Prisoner: British rifleman Victor Gregg, 25, was being held in the city of Dresden along with hundreds of other men who had been sentenced to death . On 13 February 1945, British rifleman Victor Gregg, 25, was being held by Germans in a makeshift prison in the city of Dresden along with hundreds of other condemned men. He was taken there after being sentenced to death for burning down the soap factory where he had been sent to work as punishment for twice trying to escape his POW camp. Like the  townspeople of Dresden, Gregg did not believe the city would be bombed. There was a widespread understanding that the Allies would preserve its cultural heritage, just as the Germans had refrained from attacking Oxford. But, as this powerful eyewitness account reveals, this was not to be the case. It begins in the makeshift prison after British bombers had started their air assault. Gregg and his friend Harry, who had also been sentenced to death after burning  down the soap factory, were surrounded by the wails of desperate men trapped in the locked room. Tragically, Harry didn't survive Dresden. After the assault, Gregg, now 95, eventually walked to the advancing Russian lines and weeks later was flown back to Britain. Four incendiaries burst through the heavy glass roof, turning men into human torches. Nothing could be done to help them, it was impossible to extinguish the flames, and so the screaming of those who were being burned alive was added to the cries of others. The raid had been in progress for 30 minutes when a ‘blockbuster’ landed, blowing in the whole of the wall. (These thin-walled, massive missiles could demolish whole blocks with one explosion, hence the name). All I could remember was being thrown over to the far corner of the building, nearly 50 feet. The next thing I knew I was being covered in brickwork and rubble and everything went dark. When I came to, I realised the building was slowly collapsing. Wherever I turned, I was confronted by flames, smoke and dust – and all the time blocks of debris falling from the sky. There were about a dozen of us in our small group of survivors who were able to walk or stagger. In the town, there were other small groups moving between the heaps of rubble, dodging the flames which, without warning, shot out of gaps in the walls. The noise of the planes died down and people started to claw their way out of the huge mounds of rubble that an hour before had been their homes. Although the authorities had built huge concrete water towers, only a few of these had been filled with water – and these were to prove tragic. People climbed into them to escape the flames and found it impossible to climb back out. They were trapped in water which slowly boiled. Devastation: The once-beuatiful city of Dresden after the  air raids. There was a widespread understanding that the Allies would preserve its cultural heritage, just as the Germans had refrained from attacking Oxford . We stumbled along the remains of a wide avenue. We were surrounded by fires and mountains of red hot wreckage. What saved me were the clogs - the wooden soles were so thick I could walk over the red hot cinders. Finally we found ourselves in open fields, next to a railway line. Reaching safety, we saw another group coming towards us from along the railway line. They were pulling and pushing a large cart full of picks, shovels, buckets, coils of rope and some cans of drinking water. The leader of the group selected those men whom he judged to be capable and fit – including myself - and marched us off, leaving the injured to fend for themselves. At first we came across people who had been caught out in the open and were still alive. By fixing bits of wood to our picks and shovels we turned them into stretchers to carry the injured. After two hours we returned to the railway, where we discovered reinforcements and a food wagon that had somehow been shunted in from God knows where. Then the sirens started their terrible wailing again and the people started to gather in small bunches, as if to shield each other from the onslaught. The new bombs were so big that it was possible to see them falling through the air. Raining down with this terror came more blockbusters – 10-tonners this time. Only five hundred yards of open land separated us from the heart of the first raid on the old part of the city and yet not one bomb landed on us. The second raid had been in progress for 15 minutes when the ground erupted in huge clouds of smoke and flame. Then came the enormous pull of the wind as air rushed in to replace the vacuum that had been caused by the blasts. Escape: After the assault, Gregg, left as a rifleman and right today, eventually walked to the advancing Russian lines and weeks later was flown back to Britain. The horrors he witnessed haunted him for years . Some 30 minutes later they had gone. Everything that could burn was alight - the metalled roadways were like burning rivers of bubbling and hissing tar and huge fragments of material were flying through the air. A small group tried to reach us by crossing what had once been a road, only to get themselves stuck in a bubbling mass of molten tar. One by one, they sank to the ground through sheer exhaustion and then died in a pyre of smoke and flame. People of all shapes, sizes and ages were slowly sucked into the vortex, then suddenly whisked into the pillars of smoke and fire, their hair and clothing alight. And as if the Devil himself decided the torment the people were suffering was insufficient, above the noise of the wind and the roar of the inferno around us came the agonised screams of the victims as they were roasted alive. It was these fiendish visions that brutalised my mind in later years. Destruction: Buildings in the city of Dresden were left as hollow shells by the relentless bombing. Gregg was able to escape the prison where he had been held and help search for survivors - and recover bodies . What saved us was that we were on open ground with oxygen to breathe and, since the fires were getting worse, we abandoned any idea of approaching the city centre for now. At dawn, we saw new gangs had arrived to fill up