Hilary St George Saunders, The Left Handshake, 1948

Chapter VII

ASSURANCE

Scouting in Refugee and Displaced Persons’ Camps

WARS, like other scourges, produce a language of their own. Those who have to fight them or suffer their consequences use it to describe new weapons, new developments, new processes. The words disappear when they disappear, or become absorbed in the language if a contemporary genius enshrines them in a masterpiece. The slang used at Crecy or Agincourt may no longer be remembered, but Pistol, Bardolph and Nym have preserved the language of the Elizabethan camp

Uncle Toby had made succeeding generations familiar with the manner of speech of Marlborough’s veterans, Napier of Wellington’s, Kipling of Victoria’s barrack-rooms, Blunden, Alington and Sassoon of French’s Old Contemptibles. But no character depicted by a dramatist, a novelist or a historian of the past has used a word or an expression to describe those the most unhappy of the human race who, through war, have lost not only their homes but their country. It has been left to the twentieth century to coin the phrase " displaced persons." How long it will last only the future can tell. But of all the expressions to which the Second World War gave birth it seems to be that which will last the longest. With a few unimportant exceptions, every country in Europe has either lost large numbers of its own population or acquired a part of another’s and it has done so in circumstances which, for the people concerned, have been uniformly bleak, miserable, and only too often disastrous. During these dark years of war and in the years which followed, men, women and children were torn from their homes on a scale which would have staggered Attila and caused Tamberlane to rub his eyes. They were moved hither and thither about the chequerboard of Europe, pawns in as grim and inconclusive a game of international chess as any dictator has ever played.

They were, and are, of all races, ages and classes, possessing nothing in common except want, misery, hunger, and the generic term " displaced persons." Their pathetic entry on to the European scene and their continued presence there is a daily unpleasant reminder that the standard of our civilisation has not necessarily been heightened by the invention of the motor car and the refrigerator, and that an aircraft able to fly the Atlantic without a pilot is a poor substitute for the food which is everywhere, to use another modern expression, "in short supply." These miserable millions are the orphans of the world, without a home, without a country, possessing only a few yards of dusty or muddy earth in an unlovely camp, or a precarious hiding-place in some foreign forest from which, from time to time, they are hunted like the beasts to whose level they have sunk. That in all probability most of them can never again exclaim "This is my own, my native land," is the most permanent and bitter of their misfortunes, but others, of which uncertainty as to the future is the worst, have crowded thick upon them. Poverty, starvation, confinement, from all these they have suffered, and in 1948 are still suffering, and they must depend not for the amenities of life but for its continued possession, on the charity of those nations who are under the impression that they won the war.

Scouts are bound by the Scout Law, of which the 3rd and 4th provisions do not allow them to pass by on the other side of the street when they know that there are people in distress who need help. Mindful of this, the Scouts’ International Relief Service was founded in Britain as early as I942. The widespread misery and desolation which would follow the war had been easy enough to foresee. Its remedies were harder to devise, and Scout Headquarters were well aware that the more permanent of them did not lie within their province. Temporary relief, however, could and must be given. Scouting had to do something, though it could not do everything. The new organisation was an expansion of the War Distress Scout Fund set up in 1939. Its aim was to give general relief to civilians as distinct from Scouts, and by so doing to fulfil in the letter and in the spirit the injunction never to forget to do a good turn.

In these charitable intentions the Scouts were not alone. Other organisations, religious and philanthropic, were also in the field. The Government therefore set up a Council which, it was hoped, would co-ordinate the efforts of all and direct them into a common channel. Upon it sat two representatives of the Boy Scouts Association, who "had to suffer long, wearisome hours sitting at committee meetings throughout 1943." At times they were near despair, for it seemed that the Council would never achieve a concrete result. While awaiting it, a register of volunteers had been compiled and at long last a request came for Scouters to go to the Middle East. Three of them chosen from the register were dispatched in the spring of 1944 and others followed. The next request was from the Red Cross to send teams to North-west Europe. The first of these landed in Normandy at the beginning of September, and during the next twelve months three others followed them. Some Scouters were included in a Girl Guides hospital unit, and others worked not in teams but as individuals. Altogether ninety-three Scouters took part in the work, twenty-six of them women.

