Rfm. Frederick Alexander Whitten
British Army Kings Royal Rifle Corps
from:Fulham
My father served in the Kings Royal Rifle Corps and was one of the unfortunate soldiers sent to fight on the front line in an effort to stop advancing German troops long enough to enable the evacuations from Dunkirk to take place.
He and many others were the ones to be sacrificed so that others could be saved. He said that as soon as it was obvious that the Germans were going to defeat them, the French soldiers who had been their allies, started to fire at them from behind. He never forgave the French for this betrayal.
He was captured and marched from France through Germany to Poland with just his uniform and remembered walking through deep snow passing others who died due to exhaustion, exposure and their wounds and having fallen into the snow, were just left at the side of the road.
If their boots wore out, they marched in bare feet. If their coats wore out they marched in their jackets. My father was never able to wear woollies as his system had adapted to the cold too well.
He used to say that the German soldiers treated them as well as they could and that they suffered on these marches too. My father learnt to speak German and Polish during this time and came to realise that the German guards he spoke to were just the same as the young prisoners and no more wanted to be there than the POWs did. They just wanted the war to end so that they could return to their families.
In the camps he vividly remembered living mostly on potatoes and described how the piles he had to peel were rotten and heaving with maggots, but that these were a vital source of protein and were cooked along with the spuds. He would not talk much beyond this, but he never held a grudge against the Wehrmacht soldiers.
When he was evacuated, he said they were barely rescued in time by the Americans who were just ahead of the Russians. He said he didn't think he would ever have been seen again if the Russians had got there first. My father died in 2004 and was proud to have served in the KRR and to have fought in defence of his country.
