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Klinga POW working camp was located at a quarry in Klinga ( nr. The 2nd 'A14 sign ) and not far from Grimma, close to Colditz and Leitpzig The quarry is still there, at least it was two years ago - even some of the buildings.
An extract from 'Life behind the Wire', © Bert Richings 2000
I spotted the camp in the distance. It was a huge place and appeared to be about a quarter of a mile square. As we marched past the wire fences I noticed that many of the chaps had knotted handkerchiefs on their heads, although we were far removed from any English beach! That camp was '4B', a huge German P.O.W. camp, filled with all nationalities.
As soon as we were inside, each group had to line up and in turn divest all of their clothing, to be tied in bundles and placed in small gas containers for about half an hour, while we were all left standing there in the nude, shivering, with a mad rush afterwards to get them back on.
Then, we all had to queue at a large machine which looked remarkably like a sheep Shearer, and they shaved every hair off of our body and heads. Luckily, I had a hat to wear to keep my head warm.
Camp 4B was a terrible place and when we heard people were putting their names down to go to a working camp, we jumped at the chance as anything was better than where we were. Our gang of six were to be included in a group of fifty men, but what the work was we didn't know. We left one morning, walking to the railhead with four guards, and boarded a train, in a carriage this time, getting off at a small town whose name escapes me. We then walked to a village named 'Klinga' then on to a large Stone Quarry, or what was known in Germany as a 'Steinbox'.
There was a large football field at the top of the quarry and the dressing rooms, or pavilion, was surrounded by barbed wire about twelve foot high. His was to be out home and was known as the 'lager'. It comprised of a bedroom, with twenty five two tier wooden bunks, washroom and toilet, and a recreation room with a stove at the centre. Outside was a small strip of land, about four yards wide, between the lager and the wire fence. The guards slept in a hut adjoining the lager.
It was a Sunday when we arrived and that happened to be the only day that we didn't work. Every other day we were to work from dawn until last light. We queued for our first Sunday meal in that Lager and it was six medium sized potatoes, in their skins, dished out to us hot with no plate, so we put them in our hats. That was the first time I've ever had my Sunday dinner in my hat.
Roll call was first thing in the morning and lights out at Eleven pm, shortly after which we were locked in. We all had a locker each in front of our bunks, which came with pillow and mattress of straw filled sacking.
In the dining room there was a square hatch into the kitchen, where a buxom German woman with florid red cheeks, referred to as 'Rosie', dished out our spuds each day. She also cooked for the guards, who had a separate hatch to their adjoining barracks.
They supplied us with clogs, or at least a type of wooden soled slip-on with large square footcloths, for wearing at work every day, and a pile of old Polish clothes for working in. I had an old tunic with braid on and a pair of pantaloons! We must have looked like 'Dad's Army'. I ripped the braid off mine but they certainly saved our uniforms from wearing out.
Before the first morning's work we were paraded at the top of the quarry. There were about fifteen German workers and they looked at us as if they had never seen an Englishman before. Maybe they hadn't? Before us was an elaborate stone edifice, built with quarry stone, which bore the words, in large letters,
"Hart die Arbeit, Hatér die Wille",
which I discovered later meant 'hard the work, then harder the will'.
One elderly man came and counted of the first twenty five men, which included myself, and told us to follow him. He went walking down the ramp into a deep hole, it was a quarry about the size of a football pitch, with another hole going down in the middle. Apparently he was the 'Gaffer' of the quarry. He gave each of us a sledge hammer, pick and shovel, then put them all in a dram and each of us were given a 'pitch' at the cliff face to work, each with a dram line leading down to bottom of the ramp. We had to fill the dram with stone, push it to the ramp, receive a chitty for it, then return with the empty one. They insisted that we do Thirty drams a day, but would be lucky if they got Fifteen or Sixteen out of us.
The work was to fill the dram with stones that you could lift, and if not you had to break them up with your hammer. All the earth had to shovelled to one side until you had enough to fill a dram. When the face became to high to work they drilled holes in the top for sticks of dynamite, which they blew during the midday break. This made things easier, with much less hammer work necessary.
As the weeks rolled by we became more used to this sort of work. You had to feel sorry for some of the chaps who had worked in an office for all their lives, who now had to wield pick and shovel. One in particular, who we called 'Spud', was so small and frail that he just couldn't lift the sledge above his head, let alone the large stones. They gave him an easier job on the surface, running the stone crusher, but the dust was so bad he had to wear a mask all day long so he wasn't much better off really.
The Germans made no attempt whatsoever to learn any English. They issued their orders in German and expected us to understand. We picked up the odd bits of German, but most of the time just said 'O.k.' or 'Nicht Fostaine', or something like that which meant 'No understand'. There were no end of amusing incidents during these quarry days.
For a start, we never knew any of the German workers names, so we gave them all nicknames. 'Fumf', for the Gaffer, 'Cock-Robin', 'Flat-hat', 'Pug-nose', 'Smiler, White-face, Knock-knees' and 'Old Pop'. We felt sorry for 'Old Pop'. He was about Seventy, with Six sons, five of who had been killed on the Russian front and the last was reported missing. He loved his old pipe, and the lads used to slip him pinches of tobacco now and again…
An extract from 'Life behind the Wire', © Bert Richings 2000.
Bert Richings (on the right), photo taken in Cairo before being captured at Tobruck
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