Free Hitler's British Slaves by Sean Longden Page B

worked their teams of horses through the fields they had to keep watch for large stones that might be hit by the plough. In some areas superstition had it that the stones were so large because they grew underground. The ignorance of the locals was a joke to the prisoners, although the hazard caused by the stones was no laughing matter. At best a stone could cause damage to the blade, at worst it could cause the plough to jump out of the ground, at considerable risk to both man and horses. Some of the stones disgorged by the newly turned earth were so large they had to be dragged away with chains.
    Once the fields were ploughed the POWs walked the fields with baskets around their necks, sowing the seeds that would grow into crops to fill the bellies of the German military. Once that was done there were many more days of walking the same fields, often in rows ten abreast, with metal trays hanging around their necks, spreading chemical fertiliser. Les Allan was among those men detailed to plant seeds on a farm in East Prussia. His attitude towards the work soon brought him into conflict with his captors:
Captivity didn’t deter us from anything we thought would help our side, but what I did was just plain stupid. It was a beet farm. A horse pulled a two-wheeled seed box and on the box were four tubes leading down to the ground. At the end of the tubes were these little star-wheels, these pushed the seeds into the ground. I waited till the guards weren’t looking and stuffed a cloth down into one of the tubes, so the seeds didn’t plant. Then I stopped, pulled the cloth out and stuffed another tube. I foolishly forgot that within weeks it would become obvious what I had been doing since whole rows of crops didn’t grow. That resulted in a Court Martial. I was put in front of all these high ranking German officers, they asked me all about what I had done. Luckily I was defended by a Red Cross representative. He managed to get the case dismissed within an hour. He said to the Court ‘What do you expect if you send an apprentice toolmaker to work on a farm?’ So that was that. But as I came out afterwards the commandant took me aside and said ‘For sabotage we shoot prisoners’. So I was lucky. 8
    And so the work continued. POWs spent day after day wielding scythes as they cleared pastureland of long grass to be laid aside for winter fodder. Their hands became blistered as theycleared weeds by hand or hacked at bushes with sickles. The blisters burst, then more formed until eventually their hands grew hard and calloused. The changes to their hands were not the only physical effects of their labours. Even many of the less physical men found their bodies changing. They grew lean and muscular, their strength increased, and their bodies grew hardy – it was a strength they would all need before the war was over.
    Working outside in all weathers meant the prisoners endured almost ceaseless discomfort. They maintained their back-breaking schedule in the cold of winter, in the rains of spring and autumn, and in the blistering heat of summer. At harvest time they would rise early in the morning and work till dusk, hurrying to get the crops in before the weather turned. Others picked fruit, forever assaulted by the wasps and flies that swarmed around their heads as they worked. Under the late summer sun POWs worked till their skin was bronzed and their hands blistered – their bodies fit to drop by the end of each day. Hour upon hour was spent moving scythes through the corn, cutting the crops until the light faded and the day’s work was ended. As the crops were threshed, often with nothing more than a horse to power the threshers, the POWs breathed in the clouds of dust from the stalks, then suffered again as the grain was milled. Men working at threshing looked on in dismay as cart followed cart, with seldom a break throughout the day. The only men who had breaks on some farms were those who waited for the grain to arrive at the