Came the next forenoon with the
roll-call of numbers, we were told this was the day we
would be on our way to Germany. The sky was filled with
black clouds and we were not allowed to go into the hut.
At noon we were told to line up to collect our soup; just
as my turn came the heavens opened and the rain bucketed
down, such that in no time my ration of soup in my
Army-issue dish was displaced by rainwater. To cap it
all, the rain stopped and as the sun attempted to shine
through a break in the clouds I looked to the sky to see
a long silver edge in those clouds and I can still hear
myself saying, as I attempted to gain some consolation,
"Every cloud has a silver lining." One of the
old folks’ expressions that I must have gathered.
The rainwater was running off all of us and we
waited for the sunshine to dry us. Eventually it made an
appearance, together with armed Jerries and their
cacophony of "‘Raus, ‘raus, los, los"
and we were on our way. I can’t describe it as
marching, more like trudging, until we came to a railway
goods yard, to find a train of cattle trucks assembled.
How did I know that they were cattle trucks? Because they
were French wagons and on the side of each of them was
stencilled "10 CHEVAUX - 40 HOMMES". When
loading the wagon in which I was, Jerry didn’t stop
at ‘40 hommes’ - must have been nearer fifty,
but as each of us climbed into the wagon we were issued
with a whole loaf and a tin of German meat, apparently
similar to the front line German soldier’s ration.
They must have run out of bully beef from the York’s
Stores.
The German Army seemed
in a great hurry to win their war, but when it came to
moving us P.O.W.’s, or ‘Kriegies’ as we
began to call ourselves, they seemed to lose interest.
Once the requisite number was pushed and prodded into our
wagon the sliding door was shut and latched, and that was
that. At the top corner of each side of the wagon was a
tiny barred opening and there was a minimum of straw on
the floor. All we could do was organise ourselves into a
fair distribution of bodies on the floor and it was
agreed that as soon as we could discover the direction of
the wagon, we would attack a rear corner of the floor to
make a hole for toilet purposes. It was going to be a
long job because amongst us there was only a collection
of knives with shortened blades. The words for the two
types of conveniences in the German language are
‘Abort’ and ‘Pissort’ and soon these
words could be heard being shouted from the nearby
trucks, but Jerry didn’t seem to be listening.
Eventually the shunting began; forward,
backward, stop; this exercise continued for some time
until at last we were off. Having established a
direction, we took turns in attacking a square section in
the rear corner of the floor until darkness stopped work.
Next morning the train stopped and we were let out for
toilet purposes. By now we had collected a German Jew who
had become a member of the British Army Pioneer Corps.
Known as Harry, he became our interpreter. Together with
the German officer in charge, he let us know that, when
possible, we would be let out each morning somewhere
along the line and given a hot meal. Any damage caused to
German equipment would be sabotage, and that meant
shooting. Needs must, so once back in the wagon we again
took turns to make the hole in the floor. From
conversations with other wagons’ occupants when in a
crouched position with trousers or shorts down, we
learned that a number of holes of convenience were being
made! When out of the wagons we were guarded by lines of
troops each side of the train, together with
machine-gunners on the roof. These were long days, spent
delousing; those little creatures were still with me and
of course there was not the luxury of a strip-off wash in
a horse trough.
The Prisoner of War tags issued to
Harold Siddall in 1941, bearing the camp name
Stalag VII/A and number 5850
After some days the food supply had
been used up; with the heat in the wagon the meat in the
tins, once opened, could be literally poured out and the
bread became rock-hard and sour. Hunger set in and the
promised stops became few and far between. The train
often stopped, but not for our convenience. Late one
night, somewhere in Yugoslavia, the train stopped at a
station; we were "‘raused" out and found
ourselves packed together on a platform, well guarded. We
almost had bayonets up our bums, so packed and guarded
were we. Jerry must have realised the mistake, because we
were once more herded back into the wagons and the doors
slid shut. After forever the door was opened; out we came
to form a line and slowly inch forward to people ladling
goulash into our containers and handing out blocks of
bread. The fellow handing out my ladle of soup said in
English: "It’s only horse meat ", as
though apologising, but I couldn’t have cared if it
had been made of the camel shot weeks ago. It was
beautiful, and if real goulash tastes like that, roll on!
