Major John Smale

	Dunkirk, Guernsey and the Lofoten raid.
	This page: Dieppe and captivity.

TO PRINT THIS ARTICLE ... ... click on print-friendly pdf which opens in a new tab/window. To open PDFs you will need Acrobat Reader. Most computers will already have the Reader but if not there is a free download here

Cpl Gerard, left.

Soon, we were training for the Dieppe raid but I caught measles so I was put into a local cottage hospital for three weeks.  The Americans had just joined the war and I could see some from the hospital.  I remember watching them training very hard, running up a hillside and zigzagging about.  I was very impressed, they were very keen. 

I just recovered in time for the raid.  Of course, we didn’t know what or where it was, there was no particular or specific training.  A day or two before we left we were shown a cloth model of the countryside and they pointed to the exact landing areas and what the terrain looked like.  A group of us were coming back in the same train compartment and one chap shouted out, “I know where we are going, it’s Dieppe!”  Durnford-Slater was absolutely furious with him and said, “If I let you come on the raid, you’ll come with your Sergeant in charge, you won’t be in charge of a boat.  You will not lead any men.”  The story went that he was so disappointed, he walked off the end of the ship and died during the raid.

They told us the main raid would be done by the Canadians on Dieppe itself and there would be British Commandos in support on either side.  The Canadians were all volunteers and I felt they weren’t very well trained, really. They were very loyal and had enlisted specially to come over.  About a thousand of these Canadians were to attack the main town of Dieppe and they suffered terrible casualties there. No 3 Commando was on the left flank, where I was, and No 4, commanded by Lord Lovatt, was on the right.

We had been told by Durnford-Slater that we should land at all costs that was impressed on us very hard. Our main convoy ran into a German convoy of ships of some sort and although they were dispersed, one of our naval officers went round and got shot up quite a bit.  Another naval officer went round, he was very good, he got any boats that could still sail, or were movable, he got them away. We were heading for the outskirts to a place called Berneval which was a small village.  I was standing up in front with the coxswain and a naval and out of the mist a German armed trawler appeared and opened fire on us and they tried to ram us. Luckily, as they came towards us one of my corporals, a chap called Gerard, was lying on the floor (We were all lying on the floor because of this German ship) and he managed to put on the brake and so they misjudged where to fire. We slowed up and they just missed us. They shot right past us.

We were about ten miles out from the beach. I saw the trawler coming back and it was going to hit us so we had to abandon ship.  I thought I’d have a jolly good try at swimming the ten miles to the shore, and I was luckily in the calmer current, there was another current which was a very rough current and nobody could survive in that.

I got my boots off straightaway because of my experience in Guernsey, I knew my boots would pull me down so I got them off straightaway and we jumped overboard. Gerard had not taken his boots off and I said to him, “Have you got your boots off, Gerard”? He said, “No, I can’t them off because the laces have shrunk”, and I held him up as long as I could and then eventually, after several hours holding his head above the water, I found he had died in my arms.  It was a terrible experience.

As I was being washed down the slow current, I ran into a chap.  He appeared out of the mist and I said, “Hello, good morning who are you?”  Then he said he said, “I am an American pilot.  I came over to England to fight with the ‘Eagle Frogs’”, he had just been shot down.  Later on, I ran into a rubber boat with three or four Germans who must have been had been shot down and I thought, “I shall wave to them to see if they will let join them”, but they, quite rightly, thought that if I came aboard I would upset the boat and I think I would have done the same in their position. They pushed off in the other direction and wouldn’t help me, of course.

It was cold but I was very, very fit at the time. I think it was probably because I was so fit that I was alright.

By the time I got washed into Dieppe harbour itself, another of these German armed trawlers appeared and they put a boat down to pick me up.  I thought, “They are going to knock me over the head and kill me”, but they were very good and they brought me to their mother ship, which was another of these armed trawlers with a little place where the officer did his navigation from. I sat on a kind of rope there and the officer waved to me and said, “Come up and see me”, I didn’t realise how tired I was and when I started to climb the ladder and I just collapsed and passed out completely. The German Navy was very good, they took me ashore and I was put in a temporary German hospital which they had put up for casualties of the raid.

