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Private J. D. Caves: The Long Journey Home

Excerpt from Official History of New Zealand in the Second World War

page 134

Excerpt from Official History of New Zealand in the Second World War

This passage describes the evacuation of liberated POWs, including Denis, from Germany to England.

Release came to prisoners of war in Germany in such a variety of ways that a description of what happened to those at main camps and to a few of the hundreds of smaller parties cannot do more than cover some of the more typical aspects of liberation. Evacuation was a much more uniform affair. For, although a few of our men commandeered transport, most were willing to wait for instructions from those officers of the Allied occupation forces whose task it was to cater for released prisoners.

A plan had been made by Shaef in the autumn of 1944 for this evacuation, and a central organisation known as PWX was set up at Supreme Allied Headquarters, with liaison groups at major headquarters which worked through contact officers. The latter were sent forward by every possible means to areas where prisoners were assembled. There were representatives from the Dominions and from all arms of the service in these contact teams. They carried instructions to the prisoners in camps to remain there, and for those outside to report to the nearest transit centre, in order to simplify maintenance and documentation and to avoid any uncontrolled movements of prisoners which might hamper operations. A chain of transit centres was set up on the lines of communication, and ad hoc units were formed to organise and maintain them. The latter were equipped with special disinfestation, bathing, clothing and medical facilities, Red Cross services, YMCA teams to organise amenities, and Army Education teams to give up-to-date information. The plan was to evacuate prisoners by air to the United Kingdom. In view of the bad physical condition of many prisoners resulting from the forced marches they had undergone, the air evacuation was pushed forward with all possible speed, and some of the services provided at transit centres on the Continent never had a chance to function fully.

Ex-prisoners either remained in their camps, or were taken to a transit centre, or were found billets until they could be evacuated from the nearest important airfield. Sometimes 'K' rations and other army rations were supplied to prisoners in billets. As soon as possible they were taken to the airfield by army lorries and organised into groups of 30-odd ready for emplaning.

Almost as soon as the flights of Dakota transport aircraft arrived they loaded, took off, and headed back towards the west. Only the prisoners from a few camps in north-west Germany were evacuated direct to the United Kingdom in British aircraft; most were taken to France or Belgium, where they broke their journey and spent a night, or a few hours only, at a specially prepared transit centre before going on. Most of our men seem to have gone to either Rheims or Brussels.

The transit centre at Brussels, which was the one to which it had been intended that the majority of British ex-prisoners should go, received and sent on some 40,000 of them in three weeks at the end of April and in early May. As the streams of Dakotas arrived from Germany and unloaded, lorries took the ex-prisoners to the transit centre; and at the same time streams of British four-engined bombers were taking on to England those who had already passed through. At the centre they were given showers, new uniforms, and an advance on pay. They could stay a night in a hotel run by the Belgian Red Cross Society; they had full use of recreation rooms run by the YMCA; and they could go on leave to take advantage of private hospitality, or to buy presents in the city, or just to look around. A liaison officer speaks of the prisoners being 'all in rocketing spirits'. But most of our men's spirits did not reach their climax until they arrived in England, for not until then were they back among people and in an environment nearly the same as their own. There was in England the additional thrill of seeing again (or seeing for the first time) the country from which the forbears of most of them had come during the last hundred years.