Memories of Frederick George Ninow - North Africa - ACROMA< GAZALA TOBRUK
Submitted by nephew Gregory Ninow'since his passing.
There were rumblings of war in Europe, Hitler was taking over little countries and this greatly upset me. I decided I needed to go to war to help stop this mad man. I was only 17 and when I tried to enlist. The officer told me to go and join the boy scouts. I went around the block and went to see him again, this time I said I was 19, and he said “that’s better” and I was enlisted in the 2nd division of the Transvaal Scottish attached to the British 8th Army.
This was the 5th of August 1940. We trained in a place called Zonderwater near Pretoria. We left South Africa on the 19th April 194l on a 42,000 ton ship called the Mauretania which had been converted for military use. I was thoroughly sea sick and spent most of my time on deck; when I had to eat I would take a deep breath and dash downstairs where the food was, grab what I could, and then back upstairs, it was a miserable trip. The ship stopped at Haydon on the Indian Ocean to refuel, we then sailed through the Red Sea to Port Said and docked at Alexandria, Egypt, on the North African Coast.
We traveled into the desert about 17 miles where we joined with the British Forces and received further training in desert fighting. That night the German Air Force came over and dropped their bombs; we rookies made for our trenches only to discover that the bombs were being dropped 17 miles away on Alexandria but it sure sounded like they were being dropped in our trenches.
Life in the desert was very challenging. We dug a hole in the sand to act as a kitchen, a couple of days later we were standing watching this thin black line from the sky down to the sand little realizing it was the Gumseen Winds (Egyptian word); within 30 minutes we were in the middle of a massive sand storm. We quickly crawled into our tents and when the storm was over we had to dig ourselves out as the sand had covered all the tents. We did not find the kitchen again and there was sand in everything even our food, I think this is the reason I do not like to go camping.
Our food was very meager and only a pint of water a day for drinking, shaving, washing etc. If we complained the British soldiers would say “Hey mate, don’t you know there is a war on”.
We served in different lines of defense and eventually got close enough to the enemy and went on fighting patrols. We built the El Alamein defenses that would eventually stop the Germans advance; it was important to keep this line open because it was situated near the port which was used to bring the soldiers, food and guns, If Germany had taken that port they would have had total control of the area and they already had north of the Mediterranean and Italy. We had to cling to Malta as it was a vital spot. We patrolled right along the Egyptian Coast, Mersa Matruh 240 km (149 miles) west of Alexandria and 222 km from Sallum and 145 km (91 miles) west from Tobruk, and Darnah (also Spelled Derna), west of Tobruk.
We got leave twice during my stay in the area. Once I went into Alexandria, and the second time I went to Cairo. The trip to Cairo gave me the opportunity to go through the Sphinx and the Pyramid, to ride a camel and observe the Egyptian way of life. There was an epidemic of flies that would settle around any moist area of the face; the poor little children had to pull the flies away from their eyes if they wanted to see, and their nostrils and sides of the mouth were also full of flies. The male children were always trying to rent their sisters out to the soldiers.
We were guarding Tobruk one of the main shipping areas. The Germans had already taken the Australian section of the army as prisoners and we were sent to replace them. The Indian section of the army went on patrol outside the gap with 16 infantry tanks; they were captured by Rommel and his forces that put on the Indian uniforms and used the tanks to go through the gap and took control of it.
The Germans surrounded us and we had no defense; our officers had slipped away in the night knowing the end was there. We were left with just the non-commissioned officers who informed us in the morning of the 21st June 1942 that they had surrendered. We were told to destroy as quickly as possible anything we could lay our hands on including the canned food, this aggravated the Germans who marched us 25 miles without stopping to the coastal area with no food or water.