How to finance these workers had been a problem which the Association faced as soon as it began to lay its plans. This kind of Government service is not generously paid and those who perform it are usually out of pocket. An appeal was therefore made to every Cub, Scout and Rover in the British Isles to do some piece of work between dawn and dusk on Saturday, 20th May, 1944, for which he should earn at least a shilling. The money thus collected would become the "Bob a Job" Fund, and its organisers expected to obtain £10,000. When night came that day, £26,000 had been collected, and by the following Monday the total had reached £32,000 The problem of finance had been solved.

Side by side with the Friends’ Ambulance Unit, the Save-the-Children Fund and other voluntary organisations, the Scouts’ International Relief Service, its financial difficulties at an end, entered the field. It was soon at work in refugee and displaced persons’ camps in North-west Europe, Italy, Austria, Yugoslavia Greece, Cyprus, Syria, Palestine, Egypt and Hong Kong. After the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration was created, the Scouts continued for a time to serve under its aegis. The work was exacting and difficult, calling in full measure for qualities of tact, endurance and, above all, for a display of serene temper.

Nowhere were these qualities more necessary than in war-torn Greece. Here a team of Scouters and five women arrived in November, 1944, when the oppressors had been driven out, but before they had finally been destroyed. It split up and laboured in different parts of the country, its members making many long and difficult journeys through the mountains to remote valleys and uplands where the need was greatest. " When I arrived at the town with three tons of medical stores," one Scouter wrote, " and asked for the hospital, the people looked at me doubtfully until I told them I had supplies. Then the fun started: I was escorted royally and I think the whole town turned out to welcome me. The old doctor in charge came out to see if the war had started again, and when he realised what was happening, he just danced for joy. From then on I was not allowed to do a single thing. When I started to get the cases open and check the contents, most of the staff was on the scene to help, and it would have been funny, if it had not been so tragic, to see, for instance, the cook lovingly handling a pot, and even the cleaners grinning at the sight of pails and scrubbing brushes. But the best part was when the doctor and nurses took me round to see the condition to which they had been reduced. They put the new instruments alongside the old ones, and one of them said, ‘ How did we manage to perform operations with these old things? Our old surgeon must have been a magician! ‘ With that I fully agreed. The journey to this town was a 600-miles return trip over the worst roads I had so far encountered, and I can honestly say that all the difficulties were fully repaid by the heartfelt gratitude of the townspeople."

In Salonika, where a children’s Health Centre was opened, the Scouts played "big brothers" to the small and under-nourished boys. "I wish you could have seen the scene at their supper last night," an UNRRA worker wrote. "We found Scouts with a concertina type of instrument playing as the little boys ate, and this morning they all marched to full music to the dairy for milk and afterwards on a course of instruction on baby pigs to the strains of cafe dance music. British Scouts are being most helpful and some members of their team now here come out and cart sand for the children to play in."

In Yugoslavia it was the same. From Cetinje a Scouter wrote: "At 4,000 feet, in heavy, snow-covered roads among the mountains, with the road winding up and down, backwards and for wards, it made us feel that if we made this trip none other would ever deter us…. All the hospital staff seemed to be out watching as the cases were unloaded from our lorries, asking about the contents of this and that. When they were opened and unpacked the staff, fondling each bottle or package, felt a miracle had happened…. Another journey was to Plevje. Nothing but climb over terrific mountains, drop into deep, narrow gorges, negotiate serpentine after serpentine, continually trusting yourself and the heavy-loaded lorries on bridges built for horse-drawn traffic." Another, making a journey by jeep, reported that his Yugoslav driver suddenly stopped on a lonely road and ran to an old lady sitting by the side of it. The greeting between them was rapturous for the lady was his mother and he had not seen her for three years. "Many children here are without hands and blind as the result of booby-traps left behind," he added.