That soup was hot and the memory of the taste of the
bread, after being dunked, makes my mouth water even as I
am writing this episode, fifty two years afterwards.
Once again loaded and locked in the
wagon, the train stayed at that station and the guards
lined each side. One of the wags in the wagon, come dawn,
called out to the guard: "Please may I go to the
toilet?" All he received was a snarl of:
"Ruhe", which must have meant "Get
stuffed".
And so the train proceeded, stopping
frequently to let other traffic pass. One fine morning we
actually stopped for a convenience call which sticks in
my memory because a number of youths appeared carrying
packets of apples. They had obviously done this before
and appeared to supply the guards before wandering along
the line, carrying out a barter service. There
wasn’t very much with which to barter, but I
remembered my sixpence with a hole in it. I showed it to
one of the youngsters, but he wasn’t very impressed
and wandered on. Perhaps it might have been better if he
had not returned, but he did; pickings must have been
poor, because he offered me four scrawny little apples
for my sixpence with a hole in it. Like a fool I
accepted: it was food! And on an empty stomach. The next
morning in that closed wagon I had to make a dash for the
hole in the floor. An apple a day keeps the doctor away!
We had only that one issue of soup over those many days
of journeying. Once we were issued with a small tin of
meat and sometimes a handful of biscuits, as hard as
iron. Sometimes the train stopped near a watering point
for engines and from these we collected water, but it was
a precious commodity.
There was not a lot to raise a laugh on
that journey. But one instance comes to mind, when we
stopped near an engine watering point. By this time we
were all looking scruffy and one squaddie decided he
would have a shave, using his Rolls Razor. Not in
plentiful supply nowadays, that razor was a compact unit.
I used one myself until the beard-growing days. It went
to the bottom of the Mediterranean when the bows of 1030
were blown off. The blade could be sharpened by stropping
and honing in its case, but the operation caused a loud
clicking noise. Quite unconcerned, the soldier carried on
clicking until the noise caused concern among the guards,
who began to react as though they meant business. The
fact that they were ganging up on the noise made by a
Rolls Razor made us see the funny side. But Jerry, with
his poor sense of humour, decided that enough was enough,
and back in the wagons we went. The guards travelled in
passenger coaches and when we finally arrived in Bavaria,
at Stalag VIIA, a Prisoner of War camp near Munich, they
were relatively fresh, whereas we were smelling a bit
high, to say the least.
Unloaded from the wagons, formed up and
counted and counted, we were herded along until we came
to the entrance to Stalag VIIA, where there was a large
metal arch, on which were the words: "ARBEIT MACHT
FREI". This was translated by our Harry thus:
"Work makes Freedom."
We were taken into what could only be
described as a sheep-shearing shed, where French P.O.W.s
were wielding hand-operated clippers for the purpose of
shearing our heads of hair. When my turn came, my
tonsorialist was as good as the next, because I was
completely shorn. When I pointed to my beard he shook his
head negatively; there was nothing on the daily orders
about shearing beards! Now our predicament caused a
lightening of spirits and hilarity; we just laughed at
one another’s appearance. Where before there had
been burnt brown faces, now there were burnt brown faces
and snow-white heads of many different shapes and sizes.
I was the only one recognisable because I still had my
beard and we just laughed at one another because of that
sudden contrast. We were going to one another asking:
"Who are you?" When the hairdressing session
was completed, walking in a carpet of different-coloured
hair, we were ushered into the next part of the building
to find several deep circular containers of a thick,
yellow, sulphurous liquid. We were made to strip off and
bathe in these containers and scrub one another’s
back. There was another laugh when my compatriots yelled:
"Not you, sailor; we know what sailors are!" We
were told to leave all of our uniforms on the floor, but
in the assembled crowd I picked up my khaki shorts, Naval
belt, socks and boots. Liquid running from me, I went
with the others into the building to be clothed. We had
evidently been de-loused, thank goodness! On the floor
were heaps of various uniforms; I was issued with
something like cotton underpants which were secured with
a drawstring, and a shirt of rather coarse material. Then
I had to find something out of the uniforms that would
fit me. There seemed to be very little in the way of
anything British, but I did finish up with a Highland
regiment jacket, something worn by a Scottish soldier as
a dress jacket, I would imagine, because the arms were
long enough, but the jacket ended on my hips. The only
trousers I could find to fit me were a pair of Yugoslav
soldier’s jodphurs, which ended just below my knees.
