Hunt for wartime comrades (From Stroud News and Journal)

Hunt for wartime comrades

AN OLD soldier is asking for help tracking down a wartime colleague.

Joe Ponting, who lives in Bisley Old Road, Stroud, was a paratrooper in the disastrous Battle of Arnhem where he, along with a huge number of other British soldiers, was captured by the Germans.

He was taken to Dresden where he was forced to clear up and repair the bomb damage but as the Russians advanced on the city the Germans decided it would be best to spirit captured soldiers away in case they were freed and re-armed.

Joe joined what was to become known as the Hunger March out of Germany and into Slovakia.

But, faced with starvation and an uncertain future he and three others, decided to escape.

They volunteered for wood-collecting duty and over a period of time befriended their elderly guard.

"We'd sit him down with a cigarette while we went off to collect wood in the forests," he said.

"We'd go further and further away and one evening we thought, 'right, this is it,' and dropped the wood we had collected and ran and ran.

"When morning came we were miles away."

The four escapees had to live off the land and whatever scraps they could scrounge.

They spent their days above the snow line in the mountains, coming down into villages and farms at night to steal food.

A South African soldier with them spoke fluent German which got them out of many scrapes.

After numerous hair-raising adventures including being shot at by an official after they blew their cover while queuing for rations and dodging German patrols frostbite took hold.

"We didn't have proper clothes," said Joe.

"I'd lost my boots a long time ago and just had a pair of clogs and the other chaps were the same."

The men had made a pact that if one of their number had to give himself up the others would too, so in urgent need of medical attention they tried to hand themselves in at a prisoner of war camp, which proved surprisingly difficult.

"They told us to go away because they didn't have enough food for themselves, let alone for us," said Joe.

"We said we didn't want food, we had plenty of that, we just needed our feet seeing to.

"In the end they put in a phone call and someone came from another camp to pick us up.

"That was a god-awful place but we didn't stay there long.

"The Russians were advancing again and one morning we woke up and the guards were all gone.

"We didn't want to get caught by the Russians any more than the Germans did so we headed for the city of Chemnitz which we'd heard had been taken by the Americans."

But by the time the band of adventurers reached the city, the Americans had pulled back and left it to the Russians.

"It was hell on earth," said Joe.

"The Cossacks were rounding up anything that moved - man, woman or child - on their horses, dragging them into the town square and using them for sabre practice."

So they sneaked through the ravaged city and fled towards American lines.

Once they persuaded the GIs to let them through - after something of an Anglo-American disagreement - the four soldiers were finally free to go home.

Joe was surprised to discover one of his comrades was from just down the road in Woodchester.

"We never gave each other our real names or spoke about our families when we were in the field," he explained.

"If you got captured and interrogated it was best not to know anything about your comrades because of the pressure that could be put on their families."

The two agreed to meet up in The Greyhound in Stroud's Gloucester Street and managed to put a dent in their considerable demob pay with the drinks bill.

"I woke up on a bench in the park across the road with a policeman leaning over me," said Joe.

"He escorted me home and I never saw that chap from Woodchester again, despite everything we had been through together."

Now, after all these years, Joe is keen to track down his former comrade-in-arms, or at least find out who he was.

"As far as I know this lad's name was Norman," he said. "Or possibly John.

"September 17 was Arnhem Day, a day of 'I wonder where they are and what happened to them' for me."

If anyone thinks they might have any more detailed ideas of the ex-paratroopers identity, call the newsroom on 01453 762412.