This is a partial record of one man’s war divided into seven parts.
Part 1
Thursday 10 May 1945. A postcard written in pencil.
“Rested here overnight when making our way back to the American lines from near Dresden.”
Here being Lederan in Gasten Chemnitz in eastern Germany. The picture postcard was written by 24-year-old John Munro and it appears he was accompanied by several others: Tom and John Whitehead, Chris Simmons, Norrie Thompson, Bill McKay. C. Simmons, Tom S Whitehead who have added their signatures to the reverse of the card – all survivors of the Nazi work camp, Stalag IV-A. On the defeat of Germany that May the camp guards simply abandoned their posts and left the gates open as they hurried away.
Eastern Germany around Chemnitz was a centre of war-time industries producing military hardware so became a focus of allied bombing aimed at disrupting production and destroying German lines of communication in the east of the country. Some forty miles away was the famously beautiful and culturally important city of Dresden which had escaped direct attack while bombs targeted the region’s manufacturing sector but on the night of 13th/14th February Operation Thunderclap changed that when Dresden became the prime target for one of the most controversial Allies’ decisions of the war. The Soviet army approaching from the east and their allies, the British and Americans, were keen to create confusion to prevent German concentration of power in the region and possible resurgence of strength. Punishing the German people was also somewhere in the mix and a curiosity over the effectiveness of firestorm in conflict. As well as Dresden’s own citizens thousands of refugees were also passing through the city (fleeing from approaching Soviet troops), and prisoners of war (POWs) – one of them the American writer, Kurt Vonnegut, later wrote about the terrible scenes he witnessed in his novel, Slaughterhouse-Five. He was one of a number of POWs put to work recovering the tens of thousands of bodies of people who had been burned to death or suffocated in the firestorm that engulfed Dresden when Allied aircraft dropped tons of incendiary bombs on its civilian population. The following night Chemnitz was the target.
Prisoners at Stalag IV-A camp would have been well aware of the increasing assaults on the cities of eastern Germany from the flames that leapt into the sky and, presumably, been given hope that the end of the war was close. At the same time allied bombardments created interruptions to food supplies and Red Cross parcels were stolen more than was usual. Camp guards as well as prisoners were near starving and by early May with the Red Army progressing across country guards abandoned their posts and left the camp gates open. By 8th May 1945 Chemnitz was occupied by Soviet troops.
C. Simmons and Tom S. Whitehead jotted down their names on a scrap of map of the Freiberg region that John Munro took home with him. Did they use maps to find their way across country after liberation? Possibly.
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John Munro came from Ross and Cromarty in Scotland where his parents were farmers just north of Inverness. As a farmer John would have been exempted from military service at the beginning of the war but he was barely 18 and headstrong so he enlisted as a private in the Seaforth Highlanders at Strathpeffer without telling his parents four months before conscription was introduced in 1939.
1939
There must have been a lot of talk about war around the Munro kitchen table that May. While to some the country north of Inverness might suggest an idyll of out-of-the-way peace it was far from it – nearby Strathpeffer, Jamestown, Achterneed, the Heights, Blairninich became centres of military activity throughout the war and were restricted areas which meant travel passes were required for everyone, locals included. Private homes as well as hotels and public buildings were commandeered by the military – officers setting themselves up in the smartest of houses – other ranks were accommodated as available and the overflow put up in camps of wooden huts and tents. Land was allocated for military training – rifle and shelling ranges. People came in from across the UK and the world: Newfoundlander and Honduran foresters brought to Scotland to boost the country’s forestry workers (lumberjacks and lumberjills), to provide essential timber supplies for building, aircraft, shipping, mining, telegraph poles and so on. Immediately west of the Munro’s farm practice trenches were dug out on either side of the Black Water, the river that ran through their land. To assist the professionals, locals either too old or in reserve occupations, were able to provide back-up and feel they were contributing to the defence of the country through participation in the Home Guard. John’s father signed up with them and was issued with a pair of boots of different sizes. I expect another volunteer had a similar pair.
On the eve of a war that would transform so much of British life resonances of the past endured. Horses were important means of working muscle. On John’s family’s farm there were 5 working horses plus 2 young ones and a foal that summer of ’39, along with a Shetland pony that was taken as a mascot by one of the military units, likely the Lovat Scouts or Seaforth Highlanders. Horse numbers were decreasing with the advent of the tractor. Just a year or two earlier no fewer than 11 horses were being worked on the family farm. The horses all had names and some of the cattle (mainly Highland and Galloway) on this mixed farm – big cow, broken horned cow, teen, Bonnie, Captain Smith’s, old red cow, old blue cow, roan dairy cow, little red cow. Flocks of sheep were predominantly Cheviots and Leicesters. There were also 140 hens, 30 ducks and 25 turkeys – for people used to eat turkey eggs back then. And crops that included oats, barley, swedes and potatoes.
At just 18, John was surely regarded by his father as a permanent member of the farm’s workforce which he hadn’t expected to lose. As a farmhand John was paid the average wage for a male farm servant of £4 per week (housing and perks were provided on top of basic pay) and £3 for women. That May he received £15 for three weeks work before he left for military service. John’s father, always very involved in local affairs, assisted in assessing damage to Strathpeffer’s Kinettas grass parks and Kinnellan Avenue by Lovat Scouts – broken verges, fences, abandoned water troughs for their horses and general rubbish from their camp.
1940
North Africa became a main theatre of war between Allied and Axis powers over that essential trade route, the Suez Canal. At the outbreak of war the canal was controlled by the British who depended upon it for oil supplies from the Persian Gulf and it became a target for the Axis powers of Germany and Italy. In June 1940 Italy declared war on Britian and France and in September Italian troops invaded Egypt from Libya which had been colonised by Italy in 1911.
John had swapped working as a farmer for working as a soldier. He earned a soldier’s pay now and paid income tax the same as he would have at home. He would be liable for income tax throughout his time at war, as a prisoner of war. Had he been wealthy or an officer he could have claimed tax relief on investments held outside the UK curiously enough.
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