Back now after a couple of weeks in La France profonde, so here's the final part of my father's story.
As the rapid Soviet advance approached Sagan in January 1945 the Germans marched the prisoners westward; with some notice of this my father had made a sledge. My father was one of the older officers, at 45, and conditions on the march were very bad; it was mid-winter and one of the younger ones, Tony Ingram, was on the point of just lying down in the snow and waiting to be shot, but my father repeatedly urged him on and for many years after the War we received a Christmas card from him. Prisoners were housed in barns and disused factories overnight; in one of the few letters we received after this my father mentioned that as they were marched through villages this was the first time he had seen any children for several years.
He made some handwritten notes on this, perhaps for a book that was never written; I’ve located some of the villages he mentions, a bit tricky as they are now mostly in Poland and the names have changed but one or two don’t seem on a logical route to Luckenwalde.
“28 Jan. 1945 Left Sagan 6 a.m.
28 Jan. Arrived Hellbau at dusk
29 Jan. Lay up in big school at Hellbau (central heating, electric light)
30 Jan. Marched to Sichdichfür, billeted in church (v. cold, we were wet with snow)
31 Jan. Marched to Muskau, billeted in glass and china factory, warm and dry
1 Feb. Lay up all day in factory; stayed night
2 Feb. Marched to Steinau; magnificent sunset en route. Billeted in barn. Good straw to lie on, slept well.
3 Feb. Marched to panzer barracks at Spremberg. Entrained at dusk for Luckenwalde
4 Feb. Arrived Luckenwalde at dusk”
After they reached Stalag IIIA at Luckenwalde we got very few letters from that camp, the last being dated March 25th, 1945; presumably the chaotic conditions meant that PoW mail was a pretty low priority. His few letters from Jan. 11th onwards were received around a year later and stamped “Recovered PoW Mail from Europe Recently Received by British P.O”. We also received a couple of my mother’s letters to my father, sent in late 1944; they were stamped “This letter formed part of undelivered mails which fell into the hands of the Allied forces in Germany. It is undeliverable as addressed, and is therefore returned to you”.
Stalag IIIA had held prisoners from a number of nations and these included the USSR; one of my father’s watercolours was of a sumptuously decorated Russian Orthodox church that Soviet prisoners had created from one of the huts. In view of the fact that some sections of Stalag IIIA had been used earlier in the War during attempts by the Germans to recruit units formed of Allied prisoners I wonder whether improved conditions had been provided for those the Germans had hoped to ‘turn’.
In mid-April the Soviet army liberated the camp; my father’s sketchbooks included drawings of Soviet soldiers and he mentioned that there were several women in the unit. There were problems with immediate repatriation, though, and by May 7th the prisoners were still confined to camp. For some reason at home we were concerned that they might be shipped home via Odessa. Food rations were inadequate and as well as the 16,000 prisoners of mixed nationality there was an influx of Italian refugees. I have the letter from the Senior British Officer to the Russian Commandant for Repatriation outlining the problems; in it he demands immediate repatriation and resigns his responsibility for all but the British prisoners. Eventually my father, along with other RAF prisoners, was moved to Halle airfield, from which he was flown in a USAAF C-47 to Cosford, where he was de-loused, provided with a de-mob suit and from which he finally came back to my mother and me, after five and a half years absence.