and friends, hoping they might help curb the inevitable sense of homesickness felt by all prisoners. At times John Brantom, whose teenage years were passing in captivity, considered climbing the perimeter wire and meeting an inevitable death. He regularly moved huts and found it difficult to settle amongst his countrymen. Feeling like an outsider, he spent increasing amounts of time with foreign sailors, including Jamaicans and Nigerians, who were sometimes shunned by the British sailors. For John Hipkin, the emotional turmoil of captivity was suppressed beneath a desire for education. Whilst a prisoner he became an avid student, spending many of his spare hours studying – just as many of his contemporaries were continuing their studies behind school desks across the United Kingdom.
With time, conditions slowly improved. Sailors in the adjoining Milag thought the merchant seamen were living a life of incredible freedom. There were rumours of widespread rackets, gambling syndicates, drinking and even women being smuggled into the camp. Whilst the issue of discipline among men who were interned rather than held prisoner, and who were not under military discipline, meant that life might have been easier than for their counterparts, life in Milag was far from a holiday camp existence. Although labour was not compulsory, some chose to work on local farms, which helped provide some fresh vegetables for the internees. By early 1943 there were nearly 3,000 merchant seaman interned in Milag Nord. The senior British officer in the camp recorded the former positions of the boys in his camp. He counted: seventy-four cadets; thirty-five deck boys; sixteen galley boys; fifteen cabin boys; six saloon boys; one steward’s boy; one pantry boy; one engineer’s boy; and one lift boy.8 Red Cross reports indicated that the camp was sufficient to house them, except that the toilet facilities were substandard and there was insufficient equipment for private cooking. It was also recorded that they had just one hot shower per month. The seamen slept on straw-filled palliasses in two-tier bunks, with each man issued with two blankets. As one man wrote home: ‘these boards do get hard’.9 In 1943 it was recorded that each internee had just one good outfit of clothes. The men also complained that parcels from home were infrequent.
In July that year, a seaman wrote home:
We are situated right in the middle of a very pretty farming district, pine woods completely encircle us in the distance. Half the fields are cultivated, wheat, potatoes, cabbages etc, the remainder is lovely grazing pasture. Between our village and the next runs a stream, where paddle the local ducks; we can follow its course from our window by the willow tree.10
However, that rosy impression of life in the camp was far from the memory of others. Bill Manningham, who entered the camp aged seventeen, later recalled:
The first camp commandant was an elderly man named Prush. He hated us like we were poison and if anyone didn’t go to work, he used to punish them. One of the punishments was to stand us beside the barbed wire with the guard watching us for two hours at least. We couldn’t move and weren’t allowed to smoke or drink. Sometimes we were kept there ten hours. He was in charge of the camp for about two-and-a-half years and was classed as one of the worst we had. There was nothing in his mind but work and punishment.11
Conditions at the camp annoyed Bill and his mates: ‘We went on strike once because of the soup. We hadn’t received any parcels and the soup was just like water. We only got it once a day so we were practically starving, but the strike ended when the commandant threatened to have us all shot.’12 Such threats were genuine. One of Leslie McDermott-Brown’s friends was shot and killed by a guard whilst attempting to trade food. With increasing numbers of cabin and galley boys falling into German hands it was decided they should all be housed together within the camp. As John Hipkin remembered it, the Germans had hoped the boys would be a good influence on each other:
As more and more boys came in, the Germans found us such a nuisance they put us all into one barracks in the camp. You do that with boys and they’ll get up to everything. We became master thieves. So they gave us special jobs to do. We went out picking crops. We were expert at going into a spud field. We wore British army battledress which is baggy but buttons tight at the waist. You could get a stone of spuds inside there. So we became adept at stealing food. The German guards soon got sick of our antics. Whatever job was given to us, we made an ass of it.
John recalled the work details: ‘The work I liked most of all was the forestry gang. You would spend a whole day working in the forest with just a few guards. We were felling trees so they had to be a safe distance away. I liked that because you could kid yourself you were free.’13
As a teenage boy, John soon grew to recognize that youth had its advantages:
Milag was probably the most cosmopolitan of prison camps, with seamen of all nations there, ranging from 14 year olds to men in their late seventies who had gone to sea as boys in the days of sail. It was easier for us as boys than for the men. One of the problems of captivity for men was the worry about wives and children back home, while those courting used to get “Dear John” letters. That sort of stuff went over our heads.’14
With help from groups back home, including the Merchant Navy Officers’ Training Board, John Hipkin was able to restart his education. In 1944, after three years as an internee, he wrote home to his mother:
I hope my sister Betty is doing as well at school as I am here. I learned algebra and geometry last winter, and now I’m in the matriculation classes. I’ve also started learning Spanish, and am surprised how easy it is! A fellow named Stan Hagill, who has been travelling around a bit, is teaching me Spanish, and another man, Chinese and Japanese.’15
In the camp, John also studied for the RAF entrance examination, using books sent to him by the Red Cross. His mental strength was also supported by a growing religious faith which he first encountered courtesy of the teachings of a padre who had been sunk in the Atlantic.
