Veteran Wally Malcolm of Waipukurau was put to work repairing bomb-damaged buildings and delivering kegs of beer in Munich after his capture in late 1943. But despite "sneaking a few sips from time to time" it was no easy ride as the city attracted allied bombers - and some of the things he saw during his POW years still haunt him today.
He spoke with Roger Moroney.
"Here I was ... I had six grenades on my belt, a Tommy machine-gun, a fully-fledged soldier who'd seen plenty of it ... then all of a sudden it's over."
There was no alternative to the heavy Spandau machine-gun being aimed at them by a German soldier who effectively indicated that if they wanted to "have a go" he would pull on the trigger.
"He would have wiped us out."
The Kiwis had been overwhelmed by both troops and advancing Tiger tanks after battling their way up through Italy and crossing the Sangro River.
"It got a bit lively up there for a while."
The memory is still strong in Wally's mind.
"December the third - I've never forgotten that day.
"It is a very humiliating thing being captured."
It was about a year to the day since he had embarked as an infantryman aboard the converted liner Aquitania.
He'd grown up in Ruataniwha - rural Waipukurau - and was still just 18, going on 19, when he headed for Waiouru Army Camp.
There were stints at Paekakariki and Masterton and, in December 1942, having just turned 21, he was off to the Middle East and to war.
First duties were, ironically as it would turn out, escorting German and Italian prisoners.
"We'd have about 30 of them in a big GMC truck ... I'd sit up on the cab watching them with a Thompson sub-machine gun."
Then it was the push up into Italy after landing at Taranto and moving toward Orsogna.
"We did several shows [battles] up that way."
Again he was involved in the capture of enemy troops - this time a group of Germans they surprised early one morning.
Some days later, as daylight was just breaking, he and his battalion mates were holed up in a building and spotted a German tank coming straight toward them.
"They must have known we were in there. We knew then ... he's going to give us a few."
The turret swung around but a tree stood in the way. So it copped the first shell.
Wally was then bewildered by the sight of a small bird sitting in the shattered remains.
"It was like a little waxeye, and it was singing its little head off as if all was normal."
Moments later the German ground troops poured into the area and the war for Wally and his mates was over.
"War is a ridiculous thing," he mused.
"Because later we were in a room with them [German troops] and we were swapping cigarettes and showing each other pictures of wives and girlfriends. They were just young blokes ... like us."
The Kiwis were marched off and told to sit against a wall, in a damaged house.
They were far from out of danger as the area was on the receiving end of a strafing attack by several US Kittyhawk fighters.
Bullets hammered into the building and Wally watched as shells tore up the flooring in front of him.
A German soldier appeared a few seconds later and ushered the Kiwis under a protective stairway where they would be safe. "Some of them weren't bad sorts."
However, a short time later he was seconds away from being shot by a young German guard who discovered he was carrying a German bayonet.
"Someone had given it to me. They were smaller than ours and were good for opening cans of food. But this young soldier saw it and figured I'd killed the soldier and taken it ... just my luck for carrying it."
The barrel of the soldier's gun prodded into Wally's chest as the soldier ranted at him.
"It thought 'this is it ... it's curtains'."
But another German soldier stepped forward and pushed the barrel away.
"Second time my life had been saved by a German."
The Kiwis were marched off, and later transported aboard tanks, to an Italian camp.
Humour emerged there, courtesy of one of Wally's mates.
The camp commander appeared, a small man bedecked pompously in a flash uniform and a peaked hat with a large feather it in.
Through an interpreter he asked the Kiwis if there was anything they wanted - to which Wally's mate replied "I'd like that feather because I could shove it up my bum and fly home."
After translation, the fuming officer stormed off.
After two months there they were herded into rail cattle trucks and endured a six-day journey, peppered by allied air attacks, to their final destination - Stalag VIIA at Moosburg, near Munich.
"Some guys had been there for years and were in a bad way. They were just broken men. A lot of them couldn't adapt when they eventually came home ... a lot went the booze way."
Some 80,000 allied prisoners would end up going through the Moosburg camp and, with the men of Germany hauled off to fight, the allied prisoners were rounded up into work crews.
Much of the work involved cutting firewood and retiling damaged rooves, but Wally also found himself sent to help deliver kegs of beer to the bars and bierkellers across Munich by horse and cart.
"Oh yes we had a few," he said with a grin, explaining that the unscathed Lowenbrau Brewery did its best to bolster the spirits of the populace by brewing a 3.5 per cent ale, a meatier 5 per cent brew and a couple of full-on 11 and 13 per cent jobs.
"It was beautiful beer ... we'd have a few swigs while the driver of the cart was away."
A Polish prisoner, put to work in the brewery cellar, had more than the occasional sip however.
"Every night he'd come out as drunk as a skunk."
On several journeys through the city, Wally was forced to dive for whatever cover he could find when the allied bombers came over.
He could actually see the bombs coming down, and once watched in a mixture of puzzlement and terror as one bomb fell where several cyclists had been furiously pedalling away.
"They simply disappeared ... gone."
Wally recalled seeing the awful compounds of the Dachau concentration camp.
"We had to deliver beer to the guards there."
Appalled by the sight of the great chimneys and terrified prisoners, he would ask the Germans he came across if they really knew what was going on there.
They would shake their heads and simply say they couldn't speak English.
He also saw the horror the Russian prisoners in a nearby camp to Moosburg were confronted with.
"They starved them. They threw them rotting food and you'd see them all fighting for it. It was terrible to see ... just absolutely degrading."
Wally said the German guards would put three alsatian dogs into the Russian camp at night to enforce imposed curfews.
One morning the three dogs were found strung up on the wires - only their heads and skins remained. The starving prisoners had caught them and eaten them.
As the bombing of Germany intensified and it appeared the Allies were well in control, the Kiwis still felt far from safe.
There were eight buildings in the work camp, with 200 prisoners in each.
"One day we saw the Superfortresses coming over but they started dropping their bombs short of the railway marshalling yards. They took out five of the huts."
He and a mate dived into a ditch.
They could hear a bomb whistling down. They knew it was going to be close. It was - and the pair were thrown through the air.
Every Anzac Day, Wally joins the thinning numbers of veterans of that war and remembers. He has been a stoic member of the RSA in Waipukurau for many years and enjoys the camaraderie of men who, like him, understand what it was like to be there.
And yes, he enjoys the occasional beer and yes again, occasionally he'll sip on a cold Lowenbrau.
The memories never fade
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