When we arrived at the sea they allowed us to swim in the ocean and the salty sea water increased our thirst. When we finally arrived at the camp they gave us no food or water in an effort to destroy our morale and hopefully stop any desire to escape. This created a certain attitude in my mind and I became somewhat rebellious and after two days I said to my friend “Please come with me; we walked out of the camp, passed two German guards to an enclosure opposite us where the Germans kept their water supplies, picked up a two and four gallon cans of water and walked straight out past the guards who were so shocked they did not even stop us. We shared the water with as many as we could; I think I got about a half a cup of water out of it.
We were then taken from Tobruk to Benghazi where there were two tanks of water, one for the white soldiers and one for the black soldiers. The men had not had water for many days and some of the white soldiers became frenzied, they attacked the tap and tore it right out of the tank causing the water to run into the desert. These men then made for the tank of water that had been allocated for the black soldiers who said "if you want water behave like gentlemen and form a line and we will see that you get water". I was so disgusted at the behavior of the men that I went to my cover and decided it would be better to die than to act like an animal.
We remained in the desert for about 40 days after which we were taken to Italy on Italian cargo ships. They put us in the hold of the ship like a lot of animals and wired the hatch down so that we could not get out; if the ship had been hit there would have been no hope for us. This was a terrible experience as there were no toilets and after about three days the smell became unbearable; add to this my nausea and my sea motion problem which did not help matters.
After a few days we arrived at Brindisi on the western Italian coast, we were transported in cattle trucks to Bari and then to a prison camp called P.G.54 - Fara in Sabina located in the town of just west of Rome
(Fara in Sabina is a comune (municipality) in the Province of Rieti in the Italian region Latium, located about 40 km northeast of Rome and about 25 km southwest of Rieti. The Camp was in the town of Passo Corese) - See Appendix for more on P.G. 54
Our food was very meager and consisted of about 7 grains of rice and a quarter leaf of cabbage boiled in water. If one man received more grains of rice than another he went to the grievance committee to complain, we received a slice of bread a day and once a week we got a little piece of butter and a little piece of cheese. Occasionally we got packages from the Red Cross (most of the packages were stolen by the Italians).The packages weighed about I0 lbs. and were divided into four. The dividing would almost cause murder and they would count every raisin. We were not used to much food so when one man ate his entire share at once it killed him. Another man was so hungry he ate grass and died.
We lost so much weight that one day when the men were taking a shower l started laughing - they looked like an H. I happened to look down at myself and stopped laughing as I looked the same. Although we were weak three of us tried to keep our minds clear and our bodies fit by wrestling on a fast mat, taking cold showers and keeping our clothes clean we did everything necessary to prevent us from falling apart. Some of the POW’s sat on rocks near the camp gates day after day; being curious I would ask them "Hey Jack what are you thinking about?" They would answer "Nothing", “What are you looking at", answer "Nothing”, they were like the walking dead and we called them "Gloompers".
The Italian soldiers were a joke. They were afraid of us. One day they had to count us three of the prisoners had escaped. They made us march around the camp between the inner and outer fences. We did it once and when they ordered us to do it again we decided that was enough. The Italian Officer in charge of the soldiers told them to load up their rifles and fix bayonets and instructed them to charge. We were completely at their mercy as we were tightly hemmed in between the two fences. We said “come and try”. They put down their bayonets and stood like scared rabbits. We just walked back to the main camp.
I was in this camp for about twenty-three months. On 11th September 1943 Italy capitulated to the Allied forces. When we woke up in the morning there were no guards as they had all gone away. During the period before the Germans arrived to take over the camp twenty of us walked away from the camp. The next day the Germans recaptured 18 of the men who were down by the river enjoying themselves and took them back to camp. Tom and I were watching this and at the first opportunity we took off walking away from the camp in a westerly direction.
My friend Tom spoke fluent Italian as he was married to a lady from Malta who spoke Italian. We arrived at a freeway and I decided to go across first to see if everything was O.K., as I stepped onto the freeway I saw a German convoy coming around the bend; I jumped back quickly not realizing I was over a ravine and fell straight down through the trees ripping my clothes and body as I fell. When I arrived at the bottom I was scratched all over and naked. Tom went to look for some clothes for me and brought back some pants and a shirt that were on a line near by. We were trying to get to the Allied lines. Some of the Italian people were friendly but I cannot remember what all we ate during the seven months.
