Lizzy May – Chapter 23

Footsteps in the Snow

‘Trek’ by Steve Fendt

January 1980

In May 1944, after months, probably years of top-secret preparations, troop concentrations and exercises all along the English South Coast, D-Day came.

At last, Britain and the Allies were taking the war in Europe to the Germans.

Rommel had been driven out of North Africa in 1943. The Italians had capitulated. Mussolini had been lynched by his own people. Now it was Hitler’s turn.

The success of the D-Day landings brought a new mood of optimism to the country. It didn’t mean that the Nazis were actually beaten yet, mind you. Not by a long chalk.

Neither were we civilians spared the threat of Nazi bombs.

As the bombing raids eased, they were replaced by other methods which were random, pointlessly cruel and vindictive. The V1 flying bombs and later the V2 missiles.

Do you remember me talking about Charmian Lennox, years ago? That’s right: she was the little girl I tutored in Hampstead, the daughter of our good friends Robert and Esther Lennox.

We stayed in touch, after her parents sent her off to school in Lausanne. She grew into a fine young woman: pretty, intelligent and very well-read. Fluent in four languages. We were all very proud of her, hoped that she might have a bright future in the Foreign Office after the War.

A V1 put an abrupt end to all that promise, I’m afraid. She died in the rubble of her lodgings in Hackney in the autumn of 1944, just twenty-two years old. Such a terrible waste, amidst millions upon millions of similar personal tragedies.

All of them unnecessary. All in vain.

War is a terrible, ugly, depressing thing, Pauly. I truly hope you’ll never experience it in your lifetime.

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As the British, American and Canadian forces advanced into France, and the Red Army rolled back the front in the East, the flow of letters from Allied POWs in Germany became a trickle, then it dried up entirely.

So at that critical stage in the War, we lost touch with George, Percy’s son and your uncle.

We only found out much later what happened to the prisoners of Stalag VIIIB.

All we knew at the time was that the Germans were being pushed back on all fronts, and that the situation was changing daily. It took a long, long time though.

There were setbacks – the Battle of the Bulge being the worst, when the German Panzers broke through the Allied lines in the Ardennes, over Christmas 1944. It caught us all by surprise.

By the end of January, the battle was over. It was terribly bloody. Nearly 80,000 Allied soldiers had died, and the Germans lost as many – but to them, not us, it was a fatal blow. The Ardennes offensive was Hitler’s last throw of the dice, and he lost.

All the Nazis could do after that was retreat, but still they wouldn’t give in.

Hitler had no reason to, in a sense. He knew that the only terms the Allies would accept were unconditional surrender. Then there would be war crimes trials, and he and many of his deputies would certainly receive the death penalty. He decided to take the whole country with him.

Let’s leave the opposing armies at the Rhine, though, and get back to George, shall we?

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Stalag VIIIB at Lamsdorf was one of the best camps to spend the War in, I’ve heard, if you had to be an Allied POW in German hands. It had some of the best medical facilities of any camp, staffed exclusively by POW specialists, and the prisoners were well treated and well looked after, relatively speaking.

What made it awful, horrifying to be there, was that the camp was next to the Arbeitslager at Monowitz, where the concentration camp inmates were being worked to death to feed the Nazi war effort.

Beatings and hangings were witnessed by the POWs daily – the SS guards made no attempt to hide what they were up to. There were rumours of trainloads of people being gassed nearby at Auschwitz-Birkenau.

Then, at dawn on the 22nd of January 1945, while the German counteroffensive was grinding to a halt over in the Ardennes far to the west, the camp guards roused all the POWs and summoned them to roll call.

The Russians were coming, you see. The prisoners had been hearing the rumble of the Soviet artillery for days, and watching the streams of refugees pass by the camp for weeks.

The camp Kommandant announced that they needed to evacuate. They would be ‘moved to safety’. There were sarcastic cheers at that, because the POWs thought their Soviet brothers-in-arms would soon be there to liberate them.

If only they knew.

Then the guards ordered the prisoners to march out through the camp gates. The snow lay thick on the ground and it was bitterly cold. Sick and injured prisoners were left behind on their beds.

The ordeal later became known as the Lamsdorf Long March.

They didn’t know it, but they were headed for Brunswick in Germany, and there was no transport available to take them there.

Five hundred miles. On foot. In the dead of winter. With minimal rations. Through the chaos of two million civilians running for their lives before the terrible vengeance of the Red Army.

The POWs were moved in groups of two or three hundred. Tens of thousands of them. Those who couldn’t keep up, because of frostbite, or exhaustion, or starvation, were left to die at the side of the road.

Many, many men lost their lives. Others were captured by the Soviet troops, held hostage for years by our ‘allies’ in the East.

But our George survived. He walked to Germany, to the Allied lines, and to freedom.

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As I say, though, we didn’t know this at the time.

We sat by the wireless, listening to the reports as slowly the Western Allies rolled through Germany, mopping up the last resistance. The Nazi High Command sent the Volkssturm – boys younger than you, and old, broken men – to face the might of the Allied armies.

They had no chance, of course, against the tanks and the artillery and the dive bombers. None at all. It was murder to send them.

The British, American and Canadian armies fought their way to the Elbe River … and stopped. They were under orders to wait for the Soviets there.

Then finally the news came that the Red Army had taken Berlin, and Hitler was dead.

Shortly after that, the Russians met the Western Allies at the Elbe. That was in May 1945. The war in Europe was over.

We couldn’t quite believe it at first. It was like waking from a long, long nightmare.

There were still the Japanese to beat in the Pacific, though. They held on for another three months, and it took two atomic bombs to defeat them.

We were glad to have won, of course. But at what cost? And what did winning really mean for us? After all the cheering and flag-waving was over, we looked at the ruins of our country and thought, ‘Well, what now?’

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Coming up:

This Friday in Tales from the Wood: Mr O’Donnell gives Pauly something to think about, and he resolves to mend his ways. (Paid subscriptions.)

Next Tuesday in Lizzy May: Britons look orward to an era of peace, and decides a new government is needed to take them there. Percy and Lizzy May are kept busy bringing up their son.