So picture, if you can, a British sailor, with a white
bald head, a beard which had gone to seed, outwardly clad
in a jacket which nearly fitted, a pair of something or
other acting as trousers, socks and boots. A pity there
isn’t a picture to complement this description!
When considered dressed we went into
another shed where, seated at tables, French P.O.W.s took
down our particulars, and upon mine I placed a
thumb-print. I was given an aluminium, rectangular
identity disc, to be worn around the neck, on which was
stamped ‘Stalag VIIA:5850’. Stamped in two
places so that, should I die whilst in captivity, one
half of the aluminium disc would be sent to the
International Red Cross in Geneva. Presumably the other
half would be buried with me.
Then came the inoculation; seemingly
the same syringe was used on the whole batch of us; the
inoculation was in my left breast and it went in like a
thump from a heavyweight boxer. When all had been dealt
with we formed up to proceed down the long road; it was
then I realised what a Prisoner of War camp was. On each
side of that road were walls of barbed wire as high as
perhaps fifteen feet, and although at first I didn’t
realise it, similar walls branched off at right angles
making compounds. Initially Stalag VIIA had been a camp
for French P.O.W.s and we were the first British
contingent to enter. Confined to their compounds, the
French threw cigarettes to us, together with matches.
Those cigarettes were Gauloises, made from a strong black
tobacco and I actually saw some of our fellows fall to
their knees when they inhaled the smoke. At the bottom of
that long wired road was the compound into which we went.
I chose the middle bunk of a
three-tiered set, on which was a palliasse containing a
minimum amount of straw, resting on seven strips of wood.
On the palliasse was a thin, dark grey blanket and a
piece of cloth to serve as a towel. Our evening meal was
ready for us; apparently we had been expected the day
before and the French cooks had been able to save the
rations. The meal consisted of fish soup, and I actually
had two helpings because my aluminium dish was small.
Beside the huts, which formed a square,
there was a lavatory without running water, serving for
dual needs - everything expended into a huge crater.
Don’t bother to ask what we used for toilet paper:
there wasn’t any. We took our dish of cold water and
cleansed ourselves. Each hut was in the form of
semi-detached accomodation, divided by a wash-place
consisting of cement troughs into which cold water could
run. The windows had wooden shutters, hinged on the
outside; come lock-up time these were shut and barred by
the guards, who also locked the door, effectively sealing
us in. A couple of Alsatian dogs were let loose in the
compound, searchlights from the watchtowers swept the
area frequently: all this to ensure that nobody could do
us harm during the night, I presume!
The first morning saw me wake with an
itch - this time caused by fleas; everybody was the same;
the things lived in the straw and on us. But the first
night’s sleep was absolute, due to the respite from
travelling in the wagon, I suppose. But for the remainder
of the time in Stalag VIIA I never had a good
night’s sleep. Fleas and hunger saw to that, and we
were all in the same boat. It was here that I met and
formed a strong friendship with Bob Andrews, known as
Andy. We were the only Westcountry people in that hut: he
came from Newton Ferrers; so it was natural that we
should pair off. A bricklayer by profession, when called
up it was as a gunner in the Royal Artillery.
For a few days we were isolated in our
compound, then after roll-call one morning the gates were
opened and we were free to wander into the other
compounds, all occupied by French P.O.W.s who had been
there since the French capitulation, about a year before.
When Andy and I wandered into a French hut we were made
welcome and those who could speak English wanted the
latest information we could give. In one hut were P.O.W.s
from the Maginot Line who, when captured, had walked out
with all their kit, so their hut was like home from home.
