Read Online Hitler's British Slaves by Sean Longden - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Sean Longden
Ads: Link
talents needed – they understood when animals were sick, theycould predict what weather lay ahead and they could maximise their efficiency to minimise their workload. Whether crofters from the Scottish Islands or dairy herders from the pastures of England, whether cattle ranchers from the plains of Canada or shepherds from the rolling hills of New Zealand – all had talents they were eager to use. For such men to be detailed to stables to groom horses was no chore, merely a continuation of life under different circumstances.
Yet for thousands of the men, farm work came as a shock. Plenty of them had never been near a farm in their lives, never handled animals, nor indeed had much experience of the countryside. They had never been outside their home towns or cities prior to being called up for wartime service. Others knew little except what they’d seen in magazines or newsreels, or as the landscape passing the train windows during bank holiday trips to the seaside. They were to have a rude awakening. Life in the countryside was about more than leaning on a gate, chewing straw and wearing a smock. It was about long hours and hard work in all weathers.
One of the first things to be learnt by the prisoners was how different the landscape was from that of home. Since most of the soldiers were young men with little experience of the world, the landscape of central and eastern Europe was completely new to them. Indeed for many of the men from across the Empire this was their first visit to Europe. Used to the sun of South Africa or Australia, or the intense summer heat of India – and having been first introduced to Europe via the Mediterranean theatre – many among them struggled to adapt to a climate that was kind to them in the spring and summer yet savagely cruel through the winter.
There was a certain irony to what they were learning. Those POWs sent to work in the newly conquered Polish territories or in East Prussia, were labouring in the very landsthat were the German focus of the struggle. The former included the fields and forests Hitler had taken his country to war to claim, the later were the German lands he sought to protect from the supposed attentions of his eastern enemies. This was the territory that the men from Britain and the Commonwealth had been conscripted to free from the clutch of the Germans. And now with an unconscious irony they slipped into the role of labourers bound to slave for the Nazis’ expansionist dream.
Everything was different from the world they knew – from the crops to the livestock, from the houses to the wildlife. The POWs spotted small wooden houses with dark walls and forbidding windows, these were the homes of the Poles. Sharing the villages were more substantial buildings, one- or two-storey brick built homes, which housed the local German population. Yet the homes of the two nationalities shared some features. In the spring and summer their gardens were awash with colour, as daisies and poppies bloomed in the fertile earth. Enclosed within their short wooden fences these gardens and smallholdings were alive with the buzzing of insects and the chirping of crickets. They shared the common feature of wooden outhouses that perched above pits which were regularly emptied to feed the soil of the land they worked.
Fertilised by the human waste of generations of farmers, the fields of eastern Europe were bountiful. Crops thrived in these lands. Whether in the vast fields that fed the armies of the expanding Reich – or the gardens where the locals grew their peppers, cucumbers, tomatoes and dill, whose aroma filled the senses of all who walked through a village – nature was all around the prisoners as they slipped into a rural existence. Perched atop almost every chimney, church tower, or telegraph pole were the nests of storks. Every village hada pond from which ducks and geese waddled to quack at the prisoners as they marched to work. Every home seemed to have a chained dog,
Yet for thousands of the men, farm work came as a shock. Plenty of them had never been near a farm in their lives, never handled animals, nor indeed had much experience of the countryside. They had never been outside their home towns or cities prior to being called up for wartime service. Others knew little except what they’d seen in magazines or newsreels, or as the landscape passing the train windows during bank holiday trips to the seaside. They were to have a rude awakening. Life in the countryside was about more than leaning on a gate, chewing straw and wearing a smock. It was about long hours and hard work in all weathers.
One of the first things to be learnt by the prisoners was how different the landscape was from that of home. Since most of the soldiers were young men with little experience of the world, the landscape of central and eastern Europe was completely new to them. Indeed for many of the men from across the Empire this was their first visit to Europe. Used to the sun of South Africa or Australia, or the intense summer heat of India – and having been first introduced to Europe via the Mediterranean theatre – many among them struggled to adapt to a climate that was kind to them in the spring and summer yet savagely cruel through the winter.
There was a certain irony to what they were learning. Those POWs sent to work in the newly conquered Polish territories or in East Prussia, were labouring in the very landsthat were the German focus of the struggle. The former included the fields and forests Hitler had taken his country to war to claim, the later were the German lands he sought to protect from the supposed attentions of his eastern enemies. This was the territory that the men from Britain and the Commonwealth had been conscripted to free from the clutch of the Germans. And now with an unconscious irony they slipped into the role of labourers bound to slave for the Nazis’ expansionist dream.
Everything was different from the world they knew – from the crops to the livestock, from the houses to the wildlife. The POWs spotted small wooden houses with dark walls and forbidding windows, these were the homes of the Poles. Sharing the villages were more substantial buildings, one- or two-storey brick built homes, which housed the local German population. Yet the homes of the two nationalities shared some features. In the spring and summer their gardens were awash with colour, as daisies and poppies bloomed in the fertile earth. Enclosed within their short wooden fences these gardens and smallholdings were alive with the buzzing of insects and the chirping of crickets. They shared the common feature of wooden outhouses that perched above pits which were regularly emptied to feed the soil of the land they worked.
Fertilised by the human waste of generations of farmers, the fields of eastern Europe were bountiful. Crops thrived in these lands. Whether in the vast fields that fed the armies of the expanding Reich – or the gardens where the locals grew their peppers, cucumbers, tomatoes and dill, whose aroma filled the senses of all who walked through a village – nature was all around the prisoners as they slipped into a rural existence. Perched atop almost every chimney, church tower, or telegraph pole were the nests of storks. Every village hada pond from which ducks and geese waddled to quack at the prisoners as they marched to work. Every home seemed to have a chained dog,
Similar Books