Not all teenage prisoners of war were held captive by the Germans. Some crews of merchant ships found themselves at the mercy of neutral powers. In some cases their treatment was far worse than that given by the enemy. Born in Blackwood, Gwent, in August 1925, Wilfred Williams was the cabin boy on a merchant ship SS Allende. He had been working at a forge when war broke out and was upset that he could not join the Army aged fourteen. When he later saw a work colleague wearing a Merchant Navy badge he spoke with him and discovered that he was now old enough to join the Merchant Navy. He told his parents that if they did not allow him to go, he would run away to sea.
Wilfred joined the Allende in February 1941 aged fifteen. As a mess room boy he made breakfast each morning, did the washing up and laid the table for meals. One year on, the ship was eighteen miles off the coast of Liberia when a torpedo hit the ship. Wilfred was thrown from his bunk, hitting his head on the ceiling. When he got outside, the deck was already tilting and he could hear the cargo shifting beneath him. As he looked around the deck was littered with debris from the explosion. One man narrowly avoided being hit by a lump of the engine.
Taking to the lifeboats, the crew did their best to get away. In a heavy sea, with rain pouring down, the lifeboats soon filled with water. They tried to bail out the boat, but without buckets they could do little. Facing the prospect of being sunk, and noticing the Allende was still afloat, the crew decided to row back to fetch buckets. As they approached, a second torpedo struck, sending the ship to the bottom. They were forced to continue bailing out as best they could. As the seas calmed, the men in the lifeboat were able to finish bailing out and get the boat under control. However, having been soaked all night by the rain, in the morning the sun scorched them. After two days in the lifeboat, they were washed upon the coast. They attempted to row ashore, hoping they could crest a wave and be deposited on the beach. However, the lifeboat was caught by a wave: the men were thrown from it and washed up on an empty beach.
There was no sign of life in the area, with the beach acting as a narrow strip between the sea and a thick jungle. The decision was taken to walk along the beach in search of a village. After the ordeal of the sinking, most of the crew were barefoot. Wilfred Williams tore strips from his trousers and bound his feet. Eventually they reached a fishing village and discovered they were in French Guinea. The local gendarme was fetched and the crew were taken into captivity. It did not take the shipwrecked sailors long to realize the local authorities were loyal to the pro-German Vichy regime in France and were vehemently anti-British.
Not knowing what to expect, the crew were put on lorries and sent inland by dirt road. By the time they arrived in Daloa in the Ivory Coast, most of them were already suffering from dysentery. The police doctor gave them a cursory medical inspection but, despite their sickness, they were pronounced fit to travel. As they climbed back into the lorry, the weakest of the sick seamen had to be lifted onboard. They had to remove their shirts to rig up a shelter to protect them from the burning rays of the sun as they travelled.
For two months they were shuttled from place to place by the French authorities. They survived on rations of half-cooked rice and black bread, washed down by cups of weak coffee. When they were not being scorched by the sun, they were soaked by tropical rains. Meanwhile, their families had been alerted that the ship was lost, but there was no word of any survivors. It was months before the French authorities told the Red Cross that the surviving crew were safely ashore in Africa.
Eventually, they were taken off the lorries and sent by native canoe along the River Niger. Sitting in the cramped boats, the men were plagued by insects and some of the men started to show signs of malaria. As a result of their ordeal, Wilfred Williams suffered from pellagra, a condition brought on by a deficiency of vitamin B. It caused his tongue to dry, making swallowing difficult, and also affected his eyesight. They were on the river for eleven days and by the time they reached Timbuktu, Wilfred found it a struggle to walk. Despite his suffering, the sixteen year old did not give up hope.
