Grim memories of the Long March
Our feature about the gruelling experiences of captured fighter pilot John Shanks on the so-called Long March in 1945 struck a chord with Alan Robbins – because he was on the march as well.
"I found the article very interesting indeed," said Mr Robbins, who is now 96 and, like Mr Shanks who hailed from Pattingham, was also in the Lamsdorf prisoner of war camp.
As Russian forces approached, the German captors evacuated the camp and forced the PoWs to trudge eastwards in freezing weather.
Mr Robbins, from Newcastle-on-Clun, said: "I was taken prisoner in March 1943 in Tunisia and was in Lamsdorf from about July 1943. I was on that march from January 20, 1945, to May 1 when I was released by the Americans.
"Our underclothes were the same we had on for all that period. We were dirty and covered in lice. Typhus was a problem as well. We used to have one slice of bread a day."
He used to cook using a receptacle used by farmers to feed their pigs.
"I beat the pigs to the food."
Mr Robbins, who was a Trooper, would scrape as much mud off the cabbages and potatoes as he could.
"When I landed back in this country I was less than nine stone. My normal weight is around 13 stone. I'm housebound now and my eyesight is going, and my wife reads the newspaper to me."
He said he knew some pilots in Lamsdorf.
"One was Les Hickman, who came from Coventry and was a pilot of a Wellington bomber. Another was Douglas Bader. He was not a very popular bloke, I will put it that way. He was a damn nuisance."
Mr Robbins originates from Coventry, but was bombed out in the notorious raid of November 1940.
"I drove a Churchill tank in Tunisia and I drove over a land mine about four miles inside enemy territory and was taken prisoner on March 3, 1943, along with the other four crew."
He added: "If you were less than a Corporal, you had to go out to work. I worked in a depot, on the trams, and in a sugar factory, and lots of odds and ends.
"In the article it says Mr Shanks had trouble with his teeth. I did as well. We were working near a place called Oppeln and the Luftwaffe camp was about half a mile away. They took me there and filled my teeth and when I came back to this country I was on exhibition for different dentists were looking at the way they had done my teeth. They had made a perfect job of my teeth.
"I had sat down with about eight Luftwaffe crew or pilots, and when it was my turn I saw their dentist."