I can’t recall whether they received any Red Cross
Parcels of food, but each month they received thick,
hard, unsweetened biscuits from the French Government
which went a long way towards supplementing the daily
ration of food. P.O.W.s were supposed, by the Geneva
Convention, to receive the same victuals as base-line
troops of the detaining power. Each morning we received a
ladle of mint tea and a seventh of a loaf of bread - dark
brown stuff, said to contain sawdust for bulk. In the
late afternoon the food consisted of a ladle of soup:
sometimes cabbage soup, sometimes turnip soup and, very
occasionally, fish soup. Fleas and hunger were the
constant tormentors; hunger was there all the time and
all we could talk about was Red Cross parcels.
Then one day we were each given a
pre-printed postcard, on which were the following four
sentences: I am well. I am not well. I am wounded. I am
not wounded. We borrowed a pencil from a French P.O.W.
and deleted the lines which did not apply. So when mine
arrived home months later, care of the International Red
Cross in Geneva, it read so: "I am a Prisoner of
War. I am well. I am not wounded." Any additions
would cancel the card. When the card arrived, my Dad and
Mabel took it to the Naval Barracks, where I had been
posted ‘Missing in Action’. So at least the
Powers That Be could put me back on the pay register!
One day Andy and I were in the
wash-place of our hut and in our conversation one of us
said "Ta", our Westcountry version of
"Thanks". I don’t know what we were
thanking one another for, but just at that moment a
P.O.W. was passing by. When he heard that abbreviation he
stopped and said: "Are you from Plymouth?" When
we acknowledged this he said that his home was in
Plymstock. It turned out that he was on his own so we
invited him to join us, which he readily did. He was Jack
Adams, a corporal in the Royal Engineers. And so
originated the Three Musketeers from Kriegieland.
Strangely enough his two sisters worked in the same
tailoring factory where Mabel had served her
apprenticeship. Small world!
One day I was taken to an office in the
German compound near the camp entrance where my P.O.W.
disc and number were checked against the form the French
P.O.W. had completed. When it was established that I was
indeed a member of the Royal Navy, I was told that I had
to make myself ready to be transferred to a Marlag in
Northern Germany, which was a Prisoner of War camp for
Royal Navy P.O.W.s. When? Nobody knew. I just had to hold
myself ready to be transferred.
Assuaging hunger became the main need
in those days; the bill of fare remained fairly constant,
except that on an occasional day there would also be an
issue of boiled potatoes, which worked out at about three
each. What a pantomime each issue turned out to be! In
order that each man should have as fair an issue as
possible, the potatoes were put on a clear space on the
stone floor, then shared by size into the number of rows,
according to the number of men in the hut. Talk about
microscopic eyesight! The senior member of the hut had
the unenviable job of sorting the potatoes as fairly as
possible, according to size. Once issued, the spuds were
devoured instantly, skins and all. Hard cheese on anyone
who had a bad spud; it was part of his ration.
One day came the buzz that working
parties were being assembled to work for private
employers. According to the Geneva Convention, prisoners
of war who were non-commissioned officers could be made
to work for the detaining power as long as they were not
employed in war work. N.C.O.s could volunteer if they so
wished. The bait was food. We were assured we would
receive the same rations as civilian workers in the firm
in which we were employed. Bob, Jack and I stuck together
and were rounded up to go on the same working party. The
fact that I was a sailor seemed to be forgotten and
thirty six of us were gathered together to go to a work
camp, known as an ‘Arbeit Lager’, in Munich.