the craters and re-lay the track, and by mid-morning a small line of wagons was shunted alongside us. You had to hand it to the krauts, the first thing they think of is invariably their belly, and in the centre was a kitchen wagon, complete with hot soup, black bread and a 40-gallon drum of erzazt coffee. After eating, about 40 of us trudged into the smouldering embers edging the vast bonfire that still raged nearby. While other groups dug at the piles of masonry, clearing pathways we were to uncover the cellars. Powerful: Mr Gregg's account has been published in full as an ebook by Bloomsbury . But then the third raid started. Now it was the Americans. While their bombs were much less destructive than the British, many more were killed. When the raid ended, we continued to the cellars, prising them open with pickaxes and crowbars. Inside, we found the victims’ bodies, usually shrivelled to half their normal size. Children under the age of three or four had simply melted. But most of them looked as though they had died peacefully through lack of oxygen, losing conscious in the process. Even the hardest of us would flinch as we got nearer to where the centre of the firestorm had been and where fierce fires were still raging. Some of the corpses were so brittle that they crumbled into clouds of ash and dried flesh. Yet so methodical were Germans that we were ordered to stuff any identifiable parts of these corpses into sacks. The next day we were ordered to tackle a sector where there were chances of finding survivors alive, the news brought us fresh life to the gang. We set off for a small square where what had been grass was now a bed of ash at least four inches thick. Examination of one shelter revealed a tunnel leading to another shelter where the roof had collapsed. We later broke through and found four women and two girls huddled together and alive. Even the guards cheered themselves hoarse. It took an hour to get them to the surface but we all felt like heroes. But sadly, this was a solitary event, as we learned the next day. Trudging through the streets the next day, we came to the door of a communal shelter, which took all afternoon to prise open. With the first inch or so, there was a large hissing sound and the surrounding dust was sucked into the opening. As the gap widened so a terrible smell hit us. Slowly the horror inside became visible. There were no complete bodies, only bones and scorched articles of clothing matted together on the floor. There was no flesh visible – just a mass of solidified fat and bones swimming around, inches thick, on the floor. This is an edited extract from Dresden, A Survivor’s Story by Victor Gregg with Rick Stroud. Ebook Published by Bloomsbury Reader. For sale here in the UK and here in the US.
Victor Gregg was held in Dresden prison after being sentenced to death .
25-year-old POW had burned down factory and twice tried to escape camp .
He witnessed first-hand the devastating assault on the German city .
In this powerful account, he recalls horrors that haunted him for decades .
Prisoner: British rifleman Victor Gregg, 25, was being held in the city of Dresden along with hundreds of other men who had been sentenced to death . On 13 February 1945, British rifleman Victor Gregg, 25, was being held by Germans in a makeshift prison in the city of Dresden along with hundreds of other condemned men. He was taken there after being sentenced to death for burning down the soap factory where he had been sent to work as punishment for twice trying to escape his POW camp. Like the  townspeople of Dresden, Gregg did not believe the city would be bombed. There was a widespread understanding that the Allies would preserve its cultural heritage, just as the Germans had refrained from attacking Oxford. But, as this powerful eyewitness account reveals, this was not to be the case. It begins in the makeshift prison after British bombers had started their air assault. Gregg and his friend Harry, who had also been sentenced to death after burning  down the soap factory, were surrounded by the wails of desperate men trapped in the locked room. Tragically, Harry didn't survive Dresden. After the assault, Gregg, now 95, eventually walked to the advancing Russian lines and weeks later was flown back to Britain. Four incendiaries burst through the heavy glass roof, turning men into human torches. Nothing could be done to help them, it was impossible to extinguish the flames, and so the screaming of those who were being burned alive was added to the cries of others. The raid had been in progress for 30 minutes when a ‘blockbuster’ landed, blowing in the whole of the wall. (These thin-walled, massive missiles could demolish whole blocks with one explosion, hence the name). All I could remember was being thrown over to the far corner of the building, nearly 50 feet. The next thing I knew I was being covered in brickwork and rubble and everything went dark. When I came to, I realised the building was slowly collapsing. Wherever I turned, I was confronted by flames, smoke and dust – and all the time blocks of debris falling from the sky. There were about a dozen of us in our small group of survivors who were able to walk or stagger. In the town, there were other small groups moving between the heaps of rubble, dodging the flames which, without warning, shot out of gaps in the walls. The noise of the planes died down and people started to claw their way out of the huge mounds of rubble that an hour before had been their homes. Although the authorities had built huge concrete water towers, only a few of these had been filled with water – and these were to prove tragic. People climbed into them to escape the flames and found it impossible to climb back out. They were trapped in water which slowly boiled. Devastation: The once-beuatiful city of Dresden after the  air raids. There was a widespread understanding that the Allies would preserve its cultural heritage, just as the Germans had refrained from attacking Oxford . We stumbled along the remains of a wide avenue. We were surrounded by fires and mountains of red hot wreckage. What saved me were the clogs - the wooden