Forced March to Freedom: An Illustrated Diary of Two Forced Marches and the Interval Between - January to May, 1945

Bill Brydon was a librarian/journalist in Toronto.

Robert Buckham is a former RAF pilot who now lives in Montreal. In April 1943, his Wellington X bomber was shot down over Germany, and he survived for two years as a POW before being liberated by the British advance in May 1945. Forced March to Freedom is the diary that he wrote, and skillfully illustrated, between January and May of 1945. During this period, the men of his Stalag were sent on two forced marches in order to take them away from, first, the Soviet advance, and then the British. In the first of these marches, the men walked from Sagan, where their camp was located, to the town of Spremberg, and from there made a long journey by rail under bad conditions to Tarmstedt in Northern Germany. In April, they were marched northeast to the Baltic town of Lubeck, where they were liberated.

Forced March to Freedom is a first-rate piece of war journalism. Its value comes from its being written on the move and from the unfamiliarity of the subject. Buckham writes in the preface, “little has been told about the day to day existence of a prisoner enduring the forced marches which were commonplace during the last months of World War II.” In addition, the passing scene is of great interest: the conditions of life in the countryside and villages are depicted with convincing detail. It is on evidence like this that the calculations of historians stand or fall.

Buckham also writes: “I doubt if my experiences followed a norm, if indeed there was one. Nor do they detail the overall picture of the European theatre of war.” The book contains no atrocities and no sensational acts of courage. A bombing raid on Hamburg, silently visible from Tarmstedt, is tersely described, but there are few references to the fighting. The methodical invasion of the British Army was less bloody than that of the Americans, and the Western Front cannot be compared to the Eastern Front, where Western POWs found themselves intervening between German civilians and vengeful Soviet soldiers.

In this book, we are shown the war effort of rural Germany in dissolution. It is a story of patience and endurance; there is never any point to escape. On the first march, the men are fighting for their lives against sickness and disease. On the second march, their state becomes one of “semi-freedom”; it becomes a point of honour to have eggs for breakfast each day. Slowly the barriers between prisoners and guards, and soldiers and civilians, break down. The whole account is complemented by the changing of the seasons, from winter to spring. To those who were there, this meant everything, something a historian might omit to mention.