The
Notes on the Book
Bill Balmer and his Green Beret
Bill’s
Reflections Friendships Just
like everybody else in the PoW camps, I was friendly with everyone. We did not
know each other’s names but addressed each other by our nicknames,
Paddy, Taff or Jock. We could be friendly with each other for months without
asking each other our real names. From
the time I was taken a Prisoner of War until my liberation it was impossible to
have long-term friendships. While on the march and then in the camps we were
constantly split up into small units. At one time I was the only Royal Marine in
my work party. In fact a Marine taken in Crete ended up in my work party and a
month passed before we found out we were fellow Marines.
He was one of the Osbourne’s from Belfast Geordie
Thwaites was my best mate but we were continually broken up on the march and
while in the camps. After the liberation I never met up with him again until
1952. By that time he was a driver to the Royal Family. My
friend and fellow PoW
on the march, Sam Maxwell, never recovered from the brutal treatment he suffered
in the German PoW and Labour camps. We were
separated from the start of our incarceration. He spent a long time in the salt
mines in Upper Silesia. After five years of ill health he died at home in 1950.
The
Enemy It
was no joke being behind barbed wire for five years. It also depended on who
captured you. Sometimes we were treated well and on other occasions we were
treated brutally. The younger guards were always the worst. They used the butt
of their rifle against you more often and when the occasion presented itself
they would use the bayonet on you. They were also in the habit of carrying a big
stick or baton because that was easier to use than the rifle. As
time went on the younger men were selected to fight on the fronts, much older
men took their place. We
always knew how the war was going by the attitude of the guards towards us. When
the Germans were losing the war at any stage they were very brutal towards their
prisoners. You had to be careful and not step out of line at these times. When
we were out in the working parties we managed to get on with our guards, who
again were all older men, too old for the front. Reconciliation Even
when we were in the coalmines or in other work parties we managed to get on with
the German civilians. Some of them even shared their food with us. Despite being
forced to labour I have no animosity towards the German people. The
Germans appear to have more problems relating to ex-PoWs
than I have in relating to them. There have been several occasions after the war
when I met German civilians who were on holiday in Ireland. One day in Killarney
my wife and friends went off to kiss the Blarney Stone. As
I waited in the car park for their return a German couple joined me. They asked
if I minded them sitting beside me and I said, ‘Of course not’. Then the
wife said something to her husband in German and I replied in German before he
did. They asked me where I had learned to speak the German language. As soon as
I informed them that I had learned to speak German in a PoW
camp they rose straight away and scuttled off. My conscience was clear but
theirs appeared not to be. One
day on the Ballymoney road I gave a lift to two German tourists. At one stage of
the journey they started speaking to each other in German. I started speaking to
them in German as well. After they found out where I had learned to speak German
they could not wait to get away from me. Perhaps they thought I was going to
turn nasty on them but nothing was further from my mind. I
never could trust the French man for many reasons. While I was a PoW
there were many French soldiers in our accommodation. If you did anything out of
order at all the German guards would hear about it within the hour. The
French women we encountered on the march to the PoW
camp were very brave. They would risk a kick from the German guards or even
worse to leave us out some water or bread by the roadside. The French men always
kept a low profile at these times. Suffering
and Stress During and After Captivity You
always felt so sorry for your people back home. I worried about my family all
the time and then I worried because of what I was going through myself. It was
my aim to come through the PoW
experience both physically and mentally intact. All
the PoWs
worried about what their reception would be once they did get back home. It was
impossible to imagine how you were going to be received by your family, friends
or your unit. We had listened to stories about men who were repatriated through
illness and some of the stories left us all depressed. But I need not have
worried because my family received me well enough. Life
as a PoW
was never boring. You spent all your time worrying about food and obtaining
food. I always worried about when I was going to get something to eat because it
was obvious the Germans could not feed themselves never mind the prisoners. When
I returned home and even today, over sixty years later my wife has noted that I
find it impossible to leave any food on my plate after any meal. There
is one point I must emphasize in relation to all Prisoners of War. I was a
seventeen year-old lad when I first became a PoW
of the Germans but my suffering was nothing compared to the experiences of those
Allied soldiers taken by the Japanese. I
had five years of suffering at the German hands but those taken by the Japanese
went through more suffering in a couple of months than I ever did. I met some of
the ex-PoWs
and I know we suffered in our own way but their suffering was entirely
different. Rejection
of PoWs After
the humiliating experience at Lubeck I felt that all my fears coming true.
