Interviewer: Did you ever wish you were fighting in any of the other regions- France or the Russian Front for example?

Bernhard: Well, certainly not to the Eastern front. Nobody wanted to go there and I was lucky I didn’t have to. I was even more lucky to have ended up on an island. France? Well, I would have gone there but Guernsey was really the best of all bad choices. We were starving, yes, but at least we were safe. We were sheltering in the air-raid shelter of Europe, so to speak.

Interviewer: You eventually surrendered on 9th May 1944.

Bernhard: The war was over on the 8th of May but we only capitulated on the 9th because there was still an order issued on the 8th that we must continue the fight.

Well, we didn’t exactly fight but we were still under German power and had to follow orders. When the allies arrives the British took over. We had to hand over our weapons. We were driven to a square where we had to put all our weapons down. The munitions was thrown in the sea. We were taken out to the sea guarded by British troops.

Here is a little story for you. We stayed on the first floor of this house. When we heard the British guards do their round downstairs, we made a noise (makes machine gun noise) bam bam bam and did that (indicates gun gesture) at them. When they heard that they came running upstairs, but when they saw the state of us they just laughed. The British always appreciate a good joke.

Interviewer: Did you ever get any communications from your family after D-Day?

Bernhard: For us young ones letters from home  were not so important during the war. I mean, none of us had a family of their own. It was different for the older ones, of course. But we young ones didn’t give it much thought. Youth, you know.

Interviewer: So what happened after the liberation of the islands?

Bernhard: We stayed on the island until 17th of May. Then they came to pick us up. We had already handed over our guns. We were allowed to take us much of our belongings for the prisoner of war camp as we could carry. And boy did we carry! We were weak but carried as much as we could. Mainly clothing. We didn’t know what to expect. We were taken to the ship by boats. The boats were lifted up by the side of the ship and we had to jump on board. There was a huge gap between the ship and the boat, so we had to jump.

Whilst we were still in the boats, the British started to loot us. They went round with a metal detector and whatever they could find like watches, rings, they took from us. It was forbidden. And they knew it. Some of them got caught, too. That’s the only bad thing I have to say about the British.

Interviewer: Was it an Allied ship you were transported in?

Yes, it was an American troop carrier, designed to carry eight thousand people they told us. But it wasn’t true. We were stuck one on top of the other, so to speak. We didn’t leave the bay of Guernsey for another day because of the foggy weather. We were not allowed on deck, though. Shame about the view.

We arrived in England on the 19th. The whole place had been secured by barbed wire fences. A train was waiting  for us to take us to the prisoner of war camp. The interesting thing about that train was that it was a passenger train. In Germany we soldiers had got so used to travel in cattle trucks because of the war. Now as prisoners of war we got to travel on a passenger train!

Interviewer: Where were you taken to?

Bernhard: We were stationed between Bath and Bristol in a small town.

That’s when my weight was down to 88 pounds.  This prisoner of war camp was basically a huge transit camp. But there was no more transit so we stayed there for 4 months. We slept in these tank sheds, 160 soldiers in on shed. We were allowed short walks outside in the concrete square.  We were massively guarded. I have never seen so much barbed wire in my life and never so many soldiers on guard.

Interviewer: How were you feeling about the war in general at that point?

Bernhard: Well, let me put it this way. There was a lot of propaganda around and most of us fell for it, one way or another. We thought fighting a war would be exciting and a lot of fun.

I still remember when, on Christmas eve in 1942 I received my call-up for labour service. I will never forget my father’s reaction when I proudly showed him the letter. He slapped me across the face and  cried ‘you stupid boy!’.

Interviewer: What was the recruitment process like at that stage of the war?

Bernhard: From labour service you would go straight onto the SS. It was supposed to be a voluntary move but really, I remember, that when I entered the recruitment centre of the SS there was a folded piece of paper on the table. You were supposed to sign it without having read it.  We tried to hide behind the others, tried to get past the table but they noticed and picked us out. We had a medical check-up and given a health certificate grade A, a ‘fit for fighting first’. Now they wanted to know why we wouldn’t want to join them. I told them I wanted to join the horses. They said “Why don’t you come to the SS, we have cars?” And they told us we would be on leave before long and I could go help my father on the farm and all that. But I didn’t believe them and stuck to my horses instead until they asked me if my father had forbidden me to join them. I had to deny that, of course, it was really dangerous. If I would have said yes, they would have come for my father.

You see, the SS recruitment took place on a Tuesday by Friday these guys were drafted. I knew that because a friend of mine was among them.  Six weeks later this friend of mine was killed in Russia.

From the labour service I was drafted straight to the artillery. I was sixteen years old.  We first went to France but only stayed there for ten days. It was 1943, the African unit returned and needed their barracks back. We were briefly stationed at Serrant and then shipped over to Guernsey. As for mail, the last letter I received in Guernsey was in October 1944. The next letter I received from my family was Eastern in 1948.

Interviewer: What did you do after you were allowed to go home?

Bernhard: They were looking for twenty thousand German soldiers to stay in England to help on the farms. I applied and got the job. And was glad for it.  You see, I didn’t know where to go back to in Germany. Didn’t want to go to the east. Schlesingen had become Poland after the war and all Germans had had to leave. I stayed with an English farmer for another four months and after that was free to go wherever I wanted. I went back home to Germany for Christmas in 1948. The British government had paid for my return ticket. I came back to England in 1949 and decided to go back to Germany for good. But by now I had started to enjoy my youth so much I was completely broke. So, I had to stay on for a bit longer.

Interviewer: How were you treated by the farmer?

Bernhard: He wasn’t horrible but he wasn’t exactly friendly either.

But then, of course, as a German you couldn’t expect too much friendliness.  The world had judged us. You see, we didn’t know about the Jewish concentration camps.  When we were shown the films in the prisoner of war camp, we first said, “This is not us, it’s you, you British in your Boer War.” You see, we had no idea…