Dresden Read online

  Victor Gregg

  With Rick Stroud

  Dresden: A Survivor’s Story

  Contents

  Chapter One: Note of Remembrance

  Chapter Two: Grim Truth

  Chapter Three: Overture to Hell

  Chapter Four: Slaughter of the Innocents

  Chapter Five: Aftermath

  Chapter Six: The General

  Chapter Seven: Day Four

  Chapter Eight: Day Five

  Chapter Nine: Day Six

  Afterword: Was this the greatest war crime of all?

  A Note on the Authors

  Chapter One

  Note of Remembrance

  I wasn’t new to murder and bloodletting, I had enlisted two years prior to the outbreak of the Second World War. By the time I was twenty-one I had taken part in one major battle and various smaller ones. I had been in fights where the ground in front of me, as far as the eye could see, was littered with the remains of what had been, a few hours earlier, young men, full of the joy of living, laughing and joking with their mates, these young men were the enemy, or at least, had been.

  As each year of the war went by the fighting got more ferocious, new weapons were introduced and fresh young men became the targets. Through all this I somehow remained a sane person. I returned to England in late 1943. After fighting in North Africa and then Italy I rebadged as a member of the 10th Parachute Regiment, bound for the shores of Britain.

  Home in England and lauded right left and centre as a hero, which I knew I wasn’t, I got married to a girl I had met on my embarkation leave way back in 1937. I was full of beans with not a care in the world, I had experienced so much that I thought of myself as indestructible. After all, I was still in one piece, whereas a whole load of the lads I had joined up with were now laying doggo under a stinking desert sun.

  And then, as if it was all part of some great plan, in September 1944 I was hurled from a plane with a few thousand other men, the majority of whom were much younger than myself and had never fired a shot in anger. We were to fight the battle of Arnhem. For the next seven days the small fields and hedge-grows of the battlefield became strewn with the dead and mangled bodies of British and German young men, all going to their final resting place in the belief that they were offering themselves up as a sacrifice for the good of mankind. It all left me unaffected, my mind was conditioned by military life to accept that killing your fellow man was normal.

  In the end we lost the battle and the lucky ones that survived were marched into captivity laughing and joking, not a bit downhearted. The fact that the fields through which we were marched away had become one huge cemetery didn’t cause me, or the lads with me, any undue concern. We thought that this was what war was all about - men killing men, each of us determined to be the last man standing.

  Along with another small group of the lads captured at Arnhem I landed up at an arbeitslager, a work camp in a small insignificant German village to the south of the beautiful city of Dresden. The work consisted of cleaning the streets, working in the fields pulling crops from the ground and sometimes shoveling coal for the railways.

  We had all volunteered for this work to get away from being shut up in one of the huge POW camps. Even so I made two unsuccessful attempts to escape, after which the camp commandant decided it was time to teach me a short, sharp lesson. He sent me and another bloke, my mate Harry, to work in a soap factory about eight kilometers from the camp. We had to walk there and back every day. This was the beginning of February when the snow came from the skies in the shape and size of dinner plates, so he gave us each a pair of wooden clogs which later on would save my life.

  Eventually the two of us managed to sabotage the factory by causing a short circuit in the electrical system. The whole place caught fire and the building collapsed in a crescendo of smoke and flames.

  After that we were marched in front of the officer in charge of the police of Dresden. This smart official told us that our fate was out of his hands. There were strict penalties for sabotage, we were to be taken to a place where we would wait our turn, along with other poor sods, to be executed. For the first time since I had joined the army I felt the floor moving, This sod was going to have the pair of us shot. Harry didn’t seem to care, ‘Something will turn up’ said he, and something did.

  Chapter Two

  Grim Truth

  Next we were taken by car to a building that stood in a paved square right slap bang in the centre of Dresden. Then we were frog-marched up a set of stone steps under a brick archway, and thrown into a long wide room which extended the length and breadth of the building; it was full of prisoners. Above the heads of these luckless men was a large domed roof made of glass. The place was so crowded that at first glance it seemed impossible to find a place to sit. In the centre of this den of iniquity were two huge forty gallon drums almost full to the brim with excrement, the place stank to high heaven. The other prisoners seemed to have given up any hope of survival, they were a listless and forlorn bunch. The pair of us refused to bow our heads and it wasn’t long before we were taking the mickey out the situation. Harry went walkabout and discovered two Americans who were in for looting and like us were waiting execution. The yanks they didn’t seem to be to happy about the situation, they told us that the Germans took thirty prisoners away every morning and that’s the last anyone ever saw of them.

  It must have been well past mid-day when we first entered this hellhole and soon after we arrived a trolley was pushed into the room by a couple of guards. The yanks told us that this was the main meal of the day. The inmates fed themselves by putting their open hands into the large container to scoop out with whatever concoction had been served up. Harry and I decided that we weren’t that hungry and gave the offering a miss. Day turned into night, and with a push here and a shove there the pair of us managed to claim a small portion of the floor to ourselves All that was left was to have a kip and await developments on the morrow.