Luckily for me this was an isolated incident but my confidence suffered. Later
on I had to listen to other Marines telling their ‘war stories’ in the
barracks. I always felt that they were jibing me and there were a few sly smiles
directed my way when I did say I was a PoW.
But I had seen more action in one day than they had seen in the whole of the
war. Other
Prisoners of War have had worse rejections than mine. During the Malayan
campaign I met up with a commando who had served in the Burma campaign and was
taken prisoner. When
he was repatriated after the war his family rejected him and his wife would not
let him see his children. He was one of the finest cooks and decorator of cakes
in the Marines but he had his problems. Every so often he would just disappear
for days on end. The
CO was in despair because he knew part of the problem was due to the way his
family rejected him. After a repeat incident the CO decided to promote him to
Corporal and put him in charge of the cookhouse. That was a good move because
all the problems stopped there. Promoting him and then giving him some
responsibility made him feel that he was accepted as a man again. Satisfying
Experiences The
most satisfying experience I ever had in the services was completing the
commando course and earning the green beret. I was twenty-seven years old and
that was the age limit for the commando course. At that age we were much too old
for active service in the Royal Marines but there were plenty of supporting
roles we could play at that age, such as drivers, radio operators and cooks. We
still had to be as fit as the other commandos for these roles. On
my previous driving duties at the commando school I had witnessed the state of
some of the Royal Marines as they completed various stages of the course and I
had to admire those who passed out as commandos. I never imagined that I would
earn the green beret myself. I am
proud to have been a member of one of the most renowned units in the British
armed forces, the Royal Marines. My
Medals Because
I spent most of the war in a German PoW camp I failed to qualify for the Defence
Medal. Most of the early duties as a seventeen-year-old Royal Marine only lasted
for one or two weeks. That was far too short a period to qualify for the medal.
I
have my Allied PoW
Medal mounted along with my campaign medals. When I parade every Remembrance
Sunday I know that I will have to listen to some adverse comments, just as in
previous years. I
understand that the Allied PoW
Medal is only a commemorative medal and is supposed to be worn below my campaign
medals. But I always wear the Allied PoW medal with the same pride I have for my other medals. I have the same
attitude since I wore my PoW battledress jacket
with the black diamond on the back on the first Remembrance Parade after the War
in 1945.
From
the left I wear the 1939-1945 Star, The War Medal, The Malay General Service
Medal, The Northern Ireland General Service Medal Medal, The B Specials Medal
and finally, The Allied PoW Medal. My
Service Life Despite
the fact that I found it difficult to discuss my experiences until I was aged
eighty-three I can honestly say I have no regrets about my life of service.
Bill
Balmer aged 86 in 2008 In
the first place I always wanted to be a soldier. I always intended to join up as
soon as I was old enough. My father and all his brothers had served the Crown at
different times. I never imagined that I would do anything different. All
I ever looked forward to, as a Prisoner of War, was getting home to Ballymoney
for a while to see my family and then getting straight back into the Royal
Marines. That’s
the way my life worked out. Fourteen years in the Royal Marines, seventeen in
the B Specials, seven years in the Ulster Defence Regiment. In between that I
served thirty-one years in the Post Office and another fifty-five in the Royal
British Legion. It is just the way I lived my life. My wife had many a lonely
night while I was in the Royal Marines or out on patrol with the Bs and the UDR.