One evening we visited a couple of the Italians we knew in a village, we knocked, they said "Avanti" (come in) as we opened the door we saw two German soldiers at the table so we took off. Another time we were at the table eating when two German soldiers came in and sat down to eat, there was nothing we could do, fortunately they took us for Italians as every one was speaking broken Italian, it was a scary experience.
One day a lady had just killed a pig and there were sausages hanging in the rafters; she offered us something to eat but when we saw her pour pigs blood in the pan we took off as hungry as we were. Another person asked us if we were hungry and when we said yes she told us there was a vineyard down the road where we could pick some grapes and a stream where we could get water. Another time a lady offered us some food which consisted of polenta (Polenta is made with ground yellow or white cornmeal) with fresh goat’s cheese on the top and we got up and ran. The Italians would scrub the table and pour the polenta (like a stiff porridge or what South Africans would call mealie meal) directly on the table and then pour a tomatoe sauce over it. Each person was given a fork and you cut out pieces in front of you and ate it.
When we left camp the weather was still warm but we were not adequately dressed for the severe winter as it progressed; we were dressed in very light weight summer clothes and not suitable for traveling in the snow of the mountains. We would have to wade through frozen streams, sleep in shepherds’ cabanas on straw and have to break the ice off our clothes in the morning. One evening after visiting some friends they gave us two paper sacks; we had not traveled far when a German soldier asked us for our papers. We replied in Italian that we had left them at home. He wanted to know what was in the paper sacks and we told him that it was just some old clothes. The soldier did not have a flash light and ordered us to report to the work camp the next morning with our papers. As we left one of us replied O.K. in English, he realized we were not Italian and called "halt" but by then we had run off to the cave we were staying in which was under the road and covered by trees. When we opened the paper sacks we found they contained German uniforms and German food. We buried the uniforms and ate the food. If we had been caught with these things we would have been shot.
The next day a battalion of German soldiers with dogs were searching for us, fortunately the dogs were on leashes making it awkward for them to find us. They spent half the day looking for us then went away. We continued up the mountain until we arrived at an abandoned monastery where we took refuge for some time. Tom was a Catholic, but to protect us he said we wanted to be Catholics and needed god-fathers who he knew would not betray us.
In March 1944 at four o’clock one morning I awoke to the sound of "raus" to find a gun at my head. Some Italian had sold us to the Germans for four thousand lira each. The Germans took us to a village where they interrogated us. I received such a shock that I lost my memory. They took us back to the Italian Camp. The Allies were advancing so they put us in lines of five and marched us out of the camp; when one fellow tried to escape they shot him in both shoulders and forced him to keep his arms up. We marched about 25 miles and those who tried to escape or were even a foot out of line were shot dead. The next morning they marched us back again and we could see how many they had killed. They had not moved the dead and the convoys had run over them and all that was left were their uniforms.
On our return to camp they prepared us to go to Germany in cattle trucks. The first train of P.O.W’s (prisoners of war) was blown up as they crossed a bridge by the Allied forces, who did not know what they there were in the cattle trucks. Some of my fiends were in that train. We went from Turin through Insbruck, Bremmer Pass to Muizeburg (actually Moosburg) near Munich to the camp known as Stalag VIIA (See Appendix for Stalag VIIA).
Some of us were transferred as a working party to Munich where we stayed on a train going from on Marshall Yard to another eventually staying at a school at Versailler Strasse (See Appendix - Google Earth Images) which was next to a Marshall Yard. The Germans asked for someone who understood German to assist in getting the rations for the prisoners. I put up my hand and when they discovered I could not speak German they put a luger to my head and said you have six weeks to learn the language. Of course I learned in a hurry.