In Timbuktu they were put into a prison and for the next sixty-three days they shared their meals – usually just rice – from one large bowl, with all the prisoners dipping their filthy hands in to scrape out what food they could find. They could do little except attempt to shelter from the sun, and curse their chapped lips and exhausted bodies. They were reduced to sprawling on straw, plagued by lice and flies. Wilfred developed open ulcers on his legs and rapidly weakened. Only the extra food given by his shipmates, who recognized that a growing boy needed extra food to sustain growth, saved him. By this stage he had dysentery, pellagra – that had given him dry, scaly skin – and open, pus-filled ulcers. Whilst in the prison two of the crew died of sickness.
Eventually, just when it seemed hopeless, the French authorities had a change of heart and announced the men would be sent home. They were once more loaded on to lorries and moved back in the direction they had come. After a while they were put on a train, sent through Senegal and into the British colony of Gambia. By the time they reached safety Wilfred Williams had reached the stage where he was unable to stand. Finally able to receive treatment, they were taken to a hospital in Freetown, Sierra Leone. Wilfred was then sent home on a hospital ship, arriving home in August 1942, six months after the sinking. After a further six months of recuperation, he returned to the sea and continued his career in the Merchant Navy.
In the Far East a number of youngsters became prisoners of the Japanese. Some were captured at the fall of Singapore, including some of the boys who had survived the sinking of HMS Prince of Wales and HMS Repulse. Having been put ashore in Singapore, they were among the thousands of men unable to escape when the garrison surrendered to the Japanese in 1942. Among them was Gordon Cockburn, a seventeen-year-old survivor of the Prince of Wales. He was held first in Bicycle Camp in Java, then in the notorious Kuching camp (also known at Batu Lintang camp) on the island of Borneo. He soon learned that the only way to stay alive was to keep quiet and obey orders. The one occasion he did disobey the guards to go to the toilet, he was kicked so hard his shin shattered and the bone penetrated his skin. Such a wound might have proved fatal had it not been for the fellow prisoner who made sure he kept maggots in the wound to eat away the infected flesh.
Recovering from his wounds, Gordon returned to work, building runways for Japanese aircraft. Every day seemed to bring more death, with Gordon and his fellow prisoners almost constantly burying the men who died from exhaustion and disease or who had been murdered by the guards. The experience had a profound effect on the youngster, who – on the eve of the fiftieth anniversary of VJ Day – admitted:
My wife says I’m cold and can’t really show my emotions. And those four years certainly made me able to accept death. I also tend to have very little sympathy for people who are sick or ill. During the years when I should have been growing up and going to dances like other teenagers, I was staring death in the face every day. I learned to become an expert at closing my mind down and keeping my feelings to myself. And I suppose I never learned to open up again. I have no regrets about fighting for my country – except for those who were less lucky than me. Those are the people I’ll be thinking about tomorrow.16
Not all of the boys of the Merchant Navy remained resilient. Two of their number – Ronald Voysey, an Australian-born cabin boy who had been serving on British Advocate when captured, and Kenneth Berry, a fourteen year old onboard a tanker, SS Cymbeline – both volunteered for the ‘British Free Corps’ following a visit to Milag by William ‘Lord Haw-Haw’ Joyce. The Free Corps was the SS unit raised from British and Commonwealth prisoners that the Germans hoped to use against the Russians as part of an anti-Bolshevist crusade. After his capture in 1940, Kenneth Berry’s youth meant he had been allowed to live in Paris in the care of a British woman. Then, aged seventeen, he had been interned at the St Denis camp, north of Paris. There he was exposed to German propaganda, causing him to volunteer. He was detained by the Gestapo for a number of weeks and interrogated about his decision to volunteer. Then he was sent to Berlin, where he resided in a lodging house, joining the Free Corps in November 1943.
One of Kenneth’s first tasks as a member of the unit was to begin a recruitment drive among fellow merchant seamen at Westertimke. In May and June 1944 he was successful, recruiting two men, one of whom had mainly been swayed by the prospect of extra food and tobacco. However, exposed to loyal sailors on his visits to the camp, he realized his mistake and attempted to extricate himself. On the advice of the camp leader, Kenneth visited the Swiss embassy in Berlin and to seek assistance. Failing to get help from the Swiss, he continued to attempt to recruit for the Germans. His next visit to Westertimke netted two more renegade volunteers. In early 1945 Kenneth was among the small British Free Corps detachment finally to reach the front lines, being sent to the armoured reconnaissance battalion of an SS division. The unit never actually saw action, being withdrawn and given a transport role behind the front lines. In the chaos of the final weeks of war, most of the unit managed to head west and avoid capture by the Russians. When Kenneth finally returned to the UK he was sentenced to nine months hard labour for his youthful treachery.
