The second time, I teamed up with a man, he was a Czechoslovakian. (Note: Through research it appears that this man was Augustin Šesták from 311 Squadron, RAF. A picture of him was located and he was 99% identified as being the one. Sgt. Augustin Šestákwas a rear gunner on Wellington L7844 Mission Kiel and shot down in October 1940. He was at several camps prior to coming to Stalag 4B.) He spoke several different languages, Eastern European languages, spoke Polish, Czech, Slovene, oh good lord, he knew his way around the languages. And I teamed up with him and in eastern Poland and western Russia, the Ukraine area, there is a marsh called the Pripet. And it was a pretty extensive marsh, several 100 square miles, I guess. You couldn’t operate heavy equipment in there at all. But in the winter time it froze. So both the Germans and the Russians had patrols in there. And our rationale was that maybe we could contact a Russian patrol. So we went to the Pripet marsh. Unfortunately we didn’t contact a Russian patrol, we contacted a German Patrol and we went right back in the bag again.
Now that same individual went with me to Yugoslavia the next attempt and we got out of the camp the same way with this wood detail. In Yugoslavia they had a Civil War going. They had a group called the Chetniks and they were Royalists. And there was a man by the name of Mahailovic who was in charge of them. The other group were the communists and they were backed by the man, Tito in there. Well at that time the British and Americans were trying to placate the Russians and the 2nd front bit was coming all over the place. Joe Stalin was pointing the finger, you know, How come you guys haven’t opened up a 2nd front. So the British appointed Randolph Churchill, who was Winston Churchill’s son as their liaison on to Tito. Of course we were placating the Russians there and Tito was the communist side. Well after the War Tito had Mihailovic executed, treason you know and I have read some of the biggest pack that you ever could think of in this country. Academia about how the Chetnics were on the side of the Germans. Well if they were all on the side of the Germans, how does it happen that we had so many of them in the prison camps? And they did. Now I don’t remember communists in that prison camp from Yugoslavia. But any rate, we got connected with the Chetnics and they passed us along and they came to a place where there were 2 hills that came together, kinda like a gap in there. There was a creek, a small macadam highway and a rail road track at the bottom of these 2 hills. This is in Yugoslavia. (Interviewer – How far from Camp? How long did it take you to get there?) Oh 200 miles. (Interviewer – Well how did you get there?) Well we, Muhlberg is not that far from the point of Czechoslovakia. (Note: One of the other RAF Czechoslovakian POW’s was from Rakovnik and he gave them his address. While they were on the run they went to the home, a farm on the edge of the town and gave a message to the man’s family. They did not stay long but were fed while there.) In fact we got into Czechoslovakia, into Hungary, through Hungary, down into Yugoslavia and then when we got to this place where these 2 hills were together, they told us, they said “Now beyond that stream, that creek, that is Tito’s men. That’s the way they put it. Now we had nothing to do with that side at all. These guys treated us pretty darn nice. And they said we can’t go beyond there. Ok. So we went down and crossed the road and tracks and come up the other side of the mountain and we got surrounded by about 5 or 6 people with guns. They had the guns right on us and they turned us back. They would have no part of us. We told them who we were and told them we wanted to contact Randolph Churchill. No Way. They just didn’t want any part of us. So we went back to the Chetnics side and we decided that we are not going to go anywhere here so we try and go through Austria and get into France. Maybe we can get some help in France. An occupied country is better than one that isn’t occupied. Well we come back into Hungary and when we were there, we now normally the Germans checked all the through trains very carefully but the locals, they didn’t bother the workmen’s trains. But they had a prison break, a civilian prison break, not Military, somewhere in the area of Hungary, they were checking everything, trying to get these civilian prisoners back. They scooped us up in the process. So they put us in this British Work Party and these guys were locked down inside of barracks, about 25 or 30 of them, I guess. And when we got in there, they said “Boy are we glad to see you.” “You got to tell them what’s going on here.” “Well what’s going on?” Well it turns out; this work party….Now the Geneva Convention says you will not use POW’s in direct, to support directly your war effort. That by the way is the reason why when they used German and Italian POW’s in GI mess halls in Texas and in Arizona that was