Just like the other members, I was issued with an
overcoat of doubtful origin and quality, together with a
pair of cloth gaiters and two square pieces of flannel
called Fusslappe, which would line the inside of the
boots. During my scrounging sessions around the compounds
I had acquired a French Army water bottle, shaped
something like a spade; so I had a small dish, a
combination spoon and fork and a water bottle. I was
relatively well-off! We were rounded up, taken to a hut
near the main gate and made to strip off; our clothing
was minutely searched, our identity discs checked. When
re-clothed and counted, we were told that we would be
known as the Hauptbahnhof Partei, so we promptly called
ourselves the ‘Op and Offs’. At that time
nobody had a clue what the title stood for, but we soon
learned. We collected a couple of armed guards, were
counted once more, discs checked and we set off to the
railway depot. Wonder of wonders, this time we were put
into a railway carriage and rode into Munich station in
style. I was back in civilisation and realised what I was
missing. Several people must have asked the guards who we
were, because they frequently replied:
"Englaender" and we were stared at as though we
had come from the moon. We were the first P.O.W.s they
had seen, and from the way I was dressed, they could have
thought I came from the moon! By this time our heads were
showing a bit of fuzz and the once white scalps had
changed to a darker hue from the sun.
Harking back to the Stalag, I recall
the French told us that they used dandelion leaves to
complement their menu. That was good enough for us; we
went around the edge of the compound, as near the trip
wires as we dared, and cleared the camp of dandelion
leaves. Dust and all, they had a bitter taste, but they
were food. Pass the mayonnaise, please!
Once out of the station we marched to
our work camp. I am not too sure, but I believe it was a
part of Munich called Pasing. What I do remember is that,
like all work camps, it had a number, 2780A. Here I made
my first acquaintance with the continental figure 7 with
a line through it; initially we thought that the camp
number was 2F80A. Each hut contained two rooms with
twelve sets of triple bunks, six on each side, and a bare
wooden table in the centre, taking up most of the free
space. The room was illuminated by a very low-wattage
bulb, operated naturally from elsewhere. The hinged
window was double-glazed with shutters on the outside.
2780A was on the corner of the road, well and truly
walled with barbed wire, but open to view from
passers-by. The boundary trip-wire was for us guests a
warning of how close a kriegie could approach. The camp
was evidently owned by the Hauptbahnhof, the main railway
station in Munich, by whom Bob, Jack and I would be
employed. Other huts were rented to other firms which
employed P.O.W.s. The members of our hut consisted of a
mixed bag. The outstanding members, other than we three,
were three Australians: Ron Waddell, Bluey Lee, so called
because he had red hair, and Harry Woodward. They became
the Aussie Three Musketeers who, like us, shared
everything - which at that time was nothing.
After being allotted our room, the next
operation was to collect a thin grey blanket and a
palliasse, which had to be filled as full as possible
with fresh straw. That evening two tall, narrow cupboards
were delivered to each room so we had spaces in which to
keep our meagre belongings. The first meal was issued and
- surprise, surprise - it was cabbage soup! And, because
we were workers, we discovered, every soup ration would
be accompanied by an issue of boiled potatoes. So came
the ritual of laying out thirty six lines of potatoes,
each being as near as possible of similar-sized potatoes.
The same night-time rules applied as in the Stalag; once
locked in, that was that. The window was shuttered, the
entrance door locked, after a short while a guard would
bang on the shutters as a warning and soon afterwards
lights were extinguished. Night-night, pleasant dreams;
hope you remembered to go to the toilet!
Early in the morning four men had to go
to the Kueche - the kitchen - to collect the loaves and a
churn of mint tea. When the loaves had been cut into
seven parts, the bread and tea was breakfast. So each
morning five loaves and one seventh of a loaf were
collected. Sometimes there would be a large seventh and
sometimes a small seventh, depending on the disposition
of the German soldier; so regardless of its size, each of
us had to take a turn at receiving the odd seventh of a
loaf. Repast consumed and toiletries completed, there
came the German soldier who acted as interpreter. He
could speak American English, and what a bar-steward he
was, as further encounters will explain. When we heard
him shout "Oppanoffparty" our shower mustered
outside our hut and we marched to the main entrance of
that closely-wired camp. We seemed to be counted by every
guard in the camp, each armed with a clipboard; we showed
our identity discs and the numbers were checked. We were
advised to learn the German for our numbers, because that
would mean less time standing around each morning. But as
one wag was heard to observe, the longer we stayed, the
less time we would have for work! Eventually we collected
two armed guards and marched off in columns of four to
the Railway Goods Yard.