The town of Dubrovnic was fiercely attacked by typhus. A hospital was hurriedly improvised and for six weeks two members of one of the Scouter teams laboured day and night to disinfect clothing and bedding, to operate wards, wash and clean bodies of lice, and cut hair. "My spare time was spent in the bakehouse making bread for ourselves, and we amused the children by making gingerbread men and animals." These were some of the first toys they had ever had, and presently the Scouts introduced them to the playing of team games, football, cricket and handball. When the weather grew warmer swimming was added to the pastimes, but here an odd difficulty arose. The older boys were ashamed to appear naked, though the smaller shewed no such modesty. A Scout is resourceful, and the Scouter in charge was equal to the occasion. With the aid of some of the boys he made fifty pairs of bathing slips in khaki and blue, twelve pairs of shorts and a number of shirts. By then " my own slender stock of clothes had all been distributed, and I gave my spare boots and shoes to the older boys who helped me."

Grown-ups in Yugoslavia play games too, but an element of passion appears to enter into them which is lacking in more sophisticated countries. This same Scouter who had lavished such care upon the children found himself one Sunday called upon to provide transport for a party of soldiers. " Having done so, we found they were a football team going to a match. The game started and all went well until the ball burst. We were asked to repair the puncture from our repair outfit. This meant a walk of half a mile to the truck but we started off and . . . set to work on the ball. People began to run past us, but we took no notice and started back with the ball. Then we found that a riot had broken out among the players. One had called the captain of the team a name which is a deadly insult here and he retaliated by drawing a gun on his fellow-player. Order was only restored by planting a machine-gun in one corner of the field so that it covered all the players…. People told us afterwards they were sorry we had seen such an outburst of temper."

These Scouters were part of the team sent to the Middle East in September and November, 1944, which had been preceded by seven Scouts acting individually. They and the teams after them laboured among boys in refugee camps in Egypt, Palestine and Syria, helped to repatriate Greeks from the Holy Land to the isles of the Aegean and Dodecanese, and found much to do in Cyprus.

The remainder of the Scout teams chose North-west Europe for the scene of their labours, which were divided into three main phases: first-aid, emergency relief, and the rehabilitation phase. In September, 1944, the first Scouts’ International Relief Service team landed on the beaches at Arromanches and followed the Canadian Army right through North-west Europe. They helped in the evacuation of civilians from Calais and Dunkirk, and of the sick and wounded from hospitals during the "mopping-up" operations in the Scheldt pocket and the island of Walcheren. They were in charge of a transit camp at Nijmegen through which passed thousands of Dutch civilians forced to leave their farms, fields and cities which had now become a battlefield. In March and April, 1945, the war was nearing its end and the nature of the work underwent a change. All relief teams concentrated their efforts on the " Western Bounders." This was not a snobbish description of their birth or manners but the official name given to the Allied nationals whose one aim was to get back home as soon as they could after years of forced labour in Germany. The duty of the relief teams was to feed, clothe and delouse these rejoicing but needy people and to answer the innumerable questions they asked.

The rehabilitation phase began immediately before the German surrender in North-west Europe. The relief teams provided or issued the first essential items of food and clothing required by the Allied nationals whose homes lay in the rear of the advancing armies. Most of this work was carried out in North and West Holland, and three teams of Scouters were there to help, two of them labouring from March till June, 1946, when they moved on to Germany. The third team, consisting of four Scouters, was attached as orderlies to a Girl Guides’ hospital . section. Their activities and those of the other volunteer welfare organisations were carried on under the direction of the Civil Affairs Officers of the British Army, one of whom was heard to, sigh with relief when he discovered that the Scouters were grown men. He had been told that he was to be helped by Boy Scouts and had been wondering what his attitude should be towards a collection of eager small boys.

Throughout this period, and indeed all the way through France, Holland and Belgium, the Scout relief teams, of which each member wore the Scout badge, aroused the delighted friendship of their brother Scouts who, during the long years of the Occupation, had contrived to keep the Scouting Movement alive. When at last they reached Germany a task of overwhelming proportions met them. Dotted all over that country were camps of every kind, Prisoner-of-War, Internment, Concentration, Displaced Persons. In these were many hundreds of thousands of demoralised people, hungry, dirty, diseased. The army authorities acted with resolution and dispatch, but even after many had eventually been sent to their homes, or at least to the country where these had once stood, there still remained a vast number whose fate could not be permanently determined and who in 1948 were still displaced persons likely to remain so for a long time. In the British Zone of Germany alone, before 1945 was out, there were more than half a million who were living there either because it had been found impossible to repatriate them or because they had refused to return to their native land, by then under the heel of another conqueror. The greatest part of them were and continued to be Poles, nationals of the Baltic States, Ruthenians and Ukranians. In the French and American Zones the numbers were equally large. It was these unhappy people who constituted and still constitute the most difficult problem. All that the Scout relief teams and those other organisations could do to help them was very small compared with the huge sum of their misery. Herded in evil-smelling camps where cooking, heating and sanitation were more primitive than are to be found among the most savage people of Darkest Africa, they could look to no one save the Allies for food and clothing. Scouters, among other relief workers, were called upon to distribute such quantities of these as were available and to supervise the general administration of the camps.