a violation. They weren’t suppose to do that. Well they had a freight car with some shells in it, artillery shells. They wanted these British to unload the freight car. The British refused. Now they had a Corporal in charge and he had a Lance Corporal, which is one stripe. Corporal had got 2. A Lance Corporal’s got 1, he’s like a PFC in the American Service and so they told this guy to order your men to unload the car. “No, that’s a violation of the Geneva Convention and we don’t do that.” “Well you will do that.” “No.” “If you don’t do that, we will shoot you.” So he said, “No.” And they shot him. Killed him. His body was laying out there in the compound when we got there. That brought the Lance Corporal up. The Lance Corporal, they said, “Now you saw what happened to the Corporal.” “We gave him an order and he refused it.” “So we were within our rights to kill him.” This is what I am getting, second hand from these Englishmen. I would like to think I got that kind of courage but I’m not so darn sure but this Lance Jack said “Sorry.” They fired into his shoulder. He had a wound in his shoulder. It didn’t kill him. And they put them all back inside the barracks. That’s what we found when we got there. That’s what they wanted us to tell who ever we contacted when we went on down the line. We knew we were going to be staying there. Anyway about 4 or 5 days later they got us and took us out of there. And whatever eventually happened to these guys I don’t know. I have often thought about that Lance Corporal. What a courageous individual to be able to spit in these people’s eye and say, “Sorry.” (Interviewer – How did you get 200 miles? Who helped you along the way?) We were riding these workmen’s trains. These workmen trains, cars and this guy I was with, his German was pretty good. He was asking and he bought the tickets and that’s how we got down there. Anyway, that was that one and of course they took us to Chemnitz, Stalag 4F. We stayed there 5 or 6 days. Then they run us back to Muhlberg. That was our main camp. Well it takes a while to get things set up for the next attempt. (Note: He was sent to Oflag IVC. He said at this point they were not sure exactly who he was and did not believe that he was a Sergeant. He arrived by train and had to walk up to the castle. There was a dry moat around it with a open courtyard. Treatment there was very good and “hands off.” He said he stayed only a short while, a couple of weeks. He remembers meeting George Lascelles and Douglas Bader. There was a POW that had been in the Olympics and would speed walk around the courtyard area. He said it was funny to watch. He said that the German guards would take Bader’s false legs away from him at night for escape prevention. He and another POW helped make some “legs” out of tin cans while he was there. When the Germans determined that he was enlisted, he was sent back to Stalag IVB. (Interviewer – What time of the year were these 3?) Well (Interviewer – That winter time on the one.) Yeah that was the winter time. Well it was probably mid March I guess when we got grabbed and hauled back. But the Yugoslavia, that was in late summer. The Carpathian Mountains are all granite. They are tough on footwear. These Chetnics gave us boots, our own were coming apart. That was the boots that I had picked up, the American Army boots in Dulag Luft. (Interviewer – When they brought you back, did they give you a bad time?) Oh yeah, they…the German’s had a system, I never knew anybody that went all the way through but the first time you were suppose to get 7 days bread and water. Well seven days in the cooler, in the clink. For some reason and I don’t know why, they held me 30 days that first time. The second time you are suppose to get 30 days. The third time you’re suppose to go to a punishment work party. The fourth time you go to a Concentration Camp and the fifth time you’re executed. Now that is the theory. I never knew anybody that was executed under that system. In fact I never knew anybody that, well I went to Buchenwald and I knew 2 or 3 other people that managed to get into things like that but as far as the execution is concerned I never knew anybody that did get the chop on that. But that was the theory. And the reason we knew that because we had a fella named Stan Eardsley. Stan’s German was just about complete. He had been a Gem salesman all over the continent before the war. He knew his way up one way and down the other in Europe. And Stan was in the Kommandant’s office one day, I don’t remember why, I don’t know if I ever knew why but he was sitting there reading these things in the Kommandant’s desk upside down. So you know that his German is pretty good. He’s reading these things and this list of punishments was one of these things. He told us about them when he came back. (Interviewer – I assume you didn’t take any weapons with you when you went out?) No. (Interviewer – I mean if you would have killed a civilian then…) If you killed a