I found this Dieppe hospital was over-crowded when I woke up the following morning.  The hospital produced a pair of battle dress trousers, I suppose the previous owner no longer needed them and I think I dried my shirt; they must have provided boots and socks but I don’t remember this.

We were cared for by French nurses and I asked one if she could help me to escape.  She looked rather frightened and said it would be better to wait until I got to an established camp where they would have the necessary facilities.  This let her off the hook but I had every intention to try to escape, we had been instructed to make an attempt as soon as possible after capture before the German anti-escape organisation could be organised.  Some lorry-loads of POWs were being sent to Rouen, about 10 miles away, and I joined hem the day after capture.  Having got to Rouen they did not know where to drop us off, but finally decided on the Police Station.  The Police did not welcome us and so we were moved to an area of grass outside the hospital.  I enquired about being admitted to the hospital but was told I should need to have an anti-tetanus injection in my stomach so I decided against it.

Later that day we were moved on foot to the railway station and I remember seeing an elderly French couple waving to us and giving the “V” sign from their window.  They tried to hide their action from the Germans but I caught their eye as I passed.  I tried to collapse on the ground, hoping to get separated from the marching column, but got kicked to my feet.  We were eventually loaded into cattle trucks and moved off.

The other POWs were Canadians, I don’t remember any other British at this time, and I asked if any of them had any escaping kit (we had files and small compasses sewn into our battledress).  But no-one seemed to have anything. 

Our destination was an established camp on the outskirts of Paris.  It was called Verneuil.  We arrived there in the morning and spent most of the day sitting in an open field outside the camp.  I remember water in pails being brought but I don’t recall having any food.  Later in the afternoon we were admitted to the camp after being searched.  Despite telling me otherwise, some people had large and heavy army compasses and they tried to bury them outside the search hut.  The Germans must have found these with little trouble afterwards.  We were then billeted in the Nissen huts which had bunk beds.  I think food must have been provided, but don’t remember anything, except the French Red Cross sent in some tins of sardines, only “for French Canadians”.  The Senior French Canadian Officer refused to accept them on these terms saying that they should be for all Canadians and insisted that his officers shared them with all the POWs (including, of course, the British).  The only British prisoners were from No 3 and No 4 Commando plus a Royal Navy Officer and 2 Royal Marines.  While we were eating these sardines, the Canadian Brigadier returned from an interview with the Germans to find that no sardines had been kept for him.  The ration had worked out as only one sardine per man.  The Brigadier, of course, asked for his sardine and was told that I had eaten it!  This was a complete cover up as they had forgotten to include him while they were sharing out and I was British, so they thought was not under his orders.  He believed his men and later who later, when we were in Germany, he said to me one day: “It was you who ate my sardine at Verneuil, wasn’t it?”

I chummed up with a British Royal Marine called Houghton and we planned to try and get through the wire that night.  When the time came to leave the hut, it was raining hard and I decided not to go (my injured arm was starting to give me a lot of trouble) however Houghton went out, but later he returned as he thought that the wire was electrified.

The following morning we were looking across at the soldiers’ huts – we had been separated from the soldiers on capture – and some Lancashire Fusiliers who had joined the Commando with me and had served in the same Battalion at Dunkirk spotted me and shouted “Up the twentieth!”  This was the Regimental shout we gave at football matches etc as the Regiment had been known as the XXth of foot before county names were given to infantry regiments.

Later that day one of the Canadians returned from the doctors’ surgery and told me that there was another Smale there (he must have been sleeping in another hut.)  I went over and found my cousin Ken Smale, who was a Marine.  He had been serving with the Royal Marine Commando and had landed on the main beach at Dieppe.

After a few days we were moved by train to Germany and during this period my left arm started swelling due to blood poisoning caused by the blue coloured strap on my life jacket cutting into my arm.  I was kept in the camp hospital, staffed by both British / Canadian & German doctors until being sent, with a few other men, to a proper POW hospital at a place called Freising.  Another of 3 Commando, Geoff Osmond, who was wounded in the arm also came and we had four German soldiers as escort.