I
did have a life of service to the Crown and the community of Ballymoney. I have
often been asked if I would do it all over again and I have always said that I
would. This work has
been about the life history of Bill Balmer, who committed himself to a life
of service before the age of sixteen. The focus has been on Bills
experiences and not the minutiae of political and military factors relating
in those experiences. Bills initial
commitment and subsequent life of service was always selfless. Ideally, that
commitment should not have prevented subsequent British governments from
paying full tribute to Bill and his World War Two comrades. Compensation At the end of
World War Two the British government reimbursed the German government for
monies paid to British PoWs during their incarceration. This happened
despite the fact that many PoWs like Bill were never adequately paid,
nourished or clothed by their German captors. In 1967 the
West German government agreed to provide £1m in compensation to the British
victims of National Socialism. That episode has turned out to be the only
time the British government has been involved in recompensing the ex-PoW
veterans who were in German custody. The episode
became a public scandal when the British Foreign Office rejected many of the
submitted claims, including claims from veterans who survived the Nazi
reprisals against those who took part in the ‘Great Escape’ from Stalag
Luft III, Poland, in March 1944. The Revenge
Factor While Bill was at
Chatham in 1946, he applied for the post of security police in Germany. He
was informed that as an ex-PoW he probably wanted to go back to Germany to
work because he was after revenge. This is a recurring theme in ex-PoW
stories and shows that the government departments were aware of the
suffering experienced by PoWs in German camps. Bill experienced
and witnessed many horrifying acts of brutality at the hands of his German
captors. At no time during my interactions with Bill has he expressed or
displayed any collective hatred for the German people. Take for example the
incident in Dummerstuck Hof when he requisitioned the SS officers food
supply and distributed it between the people of the village. Bill has always
differentiated between those specific individuals who abused the PoWs, other
guards and then the ordinary German population. At the same time he has
never shown any hostility for his abusers, his focus has always been on
telling his story. Bills attitude is not unique
amongst World War Two veterans. I have talked to other veterans as they
recalled their experiences during the liberation of the Belsen and
Sandbostel concentration camps. In the next breath they would talk about the
normal German people and their beautiful German countryside (Gamble, p110). Although many PoWs were treated
brutally by German civilians in the coalmines, Bill and others were lucky.
Bill recalls that one former PoW intended returning to Germany, when his
time in the Royal Marines was completed, to marry a farmer’s daughter.
This was not an isolated case. Barbour (2008) recalls that Guardsman Sam
Quigley, 2nd Bn Irish Guards and a former PoW, returned to
Germany and married a farmer’s daughter. Recognition The two 1940
battles that Bill Balmer took part in were part of a strategy to evacuate
the defeated Allied forces through Dunkirk. The rearguard actions at
Boulogne, Calais, the perimeter of Dunkirk and many other small battles made
this retreat a success. The evacuation has always been highlighted to the
detriment of the sacrifice made by the rearguard troops. This state of
affairs has left veterans like Bill talking about the ‘stigma’ of being
a prisoner of war and the feelings of personal failure. That was despite the
fact he went to his last battle with those terrible words ringing in his
ears, ‘You will be going to Calais and you will not be coming back’. Motivation It is
difficult to determine what motivates an individual to select any career,
never mind the armed forces. That particular choice could lead to your
deliberate killing or serious injury at any time. Objective factors in past
arguments have considered peer pressure, comradeship, family tradition and
economic pressure. Subjective factors include an adventurous spirit, moral
imperative, and loyalty to the Crown. I have found
that questioning veterans on the subject quite often forces the veterans to
construct a response. Perhaps their original motivations for volunteering
are either long forgotten or too private. Sometimes the veterans have given
me a different answer on subsequent interviews leading me to surmise that
there was more than one motivating factor influencing their decision to
volunteer. From my own
personal experiences of twenty-seven years in different service units I can
honestly say the motivation included a need for adventure, world travel, the
danger, the money, the escape from academia and doing the right thing. All
these factors were incremental and combined in no particular order to
account for my enrolment from the age of fifteen. During World
War Two one of the factors that motivated the people of Ireland to serve in
the British armed forces was their attitude towards Nazi aggression. There
were 80,000 volunteers from the south and 38,000 from the north who enrolled
in British units. There were
also thousands of volunteers from the island who served in a civilian
capacity. For example, they staffed the munitions factories, farms, and
hospitals and also acted as driving instructors to the WAAF in 1942. As
Richard Doherty stated, many volunteers were motivated with a ‘moral
imperative to become involved in the war’ (1990, p46) One of the
disparaging comments aimed at the Irish volunteer is that monetary gain was
the motivating factor. But that claim was countered long ago when the Irish
Government published a very revealing document at the end of the
Second World War. That document
is called, “List of
personnel of the Defence Forces dismissed for desertion in time of National
Emergency pursuant to the terms of Emergency Powers (No 362) Order 1945
(S.R. & O. 1945 No 198) or Section 13 of the Defence Forces (Temporary
Provisions) Act, 1946 (No 7/1946). This
Naval and Military Press reprint lists in alphabetical order the names and
personal details of five thousand Irish soldiers who were dismissed for
deserting and then joining the British Armed Forces during the Second World
War. The document
was issued to all Irish Government and Civil Service departments in order to
identify, for whatever reason, the men after their war service. The
deserter’s motivation was not the money as Richard Doherty (1999, p10)
states that the pay was no better. The Irish
volunteers, from the 1790’s onwards were always volunteers. As such they
had to meet the recruiter’s criteria for an ideal recruit and were
enrolled because they wanted to be. During World
War Two the majority of mainland conscripts, with the exception of the
volunteers for the special forces, regular units and Bomber Command, were
always enrolled whether they wanted to be or not.