military man, as a prisoner of war, you have lost your right to kill. You don’t have that right. And theoretically, if you killed somebody in an attempt to escape and got back to England, under International Law, the British would send you back to Germany to stand trial. Again I never knew anybody that had any of that happen to. No, we didn’t bother with any weapons at all. (Interviewer – So would they treat you as badly as the Gestapo did when they were interrogating you?) No. The clink in Muhlberg was one of two brick buildings. The other was a latrine, by the way. It had steam heat. It was in pretty good shape that place. The French were operating it. French POW’s. We would sit in there. Now we had our Red Cross parcels inside that clink. We weren’t suppose to but we did. This one guard, a German guard would come around and he’d tell the Frenchman, he’d say “Kommandant come, Kommandant come.” OK. So they would come around, collect all the parcels and hide them in the coal. They had a coal bin there and they had this boiler for the steam heat. (Interviewer – I’m wondering what the cuisine was like?) Well we got dehydrated turnip soup. We got about 4 or 5 small boiled potatoes. We got about a tablespoon of sugar each day. We got some margarine. The margarine was made out of coal. It really was. It wasn’t that bad. We got a piece of bread about that thick. Now if we were doing work like once when I was in the mine, we got 600 grams of bread a day. A piece about that big but when we weren’t doing any work, then we only got 400 grams of bread a day. The bread was German Army bread. It was black; actually it was kind of a tattle tale grey. It was Schwarzbrot you know, black bread. Occasionally they would come up with some kind of another soup. We called it “Skilly.” One time they had pumpkin, I don’t care much for that either. Another time they had peas, yeah I don’t know what happened there. Somebody must have goofed. But anyway, they had peas, only one time. Another time they came around and they issued every man a little can of meat. It was a can, an olive drab can and it was Monkey meat and this was something that they had captured from this French Army in Africa. I suppose it probably sat around forever, who wants to eat Monkey meat, if they don’t have to. So they finally decided they needed the space, so they gave it to us. But that’s the only meat I ever saw other than Cowboy Charlie’s dog. We ate a dog one time. The way that came about, the Vatican use to send us in small tools, seed and so on so we could make a little garden alongside the barracks. Well I was working there in my garden. (Note: He got the seeds late winter of 1943 and late winter 1944. He grew tomatoes, corn, radishes, carrots, turnips, potatoes and lettuce. His combine and muckers enjoyed the produce he said.) This one guard, he had legs, his legs were like parenthesis. He was terribly bow-legged and we called him Cowboy Charlie. He had a dog. I was working in my garden. Now this is right alongside the barracks and there was some swing out windows along the barracks. I was just outside the window. So anyway, here comes the dog around the edge of the barracks and of course Cowboy Charlie wasn’t in sight yet and that dog-gone dog started digging in my garden. I swung at the dog with this little short shovel I had. I caught the dog right on the side of the neck. That was it for the dog. Well I grabbed the dog and dropped him inside the open window. Well here comes Cowboy Charlie, “Poochie, Poochie.” “My Poochie?” No. No. I don’t know anything about your poochie. After a while, of course Cowboy Charlie went on. I suppose he’s still wondering whatever happened to his dog. About that time the guys come to the window and said “Time to eat.” Now we broke up into, we called them combines. That would be maybe 4 or 5 people that would go in together and we would pool our parcels. And of course they went a lot further that way. These guys were referred to as your “Muckers.” British term I guess. One of the guys is usually the cook and he was usually someone with an imagination. But they come to the window and says “Time to eat.” Ok. So when I got in there, they had a little string of meat on the plate. Geeze, I looked at it. You know now that these plates were made out of tin cans. We became very adept at making tin can crafts. I looked down. I said “Where did you get that?” This one guys says “Never ask.” Alright. That was Cowboy Charlie’s dog. It was kind of greasy and kind of stringy but it was meat. (Interviewer – How much did you weigh when you bailed out and how much…) I weighed 182 when I bailed out. Fourteen weeks later I weighed 107. I dropped…When I was in Buchenwald I probably…Well when I came out of there, I didn’t get weighed for about 4 or 5 days. I had a little food in between then. I probably weighed maybe 100 pounds when I come out of there. And by the time I got back, back to England, I had been eating US Army rations, I probably weighed 120.