The Scouters, by now men of experience in this mass form of charity, took up the task with all the energy at their command. A member of the S.I.R.S. wrote the following:

". . . The Scout teams are running camps throughout this winter, camps for which they are directly responsible to the Military Government. Running a camp is just like being a sort of Town Council. A Scout team has to supervise the ordering and issue of rations, of clothing, of special supplies for mothers and babies, coal (of which there is very little) and wood (which Polish work parties cut for themselves in the nearby forests). Then someone has to deal with complaints and answer questions on every subject you can think of. One Scout—possibly one of the lady Cubmasters who are now working with the teams— will be responsible for the camp hospital, which often has to be carried on with no full-time doctor available. Another will keep the trucks and ambulance fit for the road day and night in all weathers and on terrible roads. Yet another is in charge of cleanliness and sanitation. One will get a school going for the children, and several will devote an hour or two a day to giving handicraft or English lessons not only to children but to adults as well. No: I do not know any one in S.I.R.S. who knows the Polish language, but we get the job done with a mixture of German and good luck, and when the difficulties, come the old ‘ smile and whistle ‘ goes a long way."

As soon as a team arrived at a camp—it might contain as many as 30,ooo souls—it would first try to gauge its atmosphere. Contact with the camp-leaders would be made. (It was always easy, the teams averred, to pick out the one or two outstanding personalities in a camp who would be the leaders); then the team would be split up and one Scouter put on to each of the following duties: food, sanitation; registration and keeping of records; accommodation; transport; liaison between the displaced persons, the Civil Affairs headquarters, etc. The remainder would fit in where most needed.

Scouting was never officially begun in these camps, but in many the inmates themselves would start on their own or the members of the Scout Relief teams would strive to improve the morals and discipline of the hundreds of unruly children by introducing some form of Scouting work. A director of an UNRRA assembly team at Lubeck started Scouting immediately and wrote to England to ask for books to give the boys. He also reported that forty-five Poles in a camp at Lubeck had formed themselves into a Rover patrol and had appointed a provisional committee to organise Scouting amongst all the Polish boys in Germany except those living in the Russian Zone. There were, they thought, about 4,000 boys in the immediate neighbourhood of Lubeck. These Rovers were full of enthusiasm. a they had not, they said, lit a straw fire easily kindled and as easily dying out." Theirs was not a whim or a passing fancy. They were "forty-year-old men who thought soberly and soundly," and wished to raise the moral tone of Polish youth because it had suffered badly during the war years owing to the entire lack of any education and the shocking living conditions and atmosphere in which these children had been brought up.

One of the first cares besetting a Relief team on entering a camp was the problem of the children. " Twenty-two boys (Poles) live in this stable which they have transformed into their home, and the other boys of the camp (who live with their families) meet them here in what has become a flourishing Youth Club…. Next door is theatre, built up from nothing by the Poles with material rummaged from all over the place. … There are frequent concerts by local talent…. We step aside for a moment into the Chapel, where Mass is said regularly by a Polish priest who was at Dachau. Only those who saw the dank, dirty stable as it was six months ago can really appreciate what has been done to bring such an atmosphere into this camp Chapel; and we pay tribute to the Polish artist who has painted such wonderful frescoes…. So has an ordered life been built up among a crowd of people ‘dumped’ into a German camp.

We do not claim it as anything wonderful, but it is typical of the sometimes slow, but always steady, work that is going on in these camps; when a team is with a group of D.P.s long enough to establish friendship, it can show them that life can be good . . . and do a little at least to supplement the early sheer physical relief with more intangible, but equally necessary, mental and moral welfare. That we have done something is, we feel, shown in the attitude of the Poles who, after an initial outburst, remained calm in face of a threatened removal to another camp. ‘ We will go,’ said the Polish leader at length, ‘ if the British Scouts can go with us."’

