It was after Christmas during January 1944 that I developed boils. I had so many of these that I had to have treatment. The German doctor gave me injections for them. These boils were all over my back, face and chest, I was in a right mess. I had a huge boil on each side of my face and very close to my ear, which gave me constant earache. I had both abscesses lanced by the German doctor and after this minor operation I experienced immediate relief.

For most of the time now I partnered the new replacement. I can't honestly say that I tried very hard to get on with him. In my mind was the memory of my first encounter with soldiers from North of the border, I still had a feeling of apprehension and that an argument was just around the corner. I was wrong though, he turned out to be no different from any other soldier. His name was Jock and it was quite some time before we became friends.

He was full of information from the grapevine. He got the news from Stalag. He brought us news of the Allies and how well they were doing. Up till now all the war news had been from the Russian front. In a way he was like a breath of fresh air to us and he grew on me like Roses Chocolate. We never got to the stage where we shared our cigarettes, we did become good pals.

As the weeks passed by, during the setting of the crops we did notice how apprehensive the Poles were becoming about the Russian advance. Most of them feared the news they were receiving of the Russians progress.

Something else was happening too; the word Partisanty was being floated about, these were undercover Poles fighting the Germans, we called them "Charlies Auntie". It was hinted that if we contacted these people, they could help us to get back to England. If this was true we would have loved to have made their acquaintance. We had had enough of this life we were leading and we had many sessions discussing it. Without a doubt we could easily have made our escape anytime we had wanted and could have made a good start before we were missed. We had heard some time ago that Danzig had been bombed, very heavily, so that way out would be closed; either for Charlies Auntie, or anyone else's auntie. We decided the best way was to stay put and wait.

Some workers came from the Ukraine in June and they hinted that the Russians were fighting well inside the Ukraine.

We also had an unexpected visit from the Red Cross Society and St John, they were enquiring how POWs were faring. I think the death of the soldier in 1943, plus the fact that a number of lads had reported sick and returned to Stalag had prompted their visit.

This was understandable, because in winter we were working in temperatures anything from minus 8 during the day and sometimes minus 20 at night and on inadequate food for these conditions. Our billet was hardly ever warm and by the time we came in from work it would be dark in winter and all we had was just the one fireplace and there was never time for the room to get warm before we went to bed.

We answered the Red Cross Inspectors questions and they departed, we never got any benefit whatsoever from their visit.

At harvest time this year things were so much different. We were seeing the results of the Russian Campaign. Even the man second to the Major was called up for war duties, the horses and the teamsters were going too.

There were whispers from the Poles that we had invaded France and this was confirmed by the guard, though he was so sure the Allies would be pushed back. He admitted later though that we were making progress. We heard of more bombing in Danzig and Poles with rifles were hiding in the woods in this area.

The rumours were so strong we imagined ourselves to be home for Christmas and as the days went by the news was so heartening that we were sure of it.

During the harvesting I had been working with a Ukrainian family, husband and wife and their two children. They would work together in the field every day. They gave us information about the Russian advance and that the Russians were steadily moving forward all the time and this little family were hoping to get back for Christmas.

When I told the lads back at the billet, they too said that they had heard news to this effect. This was great.

More of the crop this year went to the railway for dispatch to Germany. In September we were out in the field and heard a noise like distant thunder. On looking up there was a huge ball of fire in the sky, it seemed to disappear but there was no explosion.

This happened quite a few times in the next few days. We didn't believe the guard when he said it was a secret weapon. It was the V2.

As the weeks went by we realised it was going to be another very cold winter and we hoped we would get a Red Cross parcel to help us to get through it. This was to be our 5th winter and if there was ever a time we needed these parcels it was this time of year. The work was so different this year. Some days I was helping the cowman, I never had to do the milking, I just did the mucking out and walked the bull, though I never understood why this was done.

Mucking out was shifting the soiled straw from around the cows, barrowing it along a plank to the muck heap and after clearing all the soiled straw away I would then walk the bull. To do this I had a long steel rod with a handle at one end and a gadget at the other end to attach to the bulls nose. Then I would walk the bull up and down the dung heap guiding it with the ring in its nose. I don't know if this was to keep the bull fit, or to firm the dung heap. One had to be very careful doing this, for the top of a dung heap is not the best place for walking even without a ton of bull at your side. One slip either from me or the bull, could result in a broken limb.

