Paul Elwell's Story - Part 2- War and Internment

2. WAR AND INTERNMENT

Political consciousness began to develop beyond mere instinctual alignment about this time. We all attended lectures and debates on the major issues of the time, and demonstrated against the dictators, and “appeasement” too. One debate, “That Britain has been led up the Berchtesgaden Path”, was carried by a substantial majority against strong pacifist sentiment. I hated dictatorship of whatever hue. The Spanish Civil War, Hitler’s annexation of Austria and rape of Czechoslovakia were portents of inevitable war. The League of Nations, the Pacifist movement, the British and French governments’ pathetic faith in “appeasement” were abnegations of responsibility, mere straws of hope. There was no room for pious hope in the face of demonstrated evil. War, the threat of total destruction, had to be faced. The Labour Party, though outnumbered in Parliament, at last energetically opposed appeasement. It advocated relief from the misery and distress still lingering from the Depression, and the removal of social, economic and political inequalities. My early leaning to the “Left” became a firm commitment.
Events moved on, inexorably, irrespective of the student-body. Air-raid trenches were once again hastily dug when Britain at last took a firm stand over Poland. Customary reserve and class-consciousness seemed to diminish with each shovelful excavated. A precautionary screen of barrage-balloons hovered above, without affording real protection. The University sent notice to expect evacuation to the provinces.
Then war came, hardly a surprise. I was living with my parents at Putney, in a flat lent by a former paying guest, recently married. We listened, almost relieved, to Chamberlain’s announcement, followed promptly by an air-raid warning — false, it proved. Father, despite Mother’s worried opposition in case of raids, suggested we go to Westminster. Thousands milled aimlessly round Parliament Square — but no apocalyptic annihilation, nothing whatever happened! Anticlimactically, we returned to await developments.
Notification came, with billeting details, that university courses would resume in October at Aberystwyth. There was, initially at least, no general internment of Enemy Aliens, now including all of us, except Richard, nor restrictions on movement, but some weeks later they had to face “classification-tribunals”. Category A, Nazi sympathisers and enemy nationals unable to account for their presence, were immediately interned. Category B, suspected persons, were restricted and kept under surveillance. Category C, “Refugees from Nazi Oppression”, were renamed “Friendly Enemy Aliens”.

I mentioned Mother’s impeccably British birth and extensive English connections and was, within minutes, classified “C”. Personally reassuring as that was, I wondered how easily German agents could have slipped through! But none of us refugees could possibly have doubted where our loyalty belonged.
Only evacuation, mild rationing and minor naval activity broke the even tenor of life during the “phoney war”, until Germany’s crushing Blitzkrieg underlined Britain’s misguided initial complacency, exemplified by the popular songs ‘‘Hang out your washing on the Siegfried Line” and “Run, Rabbit, run Rabbit, run, run, run!” A host of worries emerged. Would Britain have the single-mindedness and strength of purpose to fight effectively? If not, what about all the refugees, “racial” or political, of whom many had also sought refuge in Britain? Would it not be better to go under fighting, given the opportunity, than to study while others had to fight for a cause of less vital concern to them than to us? I did not, at that time, realise that many of the refugees of military age who had been held in camps since their arrival from March onwards until the outbreak of war had, in fact, been given the opportunity to enlist. Those who did were formed into labour companies and incorporated in the non-combatant Pioneer Corps.
A second, more stringent tribunal at Aberystwyth at this crisis left only three of us refugees unrestricted. I said I wanted to enlist, but was told to finish my studies first. The Dunkirk evacuation and France’s collapse solved that quandary.
At 5 a.m. on 25 June my landlady knocked on my bedroom door: “Couple of gentlemen downstairs to see you, Mr. E.!” They apologised: “We’ve been instructed to intern you, Fifth Column scare — sorry about it, but it’ll be temporary only; then you’ll be out again.” They gave me time to dress and pack, write a note to my parents, then locked me in a police cell at Aberystwyth.
Later that day, I and the other two “exemptions” were taken to Brecon by “Black Maria”, feeling sick with apprehension and petrol fumes on the winding road. During the next two days we travelled via Cardiff to Liverpool. Escorted by troops with fixed bayonets, we marched, dragging our belongings, from the Cardiff Barracks to the railway station, jeered by hostile bystanders, a much enlarged column of dispirited prisoners and internees.