The Polish Rovers at Lubeck were by no means the only displaced persons who turned to Scouting as the solution to their troubles. The report of the American, Harry K. Eby, on Scouting in the displaced persons’ camps of the United States Zone shews that by 1946 seven major nationalities had established Scout Committees and were doing their utmost to supervise the work of their groups throughout the zone and in places beyond it. The programme which they drew up, consisting as it did of training courses, conferences, the collection of literature, the publishing of Scout magazines and the passing of tests for badges, was, he notes, comprehensive and of fine quality. At Camp Esslingen, for example, he discovered that I65 Latvian Scouters had drawn up a well-planned programme for training Scoutmasters, Scouters and Commissioners, while at Augsburg the Ukrainian Scouts to the number of 728 had celebrated the thirty-fifth anniversary of the founding of Scouting in their country. Russian Scouts of the Greek Orthodox Church had built up " an extensive and long-standing organisation," and the Poles and White Ruthenians in the zone were equally active. These various organisations were fortunate enough to receive a supply of Scout literature from the World Friendship Fund which, among other books, sent several hundred copies of Aids to Scoutmastership. They were much appreciated.

"Dear Friend,

" To-day we received from you seeded books. I real was good serpraised. These books we call in I.S.A. Librery therefor that from this place the books can take ever from our scout leader and scout. The books are very necessary to scouts friendship to You and other scouts brothers in America always let be so hard and true, then that would be our greatest success.
"Always prepared!

"Yours
"A. ZEMGALS, District Scoutmaster."

The spelling and grammar may be a trifle shaky, but the gratitude is evident.

The collection of Scout magazines and periodicals made by Mr. Eby during his extensive tour "were many of them unbelievable in their composition, lay-out and art work, and just how all this was possible is hard to understand except for the zeal and ingenuity of those involved." The Troop meeting-rooms, of which several camps possessed more than one, " had been decorated in fine Scout fashion and many were real works of art with rustic woodwork . . . and decorations." Mr. Eby was gratified, as all sane persons must be, to find that there was strong evidence in each national group of the desire, indeed determination, to get into touch with other groups, so much so that an International Scouting Association had been established which was responsible in the autumn of 1946 for a widely-attended International Rally at Augsburg. Most remarkable of all was the wish expressed by the Displaced Persons’ Scouting Groups to meet groups of German Scouts as soon as they were formed. A number of such meetings had taken place, with good results.

Scout uniforms were made mostly in the camp workshops or the huts, out of German Army and Hitler Youth uniforms. Each nationality developed a set of badges distributed by the appropriate committee. Mr. Eby concludes with some remarkable figures. In the U.S. Zone by the beginning of 1947 there were between 12,000 and 15,000 Boy Scouts and Scout leaders. Of these the Poles, Latvians and Lithuanians contributed the largest number, the White Ruthenians the smallest. Only the Jewish Displaced Persons stood aloof. "Most of all have I been impressed," runs the last paragraph of his report, "by the vitality of a programme which grips these people as Scouting has and by the vitality of a people who, while facing difficulties and hardships, with little hope at times, give much unstinted devotion to their youth. Scouting is reaching a high percentage of their youth, seventy and eighty in places. It has become a natural and accustomed part of their lives. As they establish their schools, kindergartens, churches and workshops, they automatically set up their Scout programme."

Scouting continues among the displaced persons in the French and British Zones in Germany, having followed the same lines as those which have proved so successful in the United States Zone. " Our best effort was quite unintentional," reports the British Governor of a colony of 15,000 Poles housed in eight villages close to Minden. "A few weeks ago I discovered a few Boy Scouts and arranged a meeting for them. We have now got 800 Scouts and about 400 Girl Guides, with a waiting list of as many again. They are as keen as mustard. When I went to a German clothing manufacturer and ordered a thousand Scout uniforms he thought I was mad but he made them."

Common to all three zones have been the general meetings between the leaders which have taken place at Augsburg in Bavaria, at Gesslingen in Wurtemburg, and other places throughout the length and breadth of Germany, save in those parts of that country under the administration of Soviet Russia. The ground has been well dug, the seed sown, and the field is green with promise.