I preferred the job with the wheelwright. Every Autumn the wheelwright would take one of us with him and walk along one of the fields which had a dyke running down one side.

Down the side of this dyke were willow trees, they had been stopped at sometime and a callous had formed at the top and from this, long tapering shoots about 6 foot long had sprouted out. These formed perfect shafts for the pitchforks that we used at harvest time.

For this work we took with us a small ladder and a saw, which we used to lob off the branches which were selected.

The winter ploughing and the potato clamps did not seem to be so important this year. I had a feeling that the grain and the potatoes were going to be moved very quickly to Germany.

Just before Christmas we had a private parcel delivery and I was pleased to receive cigs, socks and chocolate.

I had tried during the Summer, to get my back and chest clear of the boils, by spells of sunbathing. The Sun had helped for a short time, but I was soon covered with boils again. The skin on my face was very lumpy and to me it looked awful, I was very conscious of it. I was also very ill with my stomach again. The only treatment I had for this was to make myself sick. This was the only thing I could do ease the pain and discomfort. I must have been about 9 stone in weight, this was 2 1/2 stone less than I should be.

That December it was snowing and very cold, it was dark early and the only comfort we had was from the Poles who assured us that the Russians were on the borders of Poland. We calculated this to be 400 miles from where we were. We didn't know whether to believe this or not, as we had not seen any Russian planes. Yet out of the blue something happened that almost confirmed it.

A full cavalry unit of Cossacks who were fighting with the Germans arrived and took over the whole area around the farmyard and the area outside the compound, they had even got their women folk with them; it looked just like a gypsy camp. In fact it was worse, because in one place, there was a horse that had been killed, whether it had been wounded, I don't know: it was being used for food. These people looked as if they had been roughed up by the Russians.

A number of the live stock turkeys, fowls, pigs etc. went missing, even the duck pond had been bombed for the fish in it. The small perch in the pond were all floating dead on top of the water. The Polish girls in the kitchen actually cooked them for our dinner, they probably thought they were doing us a favour. They mixed them with the spuds and didn't even take the heads off, I realised this when I saw a fish eye looking at me from my mashed potato. It looked revolting, I pushed my plate away and so did the other lads at the table with me.

There seemed to be no apparent leaders with these Cossack soldiers. No parades and no discipline either. They slept in tents and makeshift tents and anywhere they could lay their heads. The horses were tied to stakes knocked into the ground and they were fed where they stood.

I do believe the Major had orders to feed these turncoats and their horses, because the pans on the open fires and the field kitchens always seemed full of soup. If I were a German soldier, I wouldn't feel safe with men like these behind me.

At night, from the window of the billet it looked very weird. There was the unfamiliar sound of the horses as they fed and stamped. The sparks and crackling from the various open fires, when fresh wood was thrown onto them and the many heated arguments from our quarrelsome guests. Nobody on the farm went out at night, whilst these people were here. They looked and were a barbarous and unruly lot. They were here for less than a week and then went off again.

They did a bit of a clean up and even so they left plenty of feathers and horse muck

We were glad when they went, apart from the noise and awful suspense they brought with them, we were worried about visiting the well, which was our only supply of water. It was not an ordinary queue with this lot. Anything that could hold water was tied to a rope and thrown into the well. At times it was a frightening place to be the fact that most of their receptacles were covered in horse muck etc. never seemed to worry them at all.

I hoped that we were not liberated by their counterparts on the Russian side. I was beginning to understand why the Poles were so worried when the word Ruskie was mentioned, no one seemed to be in charge and the feeling was, that a blood bath was imminent in their presence.

If these Cossacks were the stock in trade of the Russian army, I was hoping that such an unruly lot was not going to be the ones to liberate us. I didn't think that they would abide by the Geneva Convention.

That Christmas we heard of the Polish uprising in Warsaw and that this had been crushed by the Germans in August and that many Poles had been killed. We were getting news of the German farmers who had gone to Poland in 1940 and who were fleeing back to Germany because of the Russian advance. This Christmas we were on top of the world. Even the guard was feeling the tension over the news we were receiving.

The overseer, who was Polish, feared he may be in trouble with the workforce, both men and women, because of the way he had treated some of them during the occupation.

We POWs had been asked to attend a dance at Christmas and when we first heard of this invite we could hardly believe it.

