The Sealed Train - German POWs at Union Station 1945

The shelters over the passenger platforms at Union Station in Saint John show up well in this 1956 photograph. It was taken from the NBTEL building. I have indicated 92 Paradise Row, where my mothers family lived and the backyard from where she made dangerous forays across the tracks to steal ice from rail cars. (Photo from the Collection of Bob Boudreau)

For over 75 years the house at 92 Paradise Row overlooked the rail yard in the Valley. When Patrick Brown bought the house in 1903 the original Union Depot still stood and the Intercolonial Grain Elevator had not yet been constructed. In the 1940s, when Joyce Brown was a girl, the busy station was just one large feature of the neighborhood landscape. Open boxcars were opportunities for curious children, especially on a Sunday when the station was less busy. She recalls that a neighbor lady, Mrs. Moore, would give her "an old chipped enamel dishpan" to fill with a block of ice from any refrigerated boxcar she could get into. It was a hard way to make a nickle. "One time her son, Barry Moore, locked the hatch on me and wouldn't let me out until I'd had a good long cry."

One of my mother's often told stories involves the Canadian soldiers returning from the war in 1945-46. Troop trains in the station would be packed with servicemen who were very excited to be home. Many of them delighted in chatting with Saint John kids, perhaps in anticipation of their own family reunions somewhere in Canada. Most of the men still had unspent European coins in the pockets of their battle dress, and my mother was given many of them. In another act of adult kindness, she and other kids were welcome to bring small change to the Bank of Nova Scotia branch on Main Street for exchange.

Recently I asked Orin Manitt for some recollections of a his boyhood living alongside the second Union Station. I pointed out that most anecdotes I had on file were purely visual, and I asked what he recalled of the soundscape. In part, this is his answer:

Nazi Prison Train. I vividly recall an event that, as far as I know, happened only once in Saint John. I'll date it as August 1945, and I may not be far wrong. At wars end I was eight years old. While I was playing with friends on Lombard Street early one evening, a train slowly approached from the east. What I found strange, or different, was the quiet of it all. There were no bells or whistles, no hissing of steam or the usual screech of iron wheels on iron tracks. The train came to a dead stop right in front of us and, within the blink of an eye, armed Canadian soldiers took up positions on either side of the train.

We realized with astonishment that the train was full of German soldiers, and scrabbled up the fence, holding ourselves across the top of it by outspread elbows, to get a trackside view. I was surprised to see machine guns in the aisles of the train cars, but guessed correctly that they had been put out of commission long before.

Our Canadian infantrymen were not happy to see and hear a passel of very curious and energetic boys suddenly shouting and shaking fists at the prisoners on the train. Most of those P.O.W.s ignored us - the windows had been sealed shut, so I had heard - but one fellow jumped out of his seat and began raging at us, even though we could not hear him. He was clearly very angry, and I had the chilling thought that he would have killed us very easily and very quickly. I was jostling with another boy for position along the fence when he seemed to stare straight at me and shake his fist. It was not a pleasant feeling. The Canadian sentries then shooed us away from the fence, and it was not long before the sealed train began to proceed west.

Many years later I learned there was a POW camp just north of Fredericton; but I did not know anything about that at the time, and the Germans may have been taken further on to another province. The only other memory that I have of that encounter with the enemy is that there were no adults on the fence or on Lombard Street at the time. And that makes sense because there would not likely have been any publicity about German soldiers passing through our fair city.

I know of the wartime camp Orin is referring to. We now have an entire shelf of books on the Canadian camps built for Axis P.O.W.s in WW2, but I can remember a time when there were none. Ted Jones, a Fredericton high school teacher, was the first to investigate Camp 70 – or Camp B, which confined Wehrmacht prisoners at Ripples, N.B. I remember his series in the ATLANTIC ADVOCATE magazine, which later became a major book project. An October 1989 CBC TV interview with Jones, The Remains of Camp 70, is archived online. In the segment he describes Camp B and shares images from his research collection. It’s here.

Bob Boyce of the Saint John Society of Model Railroaders created this wonderful trackside diorama of Lombard Street as it was in 1972. The only structure in the recreation which still exists is the small white warehouse building on the left edge of the photograph. - Note the fence. This is the spot where eight year old Orin Manitt stood in 1945 jeering at Nazi POWs who had silently entered the Valley.