soles were so thick I could walk over the red hot cinders. Finally we found ourselves in open fields, next to a railway line. Reaching safety, we saw another group coming towards us from along the railway line. They were pulling and pushing a large cart full of picks, shovels, buckets, coils of rope and some cans of drinking water. The leader of the group selected those men whom he judged to be capable and fit – including myself - and marched us off, leaving the injured to fend for themselves. At first we came across people who had been caught out in the open and were still alive. By fixing bits of wood to our picks and shovels we turned them into stretchers to carry the injured. After two hours we returned to the railway, where we discovered reinforcements and a food wagon that had somehow been shunted in from God knows where. Then the sirens started their terrible wailing again and the people started to gather in small bunches, as if to shield each other from the onslaught. The new bombs were so big that it was possible to see them falling through the air. Raining down with this terror came more blockbusters – 10-tonners this time. Only five hundred yards of open land separated us from the heart of the first raid on the old part of the city and yet not one bomb landed on us. The second raid had been in progress for 15 minutes when the ground erupted in huge clouds of smoke and flame. Then came the enormous pull of the wind as air rushed in to replace the vacuum that had been caused by the blasts. Escape: After the assault, Gregg, left as a rifleman and right today, eventually walked to the advancing Russian lines and weeks later was flown back to Britain. The horrors he witnessed haunted him for years . Some 30 minutes later they had gone. Everything that could burn was alight - the metalled roadways were like burning rivers of bubbling and hissing tar and huge fragments of material were flying through the air. A small group tried to reach us by crossing what had once been a road, only to get themselves stuck in a bubbling mass of molten tar. One by one, they sank to the ground through sheer exhaustion and then died in a pyre of smoke and flame. People of all shapes, sizes and ages were slowly sucked into the vortex, then suddenly whisked into the pillars of smoke and fire, their hair and clothing alight. And as if the Devil himself decided the torment the people were suffering was insufficient, above the noise of the wind and the roar of the inferno around us came the agonised screams of the victims as they were roasted alive. It was these fiendish visions that brutalised my mind in later years. Destruction: Buildings in the city of Dresden were left as hollow shells by the relentless bombing. Gregg was able to escape the prison where he had been held and help search for survivors - and recover bodies . What saved us was that we were on open ground with oxygen to breathe and, since the fires were getting worse, we abandoned any idea of approaching the city centre for now. At dawn, we saw new gangs had arrived to fill up the craters and re-lay the track, and by mid-morning a small line of wagons was shunted alongside us. You had to hand it to the krauts, the first thing they think of is invariably their belly, and in the centre was a kitchen wagon, complete with hot soup, black bread and a 40-gallon drum of erzazt coffee. After eating, about 40 of us trudged into the smouldering embers edging the vast bonfire that still raged nearby. While other groups dug at the piles of masonry, clearing pathways we were to uncover the cellars. Powerful: Mr Gregg's account has been published in full as an ebook by Bloomsbury . But then the third raid started. Now it was the Americans. While their bombs were much less destructive than the British, many more were killed. When the raid ended, we continued to the cellars, prising them open with pickaxes and crowbars. Inside, we found the victims’ bodies, usually shrivelled to half their normal size. Children under the age of three or four had simply melted. But most of them looked as though they had died peacefully through lack of oxygen, losing conscious in the process. Even the hardest of us would flinch as we got nearer to where the centre of the firestorm had been and where fierce fires were still raging. Some of the corpses were so brittle that they crumbled into clouds of ash and dried flesh. Yet so methodical were Germans that we were ordered to stuff any identifiable parts of these corpses into sacks. The next day we were ordered to tackle a sector where there were chances of finding survivors alive, the news brought us fresh life to the gang. We set off for a small square where what had been grass was now a bed of ash at least four inches thick. Examination of one shelter revealed a tunnel leading to another shelter where the roof had collapsed. We later broke through and found four women and two girls huddled together and alive. Even the guards cheered themselves hoarse. It took an hour to get them to the surface but we all felt like heroes. But sadly, this was a solitary event, as we learned the next day. Trudging through the streets the next day, we came to the door of a communal shelter, which took all afternoon to prise open. With the first inch or so, there was a large hissing sound and the surrounding dust was sucked into the opening. As the gap widened so a terrible smell hit us. Slowly the horror inside became visible. There were no complete bodies, only bones and scorched articles of clothing matted together on the floor. There was no flesh visible – just a mass of solidified fat and bones swimming around, inches thick, on the floor. This is an edited extract from Dresden, A Survivor’s Story by Victor Gregg with Rick Stroud. Ebook Published by Bloomsbury Reader. For sale here in the UK and here in the US.
Prisoner: British rifleman Victor Gregg, 25, was being held in the city of Dresden along with taken there after being sentenced to death for Oxford. But, as this powerful eyewitness account in the makeshift prison after British bombers had haunted him for years . Some 30 minutes later bombing. Gregg was able to escape the prison