Godstone: World War II veteran shares life as prisoner in Poland
Eric and members of his regiment were captured in France in 1940 and marched to the town of Doullens in the north of the country and on to Amiens and Cambrai.He said that, during three days of marching, the prisoners were only given bread and water once."We were then put on cattle trucks with our knees up and crammed in, and transported to Poland," he added."We were so weak that if we tried to get up, we would black out and sit back down againEric spent five years in a prison camp in Szubin, where he was held for the remainder of the war.
During this time, he became fluent in German and is still able to speak the language to this day.In 1945, one of Eric's fellow prisoners left the hut one morning to discover there were no longer any guards. Later that day, an allied Russian tank ran over the gates of the prison camp and declared that the war was over.They were picked up by some German soldiers who had surrendered and were taken to an American military camp, before eventually returning home.On returning to Surrey, Eric said that he used some of his backpay from the army to take up ballroom dancing in Reigate.It was through this and an encounter in a dance hall in Dorking that he met his wife of 60 years, Hilda, by pretending to be a novice dancer to win her over.He said: "We started a slow foxtrot and she said, 'you old fibber, you can dance'. I'll always remember that!"
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