One of the barns that had been cleared of wheat was to be used. The German Major and his wife provided a few sandwiches and diluted schnapps, the schnapps were diluted with juice from damsons. It wasn't champagne, but it tasted like it to us, we were on cloud 9. We sensed that our lives as POWs was coming to an end. The Poles enjoyed the dance and so did we although the music, the fiddles and accordions were not professional, but we didn't care, for we were walking on air as we knew things were coming to a head.

Out in the fields in January we had seen planes and we knew that they weren't German and by the middle of January we knew that the war was getting close to us. There was fighting in Warsaw that was less than 200 miles away.

We could see German farmers in their wagons covered with tarpaulin going down the main road on the way to Germany. Work had almost come to a stop and we just seemed to be waiting.

After the third week in January we were killing pigs and preparing for we knew not what.

We didn't know if we were to stay and be overrun by the Russians or whether we would have to take to the road and become refugees.

Our sergeant was at his best at this time. I sensed he had done this before in Scotland. I knew from the talks we had during our 3 years together that he had kept pigs in the out of way place where he lived. I understood that he worked for British Rail and his job was to keep a single rail track about 15 miles long under supervision. He was more or less self supporting, he had a smallholding. He told me that he had neither to buy fish nor meat and he could get a salmon whenever he wanted.

His instructions to us were, lift the pig by its back legs and its head will come out almost at right angle. It was just in position then for a blow with the hammer, which the sergeant wanted, be struck one blow with the edge of a short handled 7 pound hammer and the pig was unconscious. It was then bled and gutted and then hoisted into a boiling vat. When the pig was cooked the hairs was scraped off with a metal scraper.

When this was finished we were given half of a pig, which was dropped still steaming into a box and the box was put into a hand cart and then we went back to the billet, taking the pig with us. That was January 23rd 1945.

The next day our working party of ten and the guard had a meal off the pig for our breakfast. The pig was frozen in a block of ice, from being put into the box and left outside whilst it was still steaming. It was lovely! All the ten of us enjoyed it including the guard. Apart from the Christmas meal with turkey on the menu, this was the first meat meal we had had in over 4 1/2 years. All the meat we had had previously had been in soups.

We said our goodbyes to the Poles on the farm as we put our belongings onto the hand cart that we had been provided with and we walked happily along, there was no hurry and our idea was that we would soon be liberated, though it wasn't long before we found out that it wasn't going to be so easy or so enjoyable a journey, travelling in winter on foot and the roads jammed with refugees.

The guard had told us that our first objective was to cross the Vistula. As we approached it we couldn't help but notice the number of refugees making their way towards the same bridge. They came from many different directions and long before we reached the bridge the roads were full with men, women and children, horses and carts and anything that could be moved seemed to be on the move towards the bridge over the river Vistula.

These Germans who had derided the Russians for so long were in full flight and utter disarray, fear could be seen on their faces, they were so out of control that the German Army had to take over to stop them stampeding. With the small handcart that we had it was easy for us to make progress.

We soon reached the other side of the bridge and couldn't help thinking what an awful place it would be if we were attacked from the air. The horses and carts were two and three abreast and it was soon obvious what was causing the delay, for as the carts came off the bridge, there was quite a steep incline and the horses could not get a foot hold, they were slipping all over the place.

A German officer ordered the guard to organise us to help to clear the bridge, by getting us to push at the carts and help the horses over this bad patch. This was to be our first stop.

We stayed there over the remainder of the day and well into the night, before we were allowed to get some sleep.

This night we got food and slept in a school.

We started off again, the guard feeling better now he was away from the officer who had taken us over for a short time.

I soon realised that I was going to have trouble with my boots. They were beginning to crack across the soles, I knew they weren't going to stand up to walking in these conditions of slush, snow and frost for very long.

The food supply that we had brought with us, the pork etc. had all gone. It did not last long with 11 hungry men in midwinter, we discarded the hand cart and carried our own packs, all I had in mine were cigs, soap and socks and the album and pullover that Alf had given to me as a parting gift. I also had a blanket and an old Polish overcoat.

We soon got clear of the crowd that had caused the bottle neck at the bridge and by now we were catching up with hundreds of POWs of many nationalities, but mostly Russian who were being marched in blocks of 200 and they were approximately 200 hundred yards apart.