Of all displaced persons, those of Polish origin perhaps have been the most widely scattered. Polish refugees fled to Hungary, Roumania, Yugoslavia, even to Persia. They came there in 1932 from Russia, where they had been interned after the partition of their country two years before. Some of them found work on that remarkable railway connecting the Persian Gulf with the Caspian Sea which formed the main line of supply from the outside’ world to Russia, others existed miserably in camps which were "just sites in the desert," for the Persians were quite unprepared for this horde of men, women and children belonging to a race of which few of them had ever heard. On the high, bare plateau of Central Persia, cold in winter, savagely hot in summer, they lived a life of great hardship, especially the children and the young people and girls. "They had no clothes, no food, no facilities for education, no morality. They were wild, unkempt, little gipsies." But here, too, Scouting raised its head. A number of young Scouters organised a camp for children where they could play games, learn lessons, and where those who were afflicted with typhoid, dysentery, malaria and other diseases—a large number—could be given some kind of hospital treatment. The Scouts who became schoolmasters were handicapped by a total lack of books or paper, pen or ink. They taught from memory, using a pointed stick and the sand of the desert as a blackboard. Presently camp-fires were lit, plays performed, and since the children were now happy, the spirits of the adults rose. "Afterwards it was said by many people," the report modestly records, " that if it had not been for Scouting the situation would have been very much more serious."

The most fortunate of the Poles found themselves, by the middle of 1942, far away from Europe in Northern Rhodesia. Their advent caused something of a flutter, but Mr. H. F. Cartmel-Robinson, the Commissioner, was equal to the occasion. There were, he was informed, Scouts among the boys and girls, and one of them had been a Troop Leader. He was called upon at once to form a Troop and did so at Livingstone, where the Polish Scouts trained side by side with their younger British brothers. A Rally was held which they attended, and they became " extremely popular throughout the camp…. Their singing was very good. They learned the English words of the songs and taught the British Scouts Polish songs…. I was greatly impressed with the fine spirit of comradeship between them both, despite the language difficulties. It was a fine example of Scout brotherhood." This was the first Troop and others were formed as more Polish boys and girls arrived, the kind-hearted Commissioner urging every one to "extend a welcome to these unfortunate people who have suffered such terrible misfortunes. I appeal," he went on, " to all Scouts and Scouters to help them in every way." The appeal did not fall on deaf ears. At Lusaka there were soon 88 Polish Scouts and I02 Guides and Brownies. The Polish Commissioners in London were eager for them to become good Scouts and to this end felt that the help given by British Scouts in their training would be invaluable. They had no need for apprehension. Both nations took easily and readily to each other, and the history of Polish Scouting in Rhodesia is an altogether happy one.

Other Polish children went still farther afield to the blue hills and blue skies of New Zealand, where they were warmly welcomed by the native Scouts, who were shocked at their appearance. "It was rather pitiful to see the aged and anxious expressions on some of the very young faces and also to see how shortage of food and improper care had reduced them considerably in vitality." The hospitality given was such that these marks of privation soon disappeared. They were established "in an old military camp specially adapted for their use in wide open country where there are plenty of trees on the one hand and a vista of low blue hills on the other."Here, too, all became well, and similar good fortune befell the Jewish Displaced Persons who arrived in the island of Mauritius early in I94I. Before very long, four Patrols among them had been started and these Scouts were provided each with a white shirt, a royal blue scarf, a pair of blue shorts, and a white forage cap pending the arrival of Scouts’ hats."Such reports as these shed a bright ray of hope across a Europe reduced by two wars in one generation to a condition of slavery and destitution unknown since the Dark Ages. It was in those times that the influence of religion and the slow rise of chivalry gradually made themselves felt and eventually produced happier days. What will take the place of those influences to-day it would be unwise to conjecture, but it is safe to say that Scouting, with all it means, with all the joys and responsibilities it brings to youth at the most impressionable age, must be, and will remain, a principal factor in that physical and moral recovery which Europe must achieve if she is to survive. It is a very sound form of "Assurance" which the nations would do well to take out as quickly and as lavishly as possible.

Table of Contents

Hilary St George Saunders, The Left Handshake, 1948

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