by Dugald » Thu Dec 07, 2006 12:40 am
Stealing from a German POW camp in Govan.
During the war when I was a young schoolboy, I was crazy about war souvenirs and would have walked the proverbial mile over broken glass to get any. One day in the summer of '43, I heard that a troopship had docked in Govan and thousands of Rommel's Afrika Korps soldiers, direct from North Africa, had been taken to a transit camp at the White City race track on Helen St. in Govan, and to the Bellahouston Park, where they were re-equipped with POW uniforms. These camps were not far from where I lived.
Later in the evening, about 8pm, myself and seven other pals went to the White City. No POW's were to be seen, indeed no one was to be seen. But behind the barbed wire immense mountains of discarded military uniforms and equipment were to be seen. We all stood there, drooling at the thought of all these long-dreamed of military items just over the fence, drooling just as an art thief might fantasize over breaking into the Louvre.
There were no guards in sight so we waited until it was dark then we all crawled through the coils of barbed wire. Soon I was deep in the middle of this mountain of treasures stuffing every pocket I had, then into a rucksack and jamming loads up my jersey. I was completely oblivious to my surroundings and had just started to gather as much as I could carry in my arms when I heard wild and frantic screams. When I looked up it was just in time to see a horde of battle-hardened Cameronians descending on us at great speed. I managed to get as far as crawling into one of the coils of wire, but after getting caught on barbs because of having too much stuff up my jersey, I felt a big strong hand lock itself onto my ankle and I knew I too, had been "captured".
Four of us got caught and the other four stood outside the wire taunting us. We laughed back at them thinking it was a great lark as we, each of us between two big tough-looking Cameronians, were taken to the guardhouse. The soldiers, in their broad Scotch accents, assured us that we were for the "high Jump" (never ever did find out what this "high jump" was!).
We were still laughing and shouting back at our pals when we entered the guardhouse where we were met by an officer, and he wasn't laughing. He had us lined up and started to question us, somewhat forcefully, one at a time, with all the Cameronians standing around watching. All went well for the first three of us and then it was Rab's turn to be questioned. After the usual questions about address , school, etc., it got to, "Where does your father work?".
"My father is dead" said Rab (died from wounds in Great War in fact). "Where then does your mother live", continued the stern-faced officer. "My mother is dead too." replied Rab.
The officer didn't believe Rab and started to shout at him. This went on for a while then Rab started to cry, but the officer didn't let up. Rab was a neighbour of mine and I knew he was was telling the truth, his brother was away in the navy and he lived with his sister. I started to cry too and screamed at the officer to leave him alone. The officer said we would be held here till the civilian police arrived.
By this time the soldiers weren't laughing either. In fact the one who was holding me whispered that he hadn't expected this to happen and thought we'd just have been given a "kick on the arse" and sent home. The Cameronians were in fact now on our side...not that it made any difference. We were kept a long time under intense guard until two detectives from the Govan Division arrived, and after taking all the facts and telling us to report to Govan Police station after school next day, they allowed us to go. I got home at 1 am, an unheard of time in my household in these days, and there was hell to play! Anyway , despite having found the latter part of the experience rather frightening, I had survived.
I, and all of us, had been genuinely frightened by what went on in the guardhouse. Yet despite this, at lunchtime next day, I, alone, jumped on a car and went up to the Bellahousten Park. This was my territory, I knew it well. I stood at the railings at the top of Jura Street and cased the area thoroughly. There were still mountains of equipment here, and not a guard in sight. I had a clear view that all was clear, and I knew that I could out-run any hob-nail-booted Cameronian guard if it came to that. I hopped the railing (no barbed wire here) ran to a heap of equipment and uniforms, filled a rucksack with all it could take, ran like a train back to the fence and was over it and on a car back to school in no time flat. At four o'clock I reported to the Police station on Orkney St. and had my name entered in the "Doomsday" book, as the big hielen sergeant called it. I promised him never to break into a POW camp again ...and I didn't.
My fanaticism regarding souvenirs is clearly evident by the fact that despite having been terrified the previous night, I went back and did the same thing within a matter of 11 hours!
What about this creep of an officer? Why such a big deal over four schoolboys looking for souvenirs?
German military equipment was one type of souvenir, but it was not very long before I had a host of other souvenirs which I had not, very foolishly, considered. In those days all young teenagers wore short trousers. I was sitting in my class one day examining my bare leg, vaguely aware of the teacher mumbling away in the distant background, when I noticed a wee crab-like beastie. It was white, perhaps oh, 1/10 inch in diameter, with legs jutting out on each side. The thing about this beastie was that it wasn't ON my skin, it was UNDER my skin! I tore at the skin in a mad panic and removed it with great haste and much blood. But alas, the removal was much too late...by the middle of the summer the Afrika Korps beasties were all over my legs...and other places on which the sun didn't shine.
It took me some time to realize that I really had a problem, and eventually I couldn't hide it from my parents any more. I was hauled off to the doctor and finished up at the Glasgow University Dept of Dermatology. They couldn't figure out what it was either... I hadn't told anyone about my White City caper and there was no little black swastikas on the shells of these wee beasties. I got rid of the major problem only after a few months of rigorous painting, but I had another problem too, more baffling apparently. I had developed deep-rooted blisters between all my fingers...it took more than three years to get rid of this lot! According to the doctor at Glasgow University, I had two different skin diseases!
It's not surprising that I suffered from such skin ailments as I did a lot of camping that summer using a Wehrmacht rucksack, cape, hats, shirts, and even a water bottle..all from Rommel's escapades in the desert wastes of Libya.
Now to this "creep of an officer". He really did give us a hard time and was not at all happy about the civvy police letting us go...he wanted to keep us at the White City! I have wondered ever since if his reason was that we had a need to be fumigated. The German prisoners had no doubt been fumigated ...but certainly AFTER they had disposed of all that precious equipment that we had so hungrily collected.