There we discovered that we were to be
the Tick-Tocking Party, maintaining railway tracks
wherever required. ‘Tick-Tocking?’ you ask.
Yes, because that was the noise made by the metal pick as
it struck the stone ballast to force it under the wooden
sleepers. Sounds easy, doesn’t it? Not so, quoth I.
The picks in question differed from the normal type, in
that one end of the metal part was welded into a fairly
large steel ball, which was used to hammer the ballast
under the sleepers. To level a length of railway line
meant that some of the fellows had to jack up the
sleepers while others wheelbarrowed the large lumps of
stone ballast as near as possible to the required spaces;
then the Tick-Tockers would set to work, ramming the
ballast into place. After repairing a length of track, a
shunting engine and a cattle truck appeared and the
thirty six of us piled into the truck to ride up and down
the track several times - this to convince the overseers
that we had not sabotaged anything, I presume.
Perhaps when reading this you will find
it difficult to realise that this work was really a type
of hard labour and our undernourished bodies weren’t
up to it. Thus it paid to learn quickly some German
expressions. So after a Jerry workman had gabbled and
gesticulated for about ten minutes, he would invariably
end his speech with the expression: "Verstehen
Sie?" To us this meant: "Do you
understand?" Whereupon we rapidly learned to say:
"Nicht verstehen." As our pronunciation
wasn’t pure Deutsch, it became standard to say:
"Fushstain Nicht" and the standard retort from
the overseers would be: "Nicht verstehen! Nicht
verstehen! Die Englaender verstehen immer nicht.
Dummkoepfe!" And that was another word learned to
add to the vocabulary.
To Arbeitslager 2780A was assigned a
junior German officer who was our official interpreter,
known as the Dolmetscher. He was a simple sort of lad
whose job was to cycle to the various working parties to
iron out language difficulties - and he had a full-time
job! His interpretation of the English language was on
the weak side. He learned more expressions from us than
he had ever learned at school. We had to use any means
possible to avoid work, so as soon as he appeared it was
the signal to drop everything and crowd around to hear a
translation of something said by the civvies, to ask
questions to stretch out the time. The answers were
quickly forgotten when we were questioned by the boss
after the Dolmy had cycled off to the next working party.
It sounds hilarious, but that work was hard labour.
We marched four or five miles to work
each morning, after a breakfast of a thin slice of
so-called bread and a cup of mint tea. All that did was
clear the tubes. The dinner-time break was a half-hour,
when we would each be given a small bowl of cabbage soup.
Some of the crowd would bring their bread ration to eat
with the soup, but we preferred to stick it out and have
ours with the evening repast. A favourite meal of the
civilian workers was a piece of fat bacon toasted in
front of the brazier; as the fat melted it would be
rubbed onto a piece of bread and eaten. That smell used
to drive us crazy - talk about mouth-watering! I am
certain they did this deliberately to get their revenge
for us being so deliberately thick.
One of the worst jobs on this
Tick-Tocking skylark was when lengths of line had to be
replaced. We knew this when the ‘tulip’
spanners were issued and a groan always ascended to the
skies. Using the long spanners, we had to disconnect the
fishplates from the lengths of rail and lift the rail
from the sleepers. Jerry always got his revenge on us on
these occasions. There were never enough of us to lift a
length of rail, and they were so heavy. The ganger would
shout: "Eins, zwei, drei, los!", whereupon we
would shout "One, two, six" and endeavour to
lift. Under normal conditions, with normal food, we could
have accomplished the job. At first when lifting, we were
placed any old where and there was nothing concentrated,
so we sorted ourselves into similarly-sized partners each
side of the rail, but lifting was still damned hard
labour. Then the replacement rails would be brought and
levered off the long wagon, to be manhandled into place
and connected. Upon completion, along came the shunting
engine and the wagon. All aboard, and the engine would be
traversed up and down the section until the ganger was
satisfied.