The
motivations of the volunteers in the British forces will always promote a
lively debate. Identifying the relationship between all the subjective and
objective motivational factors may be more productive than trying to
identify one single overriding factor that fits all volunteers. Despite all
that, there are exceptions, the motivation for Bill Balmer was more
singular. He joined the Royal Marines while Great Britain was at peace. ‘In the
first place I always wanted to be a soldier. I always intended to join up as
soon as I was old enough’. Despite his
horrifying experiences as a seventeen-year-old Royal Marine and the brutal
treatment he experienced in German PoW camps, he continued to serve in the
armed forces for the remainder of his working life. ‘All I
ever looked forward to, as a Prisoner of War, was getting home to Ballymoney
for a while to see my family and then getting straight back into the Royal
Marines’. Bill was
never motivated by money. For example he served in the B Specials for
seventeen years. During that service there were occasions when he
jeopardised his civilian employment by staying out late on patrol. All that,
and more, for a free uniform and £6 a year. Bill
Balmer was the consummate soldier, feared by all enemies and loved by all
Company Sergeant Majors. This is epitomised in many of his personal photos;
the quiet man in the background, waiting to do his duty. Modern trends Each
generation over the last century has been more educated than their previous
generation.
This trend has produced a more literate and articulate population. We
still have a generation of willing volunteers, but they will not suffer in
silence as the last generation did. When young
soldiers go into battle today, they have the opportunity to carry personal
computers, pocket memos and digital cameras. Modern combatants can now get
their experiences in print, in many cases, well before the politicians and
strategists. This modern
trend has reduced the options for the future military historian. As
interested parties we no longer have to wait for sixty years until a veteran
feels they can address their wartime experiences.
The modern combatant has eclipsed that line of research. Because Bill
Balmer’s story was an individual story it has not covered the full gamut
of all PoW experiences. Rather, it covers in detail what happened to Bill
Balmer.
Appendix
2 Prisoners
of War Human
warfare has made incremental advances since early Antiquity. Some of the
advances were influenced by the social changes, including the advance from
tribal leadership to city-states and then empires of ruling elites.
Technological advances in the design of weaponry have also influenced the
nature of human warfare. Treatment
Of PoWs What
has changed relatively little since the dawn of time is the treatment of
prisoners of war (PoWs). Modern religious practices may have eliminated
the acts of cannibalising and sacrificing PoWs. Other than that,
atrocities are still being inflicted on PoWs. This includes the practices
of murder, massacre, mutilation, battering, starvation, torture, human
shields, neglect, enslavement, retaliation and ransom. For
example, on Tuesday 28 May 1940; on the third day of Bill Balmer’s
capture; Private Thomas John Hanna from Bushmills was reported missing in
action. He was a member of A Company 2nd Battalion, the Royal
Warwickshire Regiment. His company had been tasked to fight the rearguard
in the village of Wormhout. The purpose of that action was to allow the
evacuation of the defeated Allied army through Dunkirk to proceed. That
day A Company had fought valiantly but lost the battle to the 2nd
Bn. Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler (LSSAH). In retribution for all the
casualties they sustained, the LSSAH shot the injured Warwick’s dead and
escorted the 200 survivors 3km away to a barn in Esquelbecq. The
LSSAH tried to kill the Warwick’s by throwing hand grenades into the
barn. That was not efficient enough so they escorted the survivors out,
five at a time and shot them in the head. The process was too slow so they
entered the barn to machine-gun and then finish off the remainder. That
evening a local farmer filled a churn with milk and went out to comfort
the fifteen survivors and the dying. The milk churn remains at the scene
of the massacre as a poignant memorial to the brave Warwick’s. (Rodgers,
p21)
Courtesy
of G Rodgers, 2008 For
the LSSAH this was not an isolated incident. Their war record is peppered
with atrocities. Their last actions included the torture and murder of
eleven African-American soldiers from the 333rd Field Bn. US
Army and the massacre of 130 Belgian civilians in December 1944.