  This was the evening of the 13th of February 1945, a date of infamy if ever there was one. At about ten-thirty that night the air-raid sirens started their mournful wailing, and because this happened every night no notice was taken. The people of Dresden thought that as long as the Luftwaffe kept away from Oxford in England then, in return, Dresden would not be bombed. The sirens stopped and after a short period of silence the first wave of pathfinders were over the City dropping their target flares.

  From inside the building we saw the flares through the glass cupola, filling the night sky with blinding light, like enormous Christmas trees they floated to earth dripping the burning phosphorus onto the streets and buildings.

  As if in slow motion the inmates of the prison began to realise that they were trapped in a cage that stood every chance of becoming a mass grave. The guards had scarpered to what they believed to be a safe hideaway. They had locked and chained the doors from the outside and to cap it all the heavy pulsating throb of hundreds of heavy bombers began to fill the air, and getting nearer and louder by the second.

  Harry, who had been chatting to the two yanks suggested that it might be a good idea to kick some of the other types away from the wall and for the four of us to get down as low as we can as a means of survival if the worst happened. The wailing of the petrified prisoners who had experienced bombing in other German cities got some of the others in such a state that they were banging on the doors and shouting and crying to be let out, naturally to no effect. As I said before, the guards had all hotfooted it.

  The flares were still wending there way to earth when the first of the bomber streams flew over the city, dropping thousands of incendiaries along with which came the first of the bombs, a whole string would hit the ground, one after the other in rapid succession like a drum roll and through t
he glass cupola the night sky changed from a bright whiteness to a dull red glow that danced, getting brighter and brighter before fading and dying. The bombers passed over in a never ending stream.

  By now it was bedlam inside the prison. Then, without any warning, about four incendiaries burst through the heavy glass roof, breaking it into fragments and shredding the luckless men under the cupola into pieces. The phosphorous clung to the bodies of the injured men turning them into human torches. Nothing could be done to help them, it was impossible to extinguish the flames, and so the screaming of those who were being burned alive was added to the cries of the other prisoners. Thanks to Harry the four of us were away from the glass roof and close to the wall, alive and uninjured.

  Not for long though. The raid had by now been in progress for the best part of thirty minutes and it must have been one of the last wave that dropped the blockbuster that landed outside of the building, blowing in the whole of the wall. All I could remember was being picked up by a giant hand which threw me over to the far corner of the building, nearly fifty feet. The next thing I knew I was being covered in brickwork and rubble, and everything went dark.

  Chapter Three

  Overture to Hell

  I don’t think I was unconscious for more than a minute. When I came to I thought that I had been blinded. I could feel a heavy weight on my legs and lower body but my arms were free to move. I managed to clear my eyes of the dust and dirt, then I realised that my eyesight was ok, I could see to the end of my arm. The smoke and fumes from the burning shell of the building was now swept away by the rising force of the wind storm that was gradually increasing.

  I managed to free myself from the embrace of the fallen beams and lumps of stonework and stumbled over the debris towards where I had last seen Harry. When I found him he was sitting down against the wall, covered in dust, and motionless. Harry had been overcome by the blast that had hit him full frontal. At this point I reckon that I must have given up all hope, Harry dead and gone, the world around me falling to the ground, surrounded by flames, smoke and dust and the ever increasing heat. I covered Harry up with the coat he had been wearing and managed to stumble outside of the building which by now was slowly collapsing. I found myself, along with the few survivors, in the centre of a huge bonfire

  The first thing that hit me when I emerged from the shaking fabric of the building was the heat. Wherever I turned I was confronted with blocks of debris falling from the sky. The old timber framed houses were one by one becoming victims of the fire. Once the central beams burnt through, the rest of the structure came crashing to the ground. Most of this wreckage landed on top of the cellars which the inhabitants were using as shelters. The blazing rubble trapped them in man-made ovens where they slowly roasted to death.

  There were about a dozen of us in our small group of survivors. We were all in various states of shock, some were screaming with the pain of their injuries and burns, about a dozen of us were more or less fit, that is able to walk or stagger. The problem was where we should go, we were cut off on all sides. I realised that there were other small groups moving between the heaps of rubble, and dodging the flames which, without warning, shot out of gaps in the walls. All the time we watched for the last incendairies falling from the final wave of bombers. The noise of the planes died down, and it became obvious that the raid had finished. People started to appear from the few houses that were still intact. Survivors were clawing their way to the surface of the huge mounds of rubble that an hour before had been their home.

  The flames were growing in intensity. Although the authorities had built huge concrete water containers at points throughout the city only a few of these had been filled with water. But the few that had been filled were later to prove tragic. People climbed into them to escape and found it impossible to climb back out of the smooth faced concrete. They were trapped in water which slowly boiled.