We were accommodated for a week at Huyton camp, in mud-encircled tents crowded between former council houses already crammed with earlier internees and prisoners, devoid of comfort and conveniences, short of food, but full of dreadful rumours. We were going to be handed over; shipped to Australia, Canada, Madagascar! Speculation climaxed with the news that the "Arandora Star" had been torpedoed not far out of Liverpool, all but a handful of the internees aboard drowned.
Our little group, with hundreds more, was paraded one morning, taken to the Liverpool docks, and immediately embarked on the "Ettrick", looking from the quayside like, but assuredly not, a cruise-ship. Morale, already low because we knew not destination or destiny, bottomed when we were herded into the lowest deck of a fetid hold, heavily barbed-wired and guarded. If torpedoed, we would all drown like rats.
Overcrowding was terrible. Humanity, hammocks, belongings were strewn everywhere. At night, the inadequate toilets were totally barred and replaced by fewer open buckets. The stench, the lack of privacy, was overwhelming. Gastro-enteritis and dysentery swept through our “accommodation”, aggravating conditions beyond endurance. Representations fell on deaf ears. Only when we had entered Canadian waters after a luckily unmolested, smooth, fog-shrouded crossing were we allowed on deck briefly, in small, heavily guarded groups. The fog probably saved the unescorted ship from attack, and us from drowning.
The Canadian authorities had evidently been warned to expect “prisoners”, not mostly harmless refugees. Still, what relief to receive adequate and wholesome meals after three weeks of slops even pigs might have refused!
The train-journey from Quebec to Monteith, through endless forests, past brooding lakes, took almost two days. Monteith Camp, the first of two I experienced in Canada, lay some distance south of Hudson Bay (near Timmins, Ontario — ed.) and adjoined the Lake Abitibi & Northern Ontario Railway; we lived in bell-tents, four to each tent, adequate for movement and stowage. We could exercise, and work on the adjacent prison-farm. Until our refugee status was recognised, we had to share the compound with Category A Germans and prisoners-of-war, mainly Luftwaffe. Their eventual segregation and our welfare were the responsibility of an elected camp-committee, chaired by one of Wilhelm II’s grandsons, patently anglicised and anti-Nazi! Once the crucial difference between the elements in his charge and our leader’s impressive pedigree dawned on the Commandant, relations and conditions improved!

A library was started with books inmates had brought. Classes and lectures were organised. Many internees were academics, well-known public figures, or students anxious to resume studies, like myself. The Commandant, previously suspicious and downright hostile, now actively cooperated. A piano and other instruments secured by him made recitals possible. Chess was popular; some had brought sets; the Red Cross supplied more; a sculptor found clay near the perimeter — the guards had to be persuaded he wasn’t digging an escape-tunnel — and baked additional sets in the kitchen. Life might have seemed tolerable.
But spirits remained low. Those activities were mere palliatives against the boredom of enforced inactivity, the frustration of isolation. Without news from families and friends we all worried. Communication was allowed only after several weeks, but was spasmodic. Daily news-sheets were short, obviously censored heavily. They reported growing air-attacks, destruction and casualties, and severe convoy-losses. Invasion of Britain was expected, rumoured to have begun. We, with so much at stake, were totally insulated, unable to share or contribute, robbed of the liberty for which we wanted to fight.
My worries remained. Hope turned to disappointment when mail-distributions continued without letters for me. Rising concern turned to immense relief when post eventually arrived for me, well after everyone else’s.
Father, too, had been interned, in the Isle of Man, but released quickly, thanks to Mother’s and some influential friends’ unrelenting efforts. Until my first letter arrived my fate remained unknown. Records had been muddled. I was reported in Australia, no, Canada. I had been on the "Arandora Star". Nobody really knew.
In desperation, Mother had sought her local Member’s help. I am not sure now, whether she had regained her British citizenship then. Laws relating to its automatic retention by British-born women marrying foreigners were certainly changed after I married one in 1942. Questions in Parliament produced no reassurance. The Home Office had apparently lost track. Churchill’s edict to “collar the lot” had obviously caught the bureaucracy unprepared!
With winter approaching, the outlook improved further. Regular mail arrived, including letters from friends who had kept in touch with home. Machinery was set up for the return and release of anyone wishing to go back or enlist.

