Dick and Joan Jones spent their honeymoon night at the Exchange Hotel in Liverpool, on 13th September 1947. This imposing railway hotel had been built next to the terminus station by the Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway in 1850, and it belonged to the London Midland and Scottish Railway by the time of their visit. It closed in 1977. The façade remains in situ, though redevelopment has taken place behind it.
My father-in-law carried the hotel card with their room number on it in his wallet for the rest of his life. That he had been able to enjoy a honeymoon at all was the result of considerable fortitude on his part during the preceding years.
On May 7th 1945, Dick was in Riesa, Germany, having walked for about fifteen miles into the town from Stalag IVB, as part of a column of British POWs. The camp had earlier been liberated by Russian Cossacks, who, having arrived on horseback, promptly shot the locks off the gates and then kicked them open. This is Dick’s own account of how he spent his time, seventy-five years ago today.
“I seemed to lose contact with all my close
friends, except Paddy. I don’t
think I ever knew his
surname. We had acquired a wheel barrow onto which
we put our possessions.
After marching all day, we came to a town between
Leipzig and Dresden called
Riesa. It was fairly badly mauled. It became
known that we were to be
put into some German barracks. Paddy and I
were not in agreement with this
and at a convenient moment slipped down
a side street and hid.
Wandering around later, we found a
tobacconist’s shop. Cigarettes were
always a problem so this
looked a promising place. We knocked and when
the frightened Germans
answered, we explained we were British prisoners
looking for a billet. This
seemed to them a better bet than the revenge crazy
Russians. We were admitted
voluntarily, arranging for us to sleep in the
shop. The arrangement
worked well. We would answer the door to Russian
marauders, explain we were
British POWs and they would shake our hands,
back slapping all round
and go away. In return the Germans would supply
us with cigarettes. They
slept in the basement of this three storied building.
We had to survive as best we could, scrounging and stealing food and
supplies. It was dangerous
and at times life risking. Russians shot first and
cleared the bodies away
later. They did not differentiate between stealing
Germans or British. We had
no idea how to get home and were living in a
chaotic world.
V.E. [Victory in Europe ] Day came, not that we knew until a Russian tank
commander, looking for
billets for his men, called at the shop and told us.
The frightened Germans
showed him upstairs and to our astonishment, in a
town where hardly a house had not been
looted at some time or another,
the rooms were perfect.
They were the living rooms of this family. Even the
tank commander could not
believe it. Dirty and travel stained, as were his
men, he decided to sleep
in the shop with us and left the rooms untouched.
Our presence had saved
their home from being vandalised and looted. The
cigarettes given were a cheap
price.
The tank commander
instructed his men to bring food and they brought
what looked like half a
cow, asking the Haus Frau to cook it. After her
initial horror, he
tempered his request to cook enough for a meal to
celebrate V.E. Day. I had
been looting in the larger residential houses and
had acquired silver plated
cutlery and serving trays, so the banquet was
served on these, plus
plenty of vodka etc. Paddy and I kept sober. Russians
are very unpredictable
when drunk. After, we all fell to sleep. We were
woken by the sounds of
tanks on the move, taking pot shots at random. Our
Russian friends had left.
Fortunately, they left a lot of food behind, which
came in useful. By this
time, we had become friendly with the Germans and
would sit with them in the
basement rooms and they would distil Schnapps,
which would drowsily send
us to bed.
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