  If there were any fire appliances they could never have traversed the huge mountains of bricks, concrete and burning timber that barred all progress, or the enormous craters that pockmarked the whole ghastly scene.

  I was now part of a small group that had bonded as a unit, none of us knowing who the man in front or behind was, we just sort of glued ourselves together as if there was safety in numbers. Slowly we stumbled along the remains of a wide avenue. We were surrounded by fires and mountains of red hot wreckage. What saved me were the wooden clogs that our kindly camp commandant had given me to walk through the snow to the soap factory. The wooden soles of the clogs were so thick I could walk over the red hot cinders and burning rubble that was strewn everywhere.

  Finally we found ourselves in open fields, ending up by a single railway line hidden from view down a steep embankment. We had reached safety. Through the dust and smoke we could just make out the outlines of what looked like the main railway station from which a huge column of smoke and fire was climbing into the sky. We still had the problem of the wounded men some of whom were in a very bad way. I was the odd man out and there wasn’t a lot I could do. I couldn’t understand a word of the jabbering that was going on around me, so I just kept quiet and followed the herd.

  Then we saw another group coming towards us from along the railway line. This lot consisted of about two dozen men in uniform. They were pulling and pushing a large cart. It turned out it was full of picks, shovels, buckets , coils of rope and some cans of drinking water. The leader of the group was the only one with a hat, all the others wore the regulation steel helmet. I reckoned that they were firemen and I was right. The leader immediately had us all form up, selected those men whom he judged to be capable and fit and marched us off. He left the injured to fend for themselves. I don’t remember being at all surprised at this action, it seemed like the right thing to do to round up anyone on the loose and make them help wherever was necessary. But not everyone wanted to offer themselves up as fuel to the raging furnace that was burning less than five hundred yards away. When the leader learnt that three of our group were refusing to follow he turned about, pulled a pistol from the holster attached to his belt, and shot two of them at point blank range, the third man started running as fast as he could to catch up with us. There were about thirty of us armed only with picks and shovels making our way back along the same track that we had fled along less than an hour before, led by a German Officer whose answer to a problem was to shoot first and ask questions later.

  Thinking back through the years to this episode I cannot fault the action the man took. Chaos reigned everywhere and authority above all else was needed, even if it had to be exerted through the muzzle of a gun. I had been a front line soldier for six years and that is how I had been trained to think.

  The leader didn’t get it all his own way. The heat stopped us. Even so we came across people who had been caught out in the open and were still alive. By fixing bits of wood to our picks and shovels we turned them into stretchers to carry the injured.

  At about midnight, or about two hours after the raid had finished our leader decided that enough was enough. There wasn’t much more he could do until the heat lessened and the fires died down so very slowly we trudged back over the burning mounds and made our way back to the original starting point by the railway line. When we reached it we discovered that reinforcements and a food wagon had somehow had been shunted in from God knows where.

  Then the sirens started their terrible wailing again.

  Chapter Four

  Slaughter of the Innocents

  A lot of survivors from the burning ruins were now out in the open, spread along this low embankment with no shelter or cover of any kind. The inferno was growing fiercer and noisier by the minute, but even so, above the noise I could hear the pulsating throb of hundreds of heavy aircraft bearing down on us. There was no need for flares to lead these bombers to their target, the whole city had become a gigantic torch and must have been visible to the pilots from a hundred miles away. The people around me started to gather in small bunches as if to
shield each other from the onslaught. Dresden had no defences, no anti-aircraft guns, no seachlights, nothing. The planes were thousands of feet up but even so it was possible to make out their outlines reflected in the glow of the flames.

  As the bombs struck the ground we realised that this second raid had nothing in common with the first raid. The new bombs were were so big that it was possible to see them falling through the air. Even the incendiaries were of a different type. Instead of the smallish metre-long sticks that had dropped the first raid, we were now subjected to huge four ton objects that hit the ground and exploded so that a ball of fire blossomed from the point of impact incinerating anything, man-made or human, within a radius of nearly two hundred feet. Raining down with this terror came the blockbusters, thin walled ten ton missiles that demolished whole blocks of buildings in one explosion.

  Only five hundred yards of open land separated us from the heart of the first raid on the old part of the city and yet not one bomb landed on us. We laid our bodies down in submission to the slaughter we all sensed was coming. We could feel the terrible heat, our bodies shook as the ground vibrated with the impact as these enormous bombs hit the ground sending great clouds of debris up into the heavens above. As if this was not enough, another terror was making its presence felt.

  It wasn’t really what you could call a wind or even a gale, the air that was being drawn in from the outside to feed the inferno was like a solid object, so great was its force. The women were clutching onto the men sensing the danger of being sucked across the open ground into the centre of the enormous bonfire, that had once been the centre of Dresden. Further along the line the station was engulfed. I am not certain that this was the main Railway Station of Dresden but it was a station of sorts. I never got near it, so I cannot say.