Godstone: World War II veteran shares life as prisoner in Poland
One of the last surviving veterans of the Second World War has been sharing his experience of being held as a prisoner of war and returning to his life in Surrey.Eric Reeves, 104, joined the Territorial Army at 16 and became a Lance Corporal with the Queen's Royal Regiment by the age of 20 but was captured by German forces in 1940 and spent five years in a prison camp.Now Eric, from Godstone, has shared his experiences of being captured, as well as rebuilding his life following his release and return to the UK.Speaking to Radio Surrey about enlisting, he said: "We were delighted. We didn't know what frightened was."
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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