We came to barns that had been used so often by POWs the excrements could be smelt as one entered and after looking inside we told the guard that we would sooner sleep outside on the straw. A dry clean place could be found in these barns, but you couldn't be sure of getting back to it if you had to get up to the toilet during the night. The whole area had been used sometime or another as a toilet for the thousands of POWs who had passed by with upset stomachs. The order came that we were to walk until we were over the border, the Polish, German border.

In doing so we caught up with and joined, roughly about 100 English and American POWs Russians too and these outnumbered us many times over, they were in there thousands and they were segregated from us. I am sorry to say these Russian soldiers were in a far worse state than we were, they were very downtrodden.

Just before we reached Bukow, the Russian soldiers were stopped and as we marched by I could see this column of Russians about 1,000 men, were pushed into an open field and the guards were throwing swedes for them to eat; the swedes were from a clamp on the edge of the field and the guards had opened the clamp to feed the Russian POWs. Some of the swedes were frozen and as they were thrown among the Russians many of the soldiers were hit and fell to the ground from the weight and force of the frozen swedes. I could imagine what these Russian soldiers will do to these young Hitler Youth Movement boys if they get the chance. If this is the way the Russian soldiers have been treated during their captivity there is a good reason for the Germans to be frightened of the Ruskies.

We passed on to Bukow; another bottle neck was forming here and we stayed there for 2 days: it gave us the chance to get sorted out. We spent the 2 days at a "brenneri" this was a brewery where schnapps was made from potatoes.

February 6th 1945 we were on the move again and I knew that I had to do something about my boots before much longer. Among my belongings I had an old pair of lightweight bootees that was sent to me from England if we had had dry weather I could change into these, though I was not looking forward to doing this, because the bootees were well worn and thin on the soles.

We were marching 6 abreast along the main road and were being asked by the German civilians "How far are the Ruskies behind?". We sensed an underlying fear in their question. We could only tell them that we had heard the guns and the strafing from the aircraft.

Now and again we saw a white sheet on a pole sticking out of a bedroom window; it seemed that quite a few of the German civilians had lost all hope of stopping the Russians. They were all so different from how they were in 1940, when their soldiers were singing songs of victory.

Some of the American lads had plenty of food. A small group of them had Red Cross parcels and an handcart stacked with boxes that were covered at all times. They seemed to be well organised; with a huge cooking pot in which they made a meal every night. As they went along the road members of this small party were looking for things to put into the pot, such as Potatoes swedes etc. and the occasional fowl, which they killed with a stick when the chance came their way. They even scrounged wood to make a fire at the end of the days march. I feared before long, as the food became more scarce they would get some agro from other POWs and the guards. It was getting very hard to get food and the number of Red Cross parcels that were on the handcart would need a good deal of explaining as things got worse.

There were thousands of refugees on the road, just one great shambles, every house along the road must have been asked sometime or other for help. The best chance of this, at this time of the march, was with the refugees and the food from their wagons. From time to time they would get stuck in the snow or mud and need a push to get going again and if they were on the spot at this time you could get a little snack. We knew they had plenty of food in the bottom of these wagons, which they had stacked up before starting on their journey and we had seen them having meals on the roadside.

For the last few days I chummed up with a fellow soldier named Fred and we decided at the first chance we would drop out of the march and go it alone. We knew we had only to follow the road into Germany: there was so many stragglers that we wouldn't be noticed and with just the two of us we would be able to cadge or exchange socks or whatever for bread. It was almost impossible for us to exchange anything because of the vast number of refugees being drawn together as we got further into Germany.

We both of us dropped into a ditch just before we reached a place called Budow. We were lucky, for in the next field was a potato clamp and after scouting around for enough dry wood to make a fire, we enjoyed some half roasted potatoes.

There was evidence of many fires that had been lit on this road in the past week or so. Wagons had been drawn off the road and become stuck, we could tell this had happened by the depth of the ruts that the wheels had made.

There were no live stock on these fields, but one or two outbuildings that had been used by the German soldiers and refugees on more than one occasion; these were open to the elements but they were dry.

We stayed there the following day and during that afternoon we saw two men working in the field at the potato clamp where we had taken the spuds from.

They were Yanks and they told us they were in a working party nearby and every day before going back to their billets they checked the potato clamp and made it frost proof. It seemed that we were not the first to raid this clamp.

They took us back to their billet and gave us a very good meal and we exchanged a lot of information, they had been told to stay put and not to take to the road. We would like to have stayed with them; but the guard would have none of it.

