Conisbrough Man Helped in Belsen Clean Up – “Life can never be the same” (picture)

June 1945

South Yorkshire Times June 9, 1945

“Life can never be the same”
Conisbrough Man Helped in Belsen Clean Up

img094 belsen

Medical Orderly Joseph Soar of 82 Northcliffe Road, Conisbrough, has had for 4 ½ years crammed full of incident since he joined the RAMC in September 1940.

He has seen service in hospital ships to South Africa and Egypt, and after leaving Java as the Japs arrived was torpedoed and was in the water for five hours before being rescued. He has seen action on the continent since D-Day and in a special order of the day by Lieutenant-Colonel M.W.Gonin RAMC issued at Belsen on May 25, 1945 it is mentioned that since February 27 the unit has never had more than two days consecutive rest and in the end undertook what for them was a thankless and unspectacular task of clearing Belsen concentration camp.

With American friends well over 11,000 sick were moved from the camp, and in doing this they worked for a month in the most unhygienic conditions inside huts where the majority of the internees were suffering from the most virulent disease known to man.

The order goes on, “You have had to deal with mass hysteria and political complications requiring tact and diplomacy and firmness of senior officers. In the first 10 days of the concentration camp and before any organised attempt had been made to feed the sick in those huts you distributed 4000 meals twice daily. By collecting medical equipment from all over Germany you provided a dispensary which has supplied drugs for 13,000 patients a day has met the demands of excitable medical officers of all races require the utmost exotic drugs in half a dozen different languages. You have without hesitation acted as undertakers, collecting over 2000 corpses from the wards of the hospital area and with moving them to the mortuary.

A task the RAMC has never before been asked to fulfil. One of those will never leave Belsen – the dawn attack by the German air force on our lines was a price he paid to come here. Life can never be the same again for those who have worked in the concentration camp, but you will go with the knowledge that the 11 (Br.) Light Field ambulance has once again done a good job.

Medical Hardly Soar has recently been home on leave. He formerly worked at the Denaby Main Colliery. He is now married and has a son aged six.