Old Comrades
We crossed the bridge at Prettin with no incident. The road was now one continuous stream of refugees and we learned that Falkenberg had been cleared by 8.30 on Sunday evening. Of course, we found that Dommitsch was not in our hands and we got the usual story that our troops were 15 or 20 kms up the road. We each had a good wash, 2 or 3 cups of tea and a smoke, at a factory where 15 of our boys had been working as POWs. They made us very welcome.
At about 4.15pm the people of Dommitsch started to evacuate also! The news was that Annaberg had been taken by the Russians at 4am, although we had been within 7 miles of it during the day and had noted nothing unusual. The trouble was that there was no communication even between villages, and there had been none for a week, owing to bombing. Every town and village was isolated. We decided after this news to start out for Bitterfeld immediately, a place we knew for certain was in Allied hands since the information was contained in one of their dropped leaflets. We set out at 4.45pm to do about 40-50 kilometres intending, if not stopped, to walk after dark until we arrived there.
We kept to the road and made extremely good time, passing soldiers, "volksturm" and military police without question until we finally arrived at the village of Aufhausen, 7 kilometres from Duben, where Allied troops were supposed to be and another 12-15 kilometres from Bitterfeld where Allied troops were certain to be. At this village we were stopped by a military policeman and taken to a German officer,who treated us very well after listening to our lies about "looking for our Kommando", and then told us that "we couldn't walk any further tonight". He detailed a man to see that we were given beds, blankets etc, and we were taken to the local P.O.W. cell, in the care of two young women who stood in the cell doorway talking for a good half-an-hour when we were waiting to go to bed, being dog-tired. They told us that the guard would come for us in the morning and let us go free so that we could walk to our own lines. They said it was all arranged, but I couldn't believe it until it happened. We were supplied incidentally, with about 2 pounds of good farm bread and a 2 pound tin of meat.
At 9a.m. on Tuesday the local policeman came to our cell, told us that the German soldiers had gone and said that we had better get on our way to Duben, 7 kilometres away. We left the place with a great deal of joy and relief and had walked a couple of kilometres when, rounding a bend in the road, we had another surprise meeting with German troops. We had walked right into a large group of them, obviously stopped for a rest. Many were sitting or lying in the grass at the side of the road, while others were standing about talking to each other. Taking a deep and collective breath, we walked on past the soldiers, occasionally nodding and smiling at them on each side of the road and saying "Guden tag!" (Good day to you), to which some of them replied. We hoped they would think we were Frenchmen or other foreign workers, in view of our assorted bits of uniform and civvy clothes.
We reached Duben at 12.30, to find to our joy that it was occupied by the Americans, who had advanced and taken over that morning. We were free! We nearly pumped the arm off the first Yankee soldier that we saw. Arriving in Duben was an adventure by itself! After interrogation to ensure that we were not infiltrators or wanted refugees on the run, I was escorted around the town by a Captain. He asked me if I could ride. Lying cheerfully, I assured him that I could. He provided me with a white horse, and accompanying me on a brown one, we rode around at a gentle speed. At a large bulk store, a very frightened young woman, trying to curry favour I think, asked if there was anything I wanted in the warehouse. Desperately in need of decent footwear, I pointed to my worn boots, soles and heels flapping away from the uppers. She took me to the footwear section, and I selected a reasonable pair of new shoes which I put on and wore immediately.
Back in the centre of town, two Englishmen who had been prisoners for 5 years, vented a little of their pent-up hatred on some captured German officers, making them turn out their pockets, taking anything of value and telling them that they were going to be shot or sent to Siberia. My mates helped out with the Yanks, on guard duty to prevent people from leaving the town, and I stayed in the Town Hall and watched some German prisoners arriving. At about 5pm, in the woods not far away, an American was shot during a skirmish and as they had arrived in Duben only as an advance party, the Colonel decided to evacuate the town for the night.
Before night fell, we crossed the River Mulde by crawling and sliding across the remains of the bridge. It was quite a wide river with fast-flowing water, and there was no other way to cross except by clambering over the shattered masonry and ironwork. The next morning we found that the Germans had advanced from the surrounding wooded country and re-taken the town. We were driven in 1.5 ton trucks at great speed to an aerodrome near Delitsch and put into a large hall to sleep for the night, with full-sized blankets and a box of K-rations each, containing meat, biscuits, chocolate, coffee, cigarettes etc. The American Lieutenant actually apologised for the poor rations. We thought we were living on the fat of the land!