Things are moving too fast to keep up with a well thought out blog. Internet issues further complicate. We’re driving hours a day and making one night hotel stops to ensure we cover all the POW locations we’ve identified. Please excuse the lack of editing and organization of my notes and pictures.
I mentioned the evacuation of SL VI last blog and how the men were crammed into the hold of a ship, the SS Insterburg. Swinoujscie port was their landing spot and the men that lived through the boat trip were loaded onto train cars at the Swinoujscie train station just as tightly packed as they were on the Insterburg.
After seventy-two hours on the Baltic in terrible conditions, without food, water or facilities, they spent another day packed in the “forty and eights”, again without food, water or facilities. It’s easy to imagine what shape they were in. The box cars were known as forty and eights because they were designed to carry forty men and eight horses.
Their next stop was the train station in Gross Tychowo about three kilometers from SL IV. When the men arrived, they were ordered to remove their belts and shoes. Then they were shackled together two-by-two and run to the prison. Dogs, bayonet stabs from Hitler Youth and manic yelling from guards to, rouse, rouse made this last four days the most inhumane period of the airmen’s lives.
There is no way I can describe our feelings as we have visited the Swinoujscie port, train station, Gross Tychowo train station and the road where the horrendous run was made. I know you understand. Jim
