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Private Reginald Pope
Unit : 39 P.O.D., attached to 6th (Airborne) Divisional Ordnance Field Park, RAOC
The following is a letter that Reginald Pope sent to his mother and father in April 1945.
14627815 Pte. R. Pope,
39 P.O.D.
Att. 6th Airborne Div.
O.F.P. [Ordnance Field Park]
B.L.A. [British Liberation Army]
18th April.
Dear Mum and Dad,
I received your letter dated the 11th April yesterday. I was very pleased to hear from you again. I see you have still somebody staying with you. Yes, I expect it does keep you pretty busy all the time, still, as you say, it is company for you; but, as I have told you, you don't want to worry about me - I shall be O.K. I am sorry I couldn't send Pop anything for his birthday, as you can't get things in Germany as you can in Belgium.
24th April.
Dear Mother,
At last I have found time to finish this letter, which, as you see, I started six days ago. I hope you have not been worrying too much about me, as it must be well over a week since you have had any mail from me. Well, Mum, I have been out driving all the time these last six days, taking stuff up to Belsen Concentration Camp, the camp which you have read so much about in the papers lately, and, believe me, every word that is in those papers is true; but nobody can visualise what it is like by just reading or hearing about it. Before I went there, I heard how terrible it was there; but I didn't imagine it could be so terrible as what I saw. There were about 60,000 in the camp, of which 20,000 were dead, and there are still hundreds dying every day. The dead are lying everywhere. There are piles of women, young girls and children, waiting to be buried. The thousands that are still living are nothing but living skeletons and hundreds have gone past medical aid. As you walk through the camp, there are women and men dropping dead around you.
I went into one of the huts and it was terrible. There were hundreds just lying on bare boards, too weak to get up, just lying there waiting to die.
The huts are about 40 yds. long and 10 yds wide, and 800 had to give in them. The live ones were living with the dead, as the live ones were too weak to carry the dead out - they were even using the dead bodies for pillows.
A young Jewess showed me round the camp - she could speak a little English. She said she had been at the camp three weeks and the S.S. had got her and some more girls dragging the dead out of the huts. All she had to eat for three weeks was one drop of watery turnip soup a day, and at night she had to sleep in the huts with the dead and the dying. If we had not got there, in three months she would have been one of those living skeletons. I asked her if she knew where her mother and father were and she said that her mother and father had been gassed in the gas chambers in Poland and her brothers and sisters had been shot.
There were 47 S.S. Guards at the camp when our boys got there - there are only 15 left - now you can guess what has happened to them.
Well, Mum, I have told you what I have seen in one of Jerry's Concentration Camps, or rather I have tried to, as one cannot possibly describe it in words or pictures. It would do some people in England good to have gone round that camp, just to see how the people of occupied countries have suffered, while they have sat back and raked in the money, and some of those some people, when they read about the acts of the Nazis and saw films of occupied countries under Nazi rule thought they were far-fetched and propaganda; but, take it from me, no film has ever been made anything like what I saw at Belsen. I shall never forget what I saw so long as I live. So, if you hear anybody say these things could not possibly have happened or feeling sorry for what the Germans are going through now, just show them this letter, and perhaps they will change their minds, for, no matter what Jerry goes through, the suffering will be nothing like what those people suffered in those concentration camps.
I hope you don't think I am trying to preach to you, but it is a thing that the people in England ought to be made realise, what has been happening out here for the last four years.
Well, Mum, now to change the subject, I am keeping O.K., but as you see I have been pretty busy lately. We all out here are looking forward to this job finishing very soon now, but Jerry is fighting back like a cornered wolf, still he is going back steadily all the time.
The weather is keeping pretty good out here. To-day it is lovely, the sun is quite hot. The bread is plentiful now, and we manage to get plenty of eggs, so I am not doing too bad for food.
I have had no mail for nearly two weeks now, as I have not contacted the unit. My mail goes too far sometimes now.
Well, Mum, I must be coming to a close for now, as I want to catch to-day's post, so give my love to Pop, and take some for yourself.
Your loving son,
Reg.