The next day a lorry picked us up and we were driven to a place called Stoly, there we were handed over to a guard who was French and who had a few French POWs with him.

We stayed with this party and marched 20 kilos to Noschau and surprisingly the French guard obtained some food for us.

We marched 25 kilos the next day and reached Nemeitz, where we picked up 7 more English and more Frenchmen, then we went on to Koslin.

The last Frenchmen that we picked up seemed very aggressive towards the guard (a Frenchman in German uniform) the French guard must have sensed the antagonism from these Frenchmen, for when we stopped at Koslin about 25 kilos further on, he drew our rations and took off with them.

One of the English POWs was one of my old mates from the last working party I was on, his name was Charlie. He too had lost contact with the others from the state farm and had been drifting along the same as me.

Further along the road at Zietlow we were all picked up and taken to a camp run by some Canadians, then we were on the road again, another 12 kilos and we came to an English invalid rest camp at Grefenbure, this was a camp where the soldiers were too handicapped to carry on.

We rested here for a day and was given a hot drink and a little food: it was the first hot drink provided for us in 4 weeks.

This wasn't a permanent resting place, if you could walk you had to continue on, there were quite a few who could not make it; but this break gave us the chance to wash and brush up, only to find we had our old enemy lice.

February l9th 1945. We were on our way again from this rest place and were about 200 strong, marching the same as the Russians, about 10 abreast. The guards were older men, they didn't behave like guards, they did have rifles, but there was no attempt to force anything, they lacked food and most of them wanted out the same as us.

It was the 17 and 18 year olds who were different, I could imagine some of these young domineering gits would come to grief at times from the hands of the people whom they were guarding. Many of us realised that all of us were just being herded along and that nobody could do anything about it.

There was no sign of German planes, now and then the road was cleared on one side to let the German armour, artillery and tanks pass through. At such time our hearts were in our mouths for if the Allied planes saw the column passing through, we do believe they would attack and this would be bloody awful to be killed by our own planes. We saw many allied bombers in the distance, the sky seemed full of them at times.

We had marched 40 kilos and we were approaching Swienmunde.

Water for washing was getting hard to come by because the snow was disappearing fast. We had seen a few low lying planes, but they did not bother us in any way. We could hear bombers, but none of the planes were interested in the fires which we had lit and these were burning all night long.

The bombers just came in and dropped their loads on Swienmunde and then flew off again. There was no sign of a German fighter anywhere. They bombed again during the night and again we had no agro from them; this was the first bombing raid that I had experienced on the march and I thought from now on we had to watch out for any low flying planes, after all we were marching in columns like soldiers, therefore we could be targets.

I had heard of columns of POWs marching with banners with POW in large letters written upon them, to warn the British and American pilots.

I had also heard that some columns had been attacked, though I never experienced this though I could quite see how they could be attacked if a German column was passing at the same time.

We were with this party for a few days passing Dangon and Ankalam. The nights were very cold and we were miserable, mostly sleeping in barns; they were filthy!.

The barns had the smell of the excrements from the POWs and there was the sickly smell of death. How many soldiers died on this march is hard to estimate. We could see the tarpaulin that covered the bodies of the less fortunate and observe the awful smell of the place in the barns where they had lay down and died. These bodies could have lain there for days, there was no inspection nor were we counted.

By the time we had reached Denmitze, we had marched another 120 kilos or more it was February 23rd 1945.

After another 35 kilos we were stopped and crowded into a field. A German officer of very high rank took over from our guards. This man was very strict and kept all of the guards on their toes. He was a right snotty git.

The field we were in had been used before, it had been ploughed and most of the ploughed ridges had been covered with branches from the bushes and trees to try to keep clear of the wet ground. We made fires and got water from wherever we could, from pools and dykes.

Even the guards had it rough on this night, when the fire died down it was very cold and we were glad to move.

This particular column seemed to be travelling very fast and we had covered far more miles during the last two days than when we had been rushed over the border. It was the first time as far as I knew that a German officer of rank had led POWs. He was going far too fast in his horse driven landau and we were getting strung out because of the pace. I wouldn't know if he had any reason to hurry, I know that I was cheesed off and so was Charlie.

I suggested to Charlie how much better it was to be on the loose and he was all for it.

We were strung out so much we found it was easy to drop out and just before darkness came we dropped out of the column and let the others go.