STEAM TRAINS - Ah yes, the railway and Union Station! I loved it all. The rail yard was very busy and, at times, very noisy ! But, you know, I do not remember anyone complaining about it. My very first ambition in life, formulated at a very tender age, was to become an "engineer". I wanted to drive a steam locomotive. I recall that I loved the power of those unbelievably huge machines belching coal-black smoke with their steel wheels actually spinning one or two rotations on the steel tracks as they began to move forward from a stationary position. As they picked up speed, the smoke came in ever-increasing blasts straight up from their stacks. The chug-chug kept getting louder until the train was under a full head of steam. By then, of course, the trains would have cleared the station area.

Adding to the noise which so impressed the kids, was the venting of massive amounts of steam from those great engines, and a lot of steam there was, too. I imagined myself sitting on the raised seat by the window high up on the locomotive where the engineer sat, almost half out the window (or so it seemed), surveying the whole world in front of me. I recall there was also a lot of general "grunt" work in the rail yard: locomotives shunting boxcars from one siding onto another, that sort of thing. As a consequence, there was a lot of "banging", for lack of a better word, as cars were coupled and uncoupled. And the continual screech and squeal of iron on iron, the grinding of wheels rolling on the tracks, And how I remember the belching black smoke!

Right at the eastern end of Lombard Street was the "foot bridge", little more than an open, steel-framed structure with only a wooden deck and wide wooden stairs at either end that allowed pedestrian traffic to cross back and forth over the railway tracks between Lombard Street and Pond Street (later Station Street). One of our favourite childhood pastimes was to run up the stairs and position ourselves on the walkway right over the tracks beneath us on which a train was chugging along. As the train passed under the bridge, we would become totally enveloped by the mass of heavy, thick smoke billowing furiously around us. With only the wooden planking of the walkway separating us from the tumultuous roar directly underneath, we became animated by the cloud of darkness, dancing and whooping out until the smoke cleared. I suffered from bronchitis more times than I can remember, missing school on several occasions. No one ever made the connection, but we all somehow survived as our years of innocence inexorably passed away.

Enlarged detail from the 1956 photo at the head of this article enhances Orin's story. The Lombard Street foot bridge is on the left, and the Wall Street bridge is on the right. Note a string of boxcars sidetracked between the spans. (Photo from collection of Bob Boudreau)

Gordon Smith, a few years older than me, was a brave if not reckless young boy. He was very happy-go-lucky and seemed not to be aware of danger. On one occasion on the foot bridge, after the locomotive of a long, slow-moving train had passed under us, he decided he was going to jump onto one of the boxcars. I recall that we told him not to try it but, without any further ado, he sat on the deck and, holding on to the slats of the framework, eased himself to the outside. He then let his body hang down as the train continued to pass underneath. I don't think that the four or five us there at that moment fully understood the danger either, but I also recall that we were basically stunned into silence. As well, I clearly recall thinking that if Gordon didn't time himself correctly, he would fall between the cars and be killed. It was that simple.

Then Gordon released his grip and landed effortlessly on a car. As agile as a monkey, he scrambled across the top of the car, down a steel ladder, and jumped the remaining few feet to the ground as the train inched along. He looked very proud of himself, as if he had just conquered the universe - which, for my money, he had ! And he had also managed to avoid the railway police who were always on the lookout for kids playing on the tracks or in empty boxcars. (They caught me once - literally - and let me go only after they telephoned my mother. When my father got home from work, he gave me the strap).

I experienced my own version of "riding the rails", but it was small potatoes compared to Gordon's great achievement. I hopped onto the side ladder of a boxcar as a train was moving east, but chickened out when the train got to Gilbert's Lane (Haymarket Square, Marsh Creek, etc.). I had no idea where it was going, but it was not stopping and I was afraid it might speed up. I did that a few times, but never went very far.

I believe that it was around 1950, I'm not sure of the year, that the age of steam finally came to an end. I remember the diesel trains and the sound of them, and was not impressed. I didn't like the smell of diesel oil, and that only added to my disdain. My days of adventure on the railroad had finally run their course, as life presented me with new challenges and new directions.