36153: Angus Ferguson: Memories of a POW Camp

Angus Ferguson, 30 Laxay, was held Prisoner of War in Germany from 1940-1945.

He was a regular soldier at the outbreak of War and arrived in Stornoway on a Saturday night, coming home on leave. He was met on the pier by Sgt Macphail and told not to go home, that he had to return to barracks on the boat the "Loch Ness" the following night. However, having come so far, he wanted to see his mother and father so he borrowed a bicycle and cycled to Laxay, then cycled back to Stornoway again on Sunday.

On his return to barracks at Aldershot, he was drafted to France where they were patrolling between the Maginot and the Siegfried lines under sniper fire at all times. The Germans were getting the better of the British army who eventually had to retreat to Dunkirk. The Ross Battery, of which Angus was a member, were providing a rearguard action to allow the bulk of the British army to get to the ships and small boats awaiting at Dunkirk to transfer them back to England.

The German 6th Army under Romel’s command had formed a horseshoe around them and they were captured at St Valery, by which time they had run out of food and ammunition. They were then loaded into cattle trucks and given one sausage each and a loaf of bread between five of them, which was to be their lot until they reached Poland five days later. They spent five long years as prisoners under guard at all times with very little to eat and made to work hard during the day.

Near the end of hostilities, as the Germans had to retreat from the Russian frontier, the prisoners had to march all the way back from Poland in deep snow, the temperature being 30o below freezing at times. In three months on the march, they only spent three nights under shelter. When they left Poland there were fifty thousand prisoners but by the time they were rescued, only six thousand had survived the march, most of them dying as they slept in the snow.