A Home Office delegation visited Camp “Q” to initiate arrangements. Transfer, pending finalisation of our return, to Camp “A”, near Montreal, with properly constructed heated huts, took place shortly afterwards. Despite alternative choices, I had, by then, decided to join up. I could have resumed my studies, or entered the USA on the suspended Dutch immigration quota through my Dutch birth, without affecting eligibility for early release, as the German occupation of the Netherlands had halted immigration from there. Though believing myself technically still German, I never felt that fighting Nazism was treason. Nazism was not Germany. My fight was against Nazism; and for preservation of decency and democratic principle.
Internment was not wholly unproductive. It gave me time to think about where I stood, what I wanted from life. Some, indeed, became disillusioned and bitter. Many looked on internment as a challenge. I accepted it as such, a temporary predicament, the upshot of extraordinary circumstances and excusable panic. Internment taught me the therapeutic value of work and a sense of humour, of patience and tolerance. The pathetic ambitions and lust for whatever little transitory power or privilege our situation offered I found loathsome. I determined never to “play politics” at others’ expense.
We re-embarked at Halifax in mid-December after another day-long train-journey, still in internment-garb. In stark contrast to the outward trip, the escort was unarmed and friendly. On board, there were no guards or restrictions.
I welcomed the chance to earn some pocket-money — what little I had set out with or earned at Monteith was exhausted — by volunteering to serve my fellow ex-internees, hoping that long hours of strenuous activity would help overcome sea-sickness. A permanent list, even in port, made work hard. Our convoy left on Christmas Eve and was joined by one obviously from the USA.
The joint fleet, presumably with a more valuable cargo than just our lot, was heavily escorted throughout. A howling gale south of Iceland made it very rough indeed. While most succumbed, work never gave me time to be sick!
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(Editor’s note: In a footnote, my father described the ship by which he returned from internment as the "Abbeville", Belgian-owned and designed for the African coastal trade, and that she had been loaded lop-sidedly for stability! There is a problem here in that no ship of that name, in Belgian ownership or otherwise, appears extant at the time. Internet research turned up reference to an "Albertville", owned by the Compagnie Maritime Belge and entering service in 1928 on the route from Antwerp to what was then the Belgian Congo, thus fitting his description and at first sight the obvious candidate, but it transpired that this ship was sunk in June 1940, putting it out of the reckoning. A further problem then arises with the stated sailing date: according to Norwegian-based web-site www.warsailors.com, which details most Atlantic convoys (with corroboration, but no ship names, from German site www.wlb-stuttgart.de/seekrieg/konvois/), there were no Christmas Eve sailings from Halifax, convoy SC-17 having left there on 23rd December 1940, with no ships remotely matching the description, or listed as carrying anything other than specific cargoes, pit-props, steel, sugar and suchlike, bar two manifestly not the ship which my father recalled. However, the next convoy, HX-99, sailed on Boxing Day, 26th December, with a ship complement that included the "Thysville", which survived the war and was an older (1922) and smaller sister to "Albertville", bound for Liverpool with cargo shown as “general”. The Commodore’s notes for that convoy, from the same Norwegian site, include reference to the fact that "Thysville" carried internees. HX-99 is also recorded as having been joined part-way by a contingent from Bermuda, but that would presumably have been just an assembly point for ships from the Gulf of Mexico, the Caribbean, and/or the United States east coast, none of the listed cargoes being such as would have originated in Bermuda itself. On balance it thus appears that this must have been the ship and convoy to which my father refers.)
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