Present-day wars are still throwing up people of this ilk. PoW
Numbers As
belief systems, technology, strategy and tactics advanced so did the
number of prisoners taken in battle. Data referred to by Davis (1977)
shows that during World War One there was a total of 8,500,000 prisoners
of war. During World War Two this rose to a total of 35,000,000. The
Function of PoWs One
reason for holding prisoners of war is to deny the enemy their fighting
personnel. An example of this took place during World War Two when the
admiralty refused to consider the exchange of sailors and merchant
marines. The Allies could only have their sailors and merchant marines
back at the expense of re-staffing the German U-Boat operations. The
prisoners of war also represented a measure of military success that would
undermine the enemy’s morale. In Germany the prisoners of war were used
as replacements for the workforce who could then be called up for military
service. Germany had taken eight million prisoners of war during World War
Two and in 1943 twenty per cent of them were forced to labour in the coal
mining industry (Davis, 1977). Prisoners
of war were also a drain on enemy manpower. If troops were tasked to guard
the enemy prisoners this reduced the number of troops available to fight
the war. Vance (1993, p676) states that during World War Two, the working
ratio was one guard for every four prisoners. By 1943 over 400,000 German
personnel were employed to guard Germany’s PoWs. Prisoner
of War Camps The
German PoW camps were located in a broad corridor that extended from the
German coast south of Denmark, through Germany, occupied Poland and
annexed Austria to Italy, in that order. These
German territories were split into military districts known by their Roman
numeral. If there was more than one camp in a specific military district
they were designated a letter according to their order of build. The
PoW camps were usually sited in World War One training grounds, former PoW
camps, Napoleonic Forts and castles. The German army manned most of the
PoW camps. To a lesser extent Allied Air Force personnel were usually sent
to PoW camps manned by the Luftwaffe (German Air Force) and naval PoWs to
camps usually manned by Kriegsmarine (German Navy). The
word Stalag is an abbreviation of Mannschaftsstammlager; a PoW camp used
to hold enlisted men and NCOs. Stalag VIIIB is therefore the second PoW
camp for enlisted men and NCOs to be built in the military district VIII.
This was located in southwest Poland. Other
abbreviations for PoW camps include; Oflags for officers, Marlags for
sailors, Milags for merchant marines, Stalag Lufts for Air Force personnel
and Dulags for transit camps. Control
of PoW Camps The
German guards were responsible for maintaining the security of the PoW
camps and the internal administration and self-government of the camps was
the responsibility of an officer or a SNCO (Lunden, 1949). The compounds
within each PoW camp were under the control of an NCO. Stalag
IIIA, Luckenwalde, was located about 30 miles south of Berlin. It held
approximately 20,000 PoWs. The PoWs held there included Australians,
Canadians, Americans, Poles and Russians. Bill
Balmer was also held there between his postings to the von Putlitz estate
and the lime kilns. During
1944/45, CSM Dessie Lynch of the 1st Battalion the Irish Guards
was in charge of the internal administration and self-government of the
camp. Ex-PoWs Guardsmen Fitzpatrick and Fallon, related to ex-Guardsman
Cpl. T. W. Barbour that CSM Dessie Lynch and his Guards regime was not
popular with the other PoWs; indeed he was most especially disliked by men
from other Regiments. CSM Lynch kept the men busy at keeping themselves
looking soldierly, repairing their uniforms when necessary and other
military disciplines (Barbour, 2008). Squadron
Leader George Dudly Craig recalls in Rollings (2007, p318) that during the
month of April 1945, every night small parties of German guards were
observed slipping away. Then on 21 April the remainder of the guard handed
the camp over to the PoWs. That
was the day the Camp Commandant went to CSM Lynch and presented him with
his formal surrender. CSM Lynch accepted the surrender along with the Camp
Commandants Luger pistol. Later
that day CSM Lynch paraded all the PoWs and addressed them with the Luger
still in his hand. ‘For
18 months you have been thinking about ways of getting me back. Well,
now’s your chance.’ He
then fired the pistol once in the air and then threw it down on the ground
in front of him. No one stepped forward to take up the offer (Barbour,
2008). Treachery Having to
surrender in the heat of the battle is as terrifying as fighting the
battle. PoWs are immediately under emotional and physical duress; they
have exhausted all means of escape and are now at the mercy of the
victors. They will be held for an indeterminate period and will be called
prisoners although they have not committed any crime. There is a
small section in all populations who will have a dysfunctional reaction to
these traumatic experiences. They will seek to avoid physical punishment
and mental stress by developing an empathy with their captors. As a
consequence, the individual seeks the favour of their captors by
committing deeds of treachery against their own comrades. This behaviour
has been witnessed in PoW and Concentration camps throughout the Nazi
controlled states. During
Bills time as a PoW he observed few incidences of treachery.