We had the same two guards each day and
one of them remembered a bit of his English lessons,
because at the end of each long day, when we mustered to
march off, he would invariably say: "Hurry, hurry,
it’s high time." So of course he was named
"Hurry Hurry." I remember one evening in
September 1942, when marching back to camp, we were made
to wait while a long convoy of Army vehicles passed us. A
crowd of Jewish workers stopped alongside us and one of
them, dressed in what appeared to be a striped pyjama
suit, asked me if I was English. I affirmed and he said:
"Can you give me a cigarette?" When I explained
that none of us had any cigarettes, he asked for half a
cigarette, or even a dog-end. I had a job to convince him
that we had none at all. While talking I noticed that
several of the Jews were carrying a brick in each hand.
When I asked the reason for this, I was told that in the
opinion of their guards they had not done a good enough
day’s work, so their punishment was to carry the
bricks and return them next morning. I could not help but
think that, had those rules applied to us, we would be
carrying concrete blocks for our delaying moves!
And so those long days passed. Just
like the others, I lived for that return to the camp for
the share-out of potatoes and so-called soup to be eaten
with the remainder of the bread. It was no use trying to
save any bread; by the next day it would begin to smell
like fish-glue - besides I for one didn’t have the
will-power.
Then one evening upon return from
Arbeit we were each given a P.O.W. postcard to write our
first few words home. We were told by Dolmy that we could
ask for parcels to be sent, but that the weight limit was
ten kilogrammes. Like the others, all I could think about
was food and it was farcical as we prompted one another
with suggestions, expecting that the parcels would be
delivered in a week or two. They never came.
On Sundays there was an issue of jam
and margarine. This worked out to be an Oxo-sized cube of
Tafel-Margarine and a tablespoon of red jam, said to be
made from turnips and coloured with cochineal. As for the
margarine, we arranged to forego the weekly ration and
took it in turns to wait, in order to have a larger
portion from the cube. We were paid seventy pfennigs a
day in Prison Camp money; this was printed especially for
us ‘kriegies’ and could only be spent in the
camp canteen which, if I remember correctly, only sold
‘Klingen’, razor blades,
‘Rasierseifen’, a sort of shaving soap (and
‘sort of’ was an excellent description for that
stuff), and ‘Zahnpulver’, again a ‘sort
of’ toothpaste. Each received four marks twenty
pfennigs in a proper workman’s envelope, which was
for six days work of nine or ten hours a day. At that
time the exchange rate was fifteen marks to the pound, so
we were never going to be millionaires! Later, a weekly
ration of rather coarse, sandy soap was on sale and we
were allowed a hot shower once every ten days. Other than
that, all water was cold.
The
Prisoner of War camp currency first used by Harold Siddall in 1941
In early October the weather began to
turn cold and on those long stretches of open railway
track the winds showed us how inadequate our clothing
was. This was a dead loss, because we had to put a bit of
effort into our work in order to keep warm. There was an
agreement between us that when Dolmy next made a visit we
would concentrate on moaning to him about the poor
clothing. After several of these sessions, blow me if one
Sunday large bundles of British Army uniforms didn’t
arrive in the canteen and, hut by hut, we were able to
choose clothing of a suitable fit. These were all parts
of captured uniforms which had been de-loused. Having
discarded my comical outfit, I finished up with a forage
cap, brown pullover, an early-issue Army overcoat, a
somewhat-modern issue pair of trousers with leg pouch
pockets and a British Army greatcoat, which was a real
treasure-find, considering there were not many of those
coats to fit six-footers. At the same time, each of us
was issued with a pair of mittens, called
‘Handschuhe’, made from old army materials. And
so our moans and badgering of Dolmy paid off. More about
my pair of Handschuhe later in the tale.
We also collected an Australian
Sergeant Major to be our camp leader; a doctor in the
form of a Major in the Medical Corps and British Army
bandsmen who became our medical orderlies. A German Naval
doctor was attached to the camp, mainly to decide how ill
a kriegie was, in order to be granted the almost
unobtainable "Bett Ruhe", which meant "bed
rest". Everything was going to be all right when the
Red Cross parcels came, or, better still, those parcels
for which we had written home.
