Captured by the enemy

AGED 103, one of the country's oldest men, Thomas Spriggs could easily pass for a man 25 years his junior.

Phlegmatic, pragmatic and unflappable, it is easy to see why Thomas, of Sway, near Lymington, didn't worry too much about whether he would live through the war or not. The reason behind this was because he simply didn't expect to survive at all.

Having fought in the mud of Passchendaele, Thomas believed in the adage that if a bullet had your name on it there was nothing in the world you could do to avoid it. Being killed, to him, at the age of 20, was a probability; being wounded a certainty. But what he least expected was to be taken as a prisoner-of-war - and in one piece too. Today it is believed he is the only surviving British PoW from Cambrai.

He said: "We attacked on November 20, 1917, and we were on the right flank - beyond us was all empty space, no frontline, no nothing. It seemed to us that we had made a real breakthrough - but then the Germans counter-attacked on November 30.

"We were near a village called Villers Guislain when the machine gun team was captured. The first thing I recall is that the Germans first sent a plane over to take some photographs. We tried to shoo the plane down but didn't manage it and it swept round to the right of us and got all our artillery first, then us.

"The next morning we could see the Germans coming over and for some reason or other the machine gun would not fire more than one shot at a time before seizing up. I was number two on the gun. I could see the Germans gradually coming up and surrounding us.

"Eventually, several soldiers came up above the slit trench we were in, led by an officer, who waved a bomb at us and said 'Drop your equipment and surrender', which we did.

"I distinctly remember when this man stood on the top of the trench with a grenade in his hand threatening to throw it at us, thinking, 'No, I'll be damned if I am going to hold my hands up to you'. It was undignified. Surrender to a bloody German, no fear. I wasn't going to put my hands up to the and say 'Oh! spare me, spare me'. I thought I would rather face a bullet or a bomb.

"I'd been all through the third battle of Ypres, Passchendaele and now Cambrai and I thought 'Well, I'm going to get killed sometime, so why bother?' Pigheaded I suppose. Of course, being taken prisoner is something that never occurs to you when you're fighting.

"After my capture at Cambrai I was taken by box van and deposited at a camp called Dlmen in Westphalia. We were there from the start of December until the end of January and in that time we did very little work, just sat around as far as I can remember.

"By February I was back in Belgium at a place called Pruwelz. A group of us were sent as general labourers. First of all we were working on the train tracks. In those days there used to be light railways running along the roads in Belgium and I went to work there, track adjusting, tamping the ballast, re-laying lines.

"I knew we weren't supposed to do anything to help the German war effort, but I don't think I gave it a thought. You were set a job and I think I did it to the best of my ability. I would have got a clout if I'd refused.

"What else could you do? You couldn't refuse to do these jobs and it wasn't particularly hard work as I recall. As for sabotage, that never occurred to me. I was out there to try and keep alive as long as possible or, until I was released.

"It was at this camp I dropped a rail on my foot and burst a nail. I remember some people in a shop dressed and wrapped it for me. I went to see a military doctor in another village and he got a knife pushed it under the toe-nail, slit one side, slit the other and wrapped it in a bit of paper - no anaesthetic nothing. My God, it did make me sweat. I thought I was going to say a rude word!

"I had to walk back to Pruwelz from raismes, this was where we unloaded planks and stacked them on trolleys for huts to be built.

"I remember going back to camp with a Prussian guard (we called them 'postens'). We used to call him Snowball. He used to pick about 20 men as his own squad and he used to love to march us down the street to the timber yard. Coming back one day I remember we passed a convent and there was a brick wall, chest high, with boards above each having a gap between. Suddenly on this day I saw a sandwich poke up between the wall and the board so I stepped out of line, took the sandwich and hid it in my pocket and then rejoined the ranks.

"Some days later the same thing happened but I was on the other side marching. Another fellow had seen the sandwich and stepped out of rank to get it, but the 'posten' saw him and he got a rifle butt about his shoulders. He got a beating."

Food was a major problem in the camps until the arrival of Red Cross parcels. Thomas remembers at one camp he was taken to, grown men fighting over pig swill like it was a gourmet dinner.

He said: "I saw four Merseyside men fighting over a bucket of swill that had come from the kitchens. It disgusted me to see them fighting over it, literally pushing each other away from the bucket before it toppled over and they had to scoop it up.

I thought 'Not me, I'd prefer to go hungry, I'd rather die than do anything like that'.

"I felt empty, real empty at times but the Germans hadn't the food to give us.

"I remember once unloading some barbed wire from a truck and I scratched my wrists and they festered. I carried on for some weeks in pain, they wouldn't heal properly and yet as soon as we got our Red Cross parcels and I'd get plenty of fat stuff down me, they healed and got better - I carried the scars though for about three years.

"Before we got those parcels hunger was always in our thoughts and we were always talking about being hungry; what we'd like to eat.

"Lancashire fellows used to talk about savoury duck and balm cakes, those from Merseyside wanted marmalade with their bacon; one Londoner would talk about thick doorstep sandwiches - it was

torture.

"At Dlmen they gave us some food; a potato or two and some soup from maize that tasted like paraffin. Plus they'd give us German cheese. God knows what it was made of but it stank and if you threw it at the wall it would splash and stick to it. It was poisonous."

Once the German offensive began Thomas and his fellow PoWs were taken to a village near Le Vain where they worked in the quartermaster stores, boxing and bagging rations for German regiments billeted nearby.

A few potatoes and Schnapps were staple when it could be smuggled out.

With the arrival of Red Cross parcels came biscuits, soup, chocolate, cake and soap - not to mention cigarettes.

"These were a godsend. I suppose if we hadn't had those parcels we would have starved to death, very gradually.

"We were given a card by the Germans to say we were prisoners-of-war and this way our details filtered back to the mothers and sisters who prepared the packages.

"Quite a number were stolen and we knew when our parcel had been tampered with - but it was every man for himself in these camps - who can blame them?"

Repatriation came relatively quickly for those prisoners in France of near Germany's western border. Thomas Spriggs had been in a German camp but had been sent back to labour near the front line. It was because of these he became one of the lucky prisoners to return home before the end of November 1918 - he had survived his year-long ordeal.

"On November 11, 1918 at 11am one of the postens came along, opened the gates and said 'Off you go, clear off'. That was the first we knew that the war was over and we didn't wait a minute before we were on our way.

"That first day about 30 of us made our way back to a place called Enghien, on the field of the Battle of Waterloo. We stayed there that night and the next day we made our way up to Mons. On our way we met the Canadian Army who fed us and took us to town. We were then put on an empty wagon train to Calais, took a boat to Dover and arrived home on November 30 - 12 months to the day after I'd been captured.

nThe remarkable stories of the 17 British veterans who were taken prisoner and survived have been made into a book called 'Prisoners of the Kaiser' available in hardback now.