We had to change trains at Munich and there was a few hours wait. Geoff Osmond and I sat on a bench seat on the station and watched the crowds.  A middle aged woman came and sat on the same bench with us; after she left we noticed she had left a cigarette package on the bench so Geoff, being a smoker, opened it up and we found she had written a note and left it inside the package.  It was in English and said something like, “Sorry to see you here”.

Freising hospital had been a nunnery and nuns still acted as nurses.  It was clean and well run, but appeared to be short of materials.  There were paper bandages and two meals only a day – a brunch at 11.30 and main meal at 5.30.  We were in a large ward with a couple of other Allied prisoners including a religious non-combatant captured in Norway, a Rhodesian pilot and a few Poles.  The Poles refused to speak to the Germans except on medical matters.  The hospital had not been known to the Red Cross until our arrival and Red Cross medical parcels which included ovaltine, brandy etc as well as normal medical supplies were sent for us.  We had to sign for these parcels and these signatures were sent to the Red Cross in Geneva, the first news that we had been captured.

A German surgeon lanced my arm and released the poison and I returned to the main camp OFLAG VII B at Eichstatt after about 3 weeks.

Major Smale with fellow prisoners at Eichstatt

Major Smale with fellow prisoners at Eichstatt

As we returned to the camp we were interviewed by a British security officer to see if we had noticed any Army camps or Anti-Aircraft Guns while travelling by train.  Any such information would be sent back to the War Office in code with POWs letters.

Soon, the handcuffing started.  We were put into one barrack block together but we found we could get out of by knocking a nail down the hasps.  After a time the Germans realised we were taking the cuffs off as they came in at 9pm to unlock them only to find some prisoners had already got into bed and put their cuffs back on.  Then they tried putting a German soldier in each room in the evening. 

During the winter of 1943/44 I took part in building a tunnel.  We called them ‘Tom’, ‘Dick’ and ‘Harry’, and ours was ‘Tom’. I think the RAF’s was ‘Dick’ but I’m not sure.  You could volunteer to help on the escape attempts, though most people spent their time working for qualifications – learning to be estate agents and solicitors and things like that.  I worked on the tunnel.

It was just like a rabbit warren and the entrance was very small, you had to drop down. It was hidden behind the lavatory, and one chap was given the job of putting the dust back all around the seat of the lavatory. Some prisoners, Canadian engineers, had experience of mining and they made all the plans and worked out how far we could go.

We worked in shifts.  When it was your shift you went down and you removed the toilet and there was a sheer drop of about ten or fifteen feet. We kept some dirty old ‘long johns’ and vests and you had to put on the vest and the ‘long johns’, and then you went down the tunnel and crawled along, it was a hell of  a job.  You would dig until you needed a break and then you would rest in one of the lay bys.

We used bed boards to secure the tunnel and so everyone slept on very few bed boards, but a lot of people didn’t take much interest in the escape attempts.  They were busy training to be solicitors and things. They got correspondence courses sent out to them.

I remember on one occasion some chaps got out, they had passes which had been sent out from England by MI9,I think it was called, the escaping organisation which helped them, and, and they showed these on a train and the ticket examiner was a prewar policeman and not necessarily a Nazi, and he said, he said, “In the circumstances it’s such a good pass that I would have not have recognised it, but it’s been signed by a man who was handed over on January the first, but if it hadn’t been for that I would have let you through”.

I lived in the room which opposite the room where the camp security officer would send codes back to the War Office through the Red Cross. 

As the Allies approached Germany, the British authorities sent codes telling us we were going to be moved and sure enough, the Germans moved us back to a place called Moosburg, a big central camp.  They marched us out, along a road and the Americans came over shot us up. They shot and wounded about twelve people right at the last minute and one of them was a professional violinist and he had lost his arm. It was a terrible thing to happen.

John eventually arrived at Moosburg to find the German guards had fled leaving the prisoners to guard themselves until they were liberated.  After the War John stayed in the Army till 1958 and he became a Citizen d’Honeur of the village of Berneval

	Dunkirk, Guernsey and the Lofoten raid.
	This page: Dieppe and captivity.