This assignment gave me a bit of freedom as I traveled with a guard around the city. The bombing of Munich by the Allies was very heavy and everyday the German guard and I would go to a Shelter during the Air Raid; this one day during an air raid he was talking to a friend and decided we were not going into the shelter, I was not very happy but he carried the gun and I had no option but to stand while he visited with his friend. I suppose without knowing it the Lord was protecting me as the shelter had five direct hits and everyone in it were killed. I seemed to have someone looking after me as bombs were flying all over the station. We were speaking to a party of about 50 Italians and had just moved away from them when they took a direct hit were all killed; around another corner a bomb came through the ceiling and did not explode.
One night I was brazen enough to get in civilian clothes and take a French girl who was forced labor to the Atlantic Palace to a concert. There where German Office all over the place. When I returned to camp I was whistling one of the tunes from the concert; The German Officer in charge called me and asked where I learned that tune – apparently it was a new song. They interrogated me and said they had already interrogated the girl but did not get any information from her. Of course I lost my privileges and had to go out on work parties after that. We went to various areas where the Allies had bombed to clean up. Having learned the language I could understand what was going on and volunteer for the right places to go.
The skies over Munich, Germany, were black with Allied planes dropping, bombs. It looked like Munich was on fire with shaking buildings that crumbled. Three quarters of Munich was destroyed. After the air raids the German soldiers and prisoners would bring large boxes of the dead who had been blown up to a mortuary where I worked, we had to put the parts together and put them in boxes and bury them. The ground was frozen and we dug trenches 3 foot deep to put the boxes in. This was terrible work as the stench of burnt flesh is awful.
The German citizens could request prisoners of war to help repair the damages of the air raids. An old lady (I called her Hackle tooth as she only had one) signed me out to kill a rabbit; I told her she was crazy that I could not kill a rabbit. We became friends and she would sign me out, she would lend me her husbands bicycle and we would ride around Munich looking at the damage done during the air raids. One evening she signed me out telling me that her friend across the river had some American soldiers in her house. She called the friend who let me speak to one of the American soldiers who said he would liberate us in the morning. Sure enough, early next morning they were there. It was a strange sight- one minute the prisoners of war were peeling potatoes with the Germans having the guns, the next the position was reversed and the German soldiers were peeling potatoes and the prisoners of war had the guns.
I was released 7.30 a.m. on May 6th 1945, and weighed about 128 lbs when I arrived home. We left Munich on a DC3 and went to Brussels for a day and arrived in England on the 28th of May 1945. On my return to South Africa the airplane stopped at Khartoum in the Sudan to refuel. As I walked away from the plane I bumped into someone in the dark only to discover that it was my brother Raymond whom I had not seen for 5 years. I resumed my journey home and arrived in Johannesburg on the 10th of June 1945.
At that time my family lived in Cape Town and my father had also joined up, I had not seen him for 5 years as well. I went into the Victoria Hotel to have dinner and as I went through the revolving doors to my utter amazement I bumped into my father. I then went to Cape Town by train to see my family after that long absence.
Summary of Official War Record of Fredrick George Ninow
Frederick George Ninow
Union Defence Force
2nd South African Division serving under English 8th Army
- Scottish
- Rank Private
- Company B Coy
- Force Number 221527
- Age 09-01-1924 19 ½ Years
- Enlisted 03-08-1940
- Embarked Durban S.S.Mauretania 08-06-1941
- Disembarked Suez 20-06-1941
- Confirmed Missing in action 20-06-1942
- Confirmed captured – Tobruk 21-06-1942
- POW – Italy PG 54 Fara in Sabina (town of Passo Carreso)
- Escaped after Italian capitulation 8th September 1943
- Captured interned in German Stalag VIIB (located Moosburg near Munich)
- POW # 132847
- Re-Patriated 15-05-1945
- Total Time 4 years and 276 days
Discharged 10-08-1945
Medals: Serial 7381, North Africa Star 1941-1942, 1939-1945 Star, The War Medal 1939-1945, Africa Service Medal
