Americans were badly burned but glad to be alive

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Craig Scott, of Makeney, has created a website to preserve the wartime diary of his late father David Scott (below, left) a Derby flight engineer who became a PoW in Nazi Germany. We are serialising extracts from the diary. After his plane crashed, David was captured and taken for questioning.

It took 40 minutes to march from one side of Frankfurt to the other and during the whole of that walk, I never saw a complete building. The whole city had been terribly damaged.

We arrived at Oberausel to yet another search. I was installed in a solitary cell – very sparse, bunk chair and water pitcher.

Food was little and far between and, at about 10pm, they locked the outside shutters on the frosted glass window. The idea, apparently, was to get your spirits down to zero before interrogation.

I was given a questionnaire to fill in but I only filled in my name, rank and number.

The next morning, I was again summoned for interrogation, this time by a Luftwaffe officer. He motioned me to sit down, handed me a cigarette and chatted about London and various innocuous topics. I smoked a couple of his cigarettes. Then he suddenly told me my Squadron, Con, unit, plane and many more details I had not known it was possible for the Germans to know. He got little from me, even though he generally answered his own questions. I was lucky. He had a low opinion of engineers’ intelligence and did not question me in detail.

He kept telling me all about what a wonderful country Germany was and the cleverness of its scientists. However, I disagreed with the old boy straightaway, so he soon terminated the interview.

Later, I was taken to a large wooden hut with about 60 others, mostly American, and what a great relief it was to hear English spoken.

We were told we would be moved early in the morning to a permanent camp. We had all been forbidden to speak since we had been captured and there was much talk about escaping from burning planes and crashing aircraft.

Many of the Americans had sustained bad burns and they were pitiful sights. Their aircraft were very flammable and they tended to use throat mikes and headphones so their faces were more vulnerable than ours in our helmets and oxy masks. Even the worst burnt were amazingly cheerful, though; they did have their lives.

Next morning, we were each given two cigarettes each – which went like wildfire – and marched to the railway station where I recognised Mike Bzowy, who was at Linton with me and had been shot down a few weeks ago.

The badly wounded were transported by lorries, many of which were the old Bedford 4 x 4s, captured at Dunkirk, no doubt.

It was a long journey up through beautiful mountainous, wooded country before we reached our transit camp.

There, we were searched, photographed and issued with an American Red Cross capture suitcase, khaki shirt, boots for me, as I was still barefoot and a greatcoat. The case was a great joy; it contained soap, towel, razor blades, vitamin pills, toothbrush and powder, cascara pills, housewife comb, toilet paper and 40 cigarettes. We had a hot shower, then had a good meal from Red Cross parcels. I also made a new friend, an Aussie called Michael J Nolan, known as Denny.

After tea, we left for our camp at Bankau, equipped with one Red Cross parcel between two and a carton of chewing gum each. The trip took three days, in crowded compartments, with hard wooden seats. At night, it was torture trying to sleep, although spirits were high. I think we were all touched with euphoria at our escape from death. The guards gave us hot water and plenty of bread so we were well fed.

We passed through many cities on the way, all badly damaged, and we realised with new force just what a devastating effect bombs have on built-up areas.

The journey took us from one side of Germany to the other as the new camp was near Kreusberg on the Polish border. The camp was still in the process of being built and consisted mainly of sheds.

Our days soon settled into the slow tedious pattern of life on a PoW camp.

The camp was Stalagluft 7, in Bankau, Silesia. It was made up of a large compound, roughly 500 yards square, encircled with barbed wire. There were eight guard towers and the main building in the prison compound had cooking facilities and an assembly hall. All the other buildings were large sheds and huts which accommodated six men.

Each man was allotted two thin blankets, one paper palliasse (mattress), one bowl, one cup and one spoon. The hut was equipped with four stools, one knife, one fork, two papier mache wash bowls, one tea jug between two huts and a water jug between three huts. Around 1,100 men were accommodated in 195 huts. Some huts were communal and housed a library and sick bays .

As the summer turned to autumn, the authorities built a more permanent camp next door to that occupied by the huts. Each room here was equipped with a slow combustion stove and two-tiered bunks, accommodating up to 20 men. The bunks all had loose boards but, unfortunately, many of the loose boards were missing, or stolen for fuel, so it was quite a balancing act to sleep. Denny and I took turns in the top and bottom bunk . It was a toss up which was the riskiest.

Life was boring but tolerable. However that situation was about to change as the winter progressed. On January 17, 1945, we were told to pack the minimum kit and to be ready to move in an hour.

The camp was to be evacuated and we were about to become part of a tortuous march across Poland which would leave hundreds of PoWs dead along the way.

Previous extracts of the diary can be found at:

Prisoner of war tells his story through diary which helped him stay alive

I felt hot flames around my ears and saw burning petrol

I was not welcome to sit on a train with the “super race”

Pages linking here

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