For example, reporting the use of illicit radios and SNCOs
accompanying other ranks. One of the reasons these incidents were so
infrequent was because camp inmates had a ruthless attitude towards
treacherous comrades. Longden
(2005, p54-56) reports that traitors were killed on many occasions and
there was an incident in Lamsdorf where the PoWs found a corpse in the
pool. It was no idle comment when Bill mentioned that the PTI who reported
the illicit radios at Sternberg labour camp stood a good chance of being
hung on the wire. Theft Bill also
observed a few incidences of theft from fellow prisoners. Longden (2005,
p54-56) also reported that thieves could be dumped in the latrine pits,
punched unconscious or flogged by fellow inmates. Repatriation It can be inferred
from the documentation on the repatriation of PoWs that there were three
classes of PoW. First there was the physically and mentally ill and the
wounded. This group was considered to be the most eligible for
repatriation. This group was followed by the eldest of the PoWs, many of
whom were over the age of sixty near the end of the war. The longest
serving PoWs was the final group for consideration. The first two groups
were exchanged but the third group remained in captivity until they were
liberated at the end of the war (Kohavi, 2004). Although the
negotiations between the governments of Great Britain and Germany started
in 1940, they achieved nothing. At that time the Germans had captured over
2,200,000 Allied troops at Boulogne, Calais and Dunkirk whereas the Allied
forces had captured a negligible number of Axis troops. The Germans in a
much stronger bargaining position and they capitalised on this PoW
disparity to block all progress in the negotiations. Serious
negotiations with the German government started in October 1943. By that
time the tide of war and the number of PoWs captured turned in favour of
the Allied forces. In the meantime the
PoW exchanges between Italy and Great Britain started in June 1943 when
the hospital ship Newfoundland sailed from England to Lisbon with
Italian PoWs. The ship then picked up Allied PoWs for a seven-day return
trip to England. According to an
article in the Winter (2005) Newsletter of The National
Ex-Prisoner of War Association, British Commonwealth and German PoW
exchanges started in October 1943. The final exchange
of wounded and sick PoWs took place after the abortive Arnhem operation.
In February 1945 1,259 British PoWs were exchanged for 1,579 Germans in
Berne, Switzerland. Liberation When
the war ended, Cpl W.T. Barbour of the Irish Guards was given leave. The
order was; those who had fought from Normandy got first rights. He went to
London en-route to Belfast and described the place as choc-a-block. Men of
all nations and Regiments were there; Americans, Australians and
Canadians. He also
muses that during the liberation of one PoW camp by the Irish Guards, a
set of trestle tables had been set up at the gates. During the issue of
travel documents, the men were asked where they were from. Each and every
one replied, ‘London!’ That included many with an American or Aussie
accent (Barbour, 2008). Later on
all ex-PoWs were expected to complete debriefing forms at the
staging camps before they were allowed home. Bill Balmer’s debriefing
forms show a significant lack of detail considering the deprivation and
horror they had all experienced. Amongst other points, Rollings (2007,
p335) relates how the ex-PoWs used these unwelcome forms for obscenities,
complaints or simple Yes and No responses and in true PoW mind-set, even
stole the pencils. Bibliography Personal Communications,
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http://www.freewebs.com/lamsdorf/ The Lee-Enfield Rifle website. http://enfieldrifles.profusehost.net/main.htm
Chapter 18
Summary
