COSSACKS RIDE IN

Evening Post, Volume CXL, Issue 55, 3 September 1945, Page 7

COSSACKS RIDE IN

PRISON CAMP SCENE

RELEASE OF RUSSIANS

Freedom came dramatically to prisoners of war in the large camp at Muhlberg, about 120 kilometres south of Berlin. Four Cossacks riding white horses, the advance guard of the oncoming Russian army, were the first real indication that the prisoners' days of captivity were over. Their arrival was the signal for the break-out of about 8000 starving Russians who poured over the country in a desperate search for food. The scene which followed was described by the Rev. R. G. McDowall, a Presbyterian chaplain, formerly of St. Luke's, Remuera, who was in the camp at the time. He was taken prisoner at Sidi Rezegh, being kept in Italian camps until the capitulation there, and then transferred to Germany. "For miles around, after these unfortunates got away, the place was scattered with feathers of the fowls and geese which they had caught,"' said Mr. McDowall, "and practically every house in the vicinity was cleaned oiit. The Russians were very badly housed and very poorly fed. They never had any parcels at all, and they were living on a starvation ration practically all the time. They were always treated severely and roughly and their losses must have been tremendous. In the hospital camp next to ours about 50.000 are reckoned to have died, mostly from tuberculosis. This place had been a concentration camp prior to the war." In their own camp, said Mr. McDowall, there were two patches in the cemetery holding Russians. In one patch, about 25 yards square, there were 700 Russian dead, and in the other, about 45 yards square, another 2400. These had died mainly of typhus. DEAD MEN'S RATIONS. "The Russians would do anything to get a little extra rations," he continued. "It was quite common for them to keep the bodies of men that had died in their huts and draw their rations for as long as they could. When they went they left six dead men in the huts, and I buried some of them." As a further instance of the desperate hunt for food, Mr. McDowall told of a prisoner who was emptying a bucket full of ashes into a huge dustbin. To his amazement from the midst of the cloud of ash arose the head of a Russian. He had been scavenging around in the bin trying to find some scrap of food which had been overlooked. Everything' considered, the Russians did their best for the prisoners when the camp was overrun, he said. They were fighting a war, but still managed to send in supplies of a kind, including flour, but it was a hard time for a while until things got organised as no parcels had been received for some time and some of the men had lost as much as 701b in weight. ARMIES JOIN HANDS. The first actual meeting between the Americans and Russians occurred at Bergsdorf, a small village just alongside the camp, said Mr. McDowall. This was two or three days before the "official" meeting at Torgau. Most of the German guards and officials at the camp were killed, he thought. They had left the camp before the Russians arrived and were making for a bridge to cross a river. The Russians met them there and shot up the whole party as they were trying to escape across. The prisoners could hear the tank and machine-gun fire, and later heard that about 400 had been killed. Horse-drawn equipment was used by the Russians for anything lighter than medium artillery. They just lived off the country, using the horses until they were killed or useless and then picking up more as they went along. A large amount of captured German transport was put to good use. "Without any doubt the food parcels saved the lives of hundreds and even thousands of our men," said Mr. McDowall. "We just lost weight steadily on German food." Mr. McDowall . conducted the thanksgiving service on the ship on the day following the receipt of the news of Japan's surrender.