There is no doubt these primary requirements of life are paramount in a prison camp. Under the Geneva Convention only basic provisions were supplied by Germany. We were not required to work (being officers or non-commissioned officers), thus food rations were the bare minimum and often of poor quality. The International Red Cross were the organisation to supplement the needs of prisoners of war. Operating from Geneva it co-ordinated the supply of goods and distributed them to Working Parties, Stalags and Oflags, throughout Germany. The supply was mainly food, but clothing, books, musical instruments, even correspondence courses for professional exams, were organised for some camps. Supplies were often erratic, governed by the war situation. It was obviously not the first priority in the German distribution system, especially as the war progressed, when their transport infrastructure was virtually destroyed by the RAF and the American Air Force.
The daily ration issued by the Germans consisted of about three boiled potatoes (often nearly rotten after months stored in clamps), and a ladle of watery soup (called ‘skilly’) made with turnips, swede, millet, barley, dried sauerkraut, or peas. These were issued at midday in skilly buckets, from the cookhouse. (There were two cookhouses one British, the other French which also catered for other nationals). The pea soup was the most desirable skilly, and many rows broke out on how the small leftover should be divided. Each barrack had an elected leader and two or three colleagues to assist him in making minor decisions and sharing out any communal chores - the pea soup share out was one of his problems. In our barracks, after a vote by everybody, it was decided that the leftover should be shared out equally, pea by pea if necessary!
In the afternoon, a piece of black bread, about an inch or so thick, a small piece of margarine and a spoonful of jam (made from beetroot); sugar or meat paste completed the hard rations. Several pails of ersatz coffee (made from roasted acorns) were usually put into the washhouse boiler for a hot drink later.
The Red Cross food parcel was based on the requirements of one person for a week. The parcels came from various countries, Britain (including Scotland), America, Canada, New Zealand, Argentine (bulk rations), and sometimes France or Belgium. A British parcel contained a number of the following: tin of condensed milk, 2oz tea, tin of cocoa, 4oz sugar, 8oz margarine, tin of biscuits, 8oz jam, marmalade or syrup, 2oz processed cheese, pkt dried fruit or tin of fruit pudding or creamed rice, rolled oats or oatmeal, tin of meat & veg, steak & kidney pudding or other varieties, tin of sausages or meat roll, sometimes a tin of bacon or Yorkshire pudding (instead of cocoa), tin of egg powder, sometimes a carton of sweets, 4oz bar of chocolate, tin of veg (peas, carrots etc.), tin of salmon or pilchards, bar of soap, sometimes pkt of salt, pepper, or mustard. American parcels and some others contained cigarettes, but alternatively there was a separate issue of 50 cigarettes a week if whole parcels were issued. But it could be only 25 a week or none, according to the availability of parcels. (Cigarettes were used throughout the camp as the main currency for trading and racketeering!)
Together, the German ration and a full parcel every week was Utopia for us. Of course there were weeks when we had only half parcels - or no parcels - when distribution was disrupted for a variety of reasons. So ‘tinned stuff’ had to be saved for hungry times. Most prisoners joined together in two’s or more to share and prepare their food. The term for this was ‘mucking in’ and groups were called ‘muckers’. John Bushell and I became ‘muckers’ and decided that we would prepare our food together everyday.
On arrival we were given a dixie and spoon each, not much for preparing food, cooking, eating and drinking. We had to acquire knives, drinking cups and plates etc. to start up, which we got with cigarettes from fellow ‘kriegies’ (established prisoners of war). The kriegies would have got the knives from the Russians, the cups and plates would have been made from Red Cross tins by a kriegie skilled in ‘tin bashing’. Cups were Canadian ‘Maple Leaf’ butter tins with a handle made from a strip of tin attached to another strip, which was clamped to the top and bottom of the butter tin. Plates and dishes for heating or frying food, were made from flattened out Scotch biscuit tins turned up at the sides and the corners folded in. Scotch biscuit tins were ideal for all sorts of things, I don’t know what we would have done without them!
The cooking stoves, one at each end of the barracks, were controlled by two stokers. The ovens were not used and only the hot plates were in action. Coal dust (compressed into briquettes) used for cooking and strictly rationed for each barrack, meant that the stoves would only operate at lunch time. The remainder of the briquettes were allocated to the washhouse, for use in the boiler for ‘brewing up’ during the day. Because the briquettes were rationed and were under the supervision of the guards, several attempts were made by various barracks to get more by false pretences. One barrack managed to get a spare set of keys to the briquettes store and organised a parade. By marching specially, with their familiar plywood Red Cross container, as if under the control of the guards, they got another issue. But I don’t think they managed it twice! Our barrack was luckier in this respect. There was a German Jew in our barrack whose family left Germany before the war. He became a naturalised British subject, joined RAF ground crew and became a member of an Advanced Airfield Unit and was posted to the Island of Kos. He became a POW after the Germans invaded the Island in October 1943 and he was moved to Muhlberg. He could speak fluent German and was able to bribe two of the guards (who, with dogs, patrolled the camp after curfew) to stay away on certain nights from patrolling the French cookhouse. This cookhouse, adjacent to our compound and opposite our barracks, had a large store of briquettes in the cellar which could be accessed by cutting the barbed wire between our compound and the cookhouse. A group of volunteers in the barracks ‘stood by’ for these arrangements, and when the barrack leader announced, in true RAF parlance, “Ops on tonight”, there was great activity.
Prior to the first of these operations, the floor bricks had been removed from under one of the bunks. A pit had been dug and covered up with a false floor made of plywood from Red Cross packing cases. The removed floor bricks were then put back on the plywood, and earth spread in between the bricks. In the gloom of the barracks it was almost impossible to detect any disturbance in the brick floor.
On ‘Ops’ night, the pit was opened up, kit bags were borrowed and half the night, kitbags full of briquettes removed from the cookhouse cellar, were unloaded almost silently into the pit. Well before daylight the barbed wire was reconnected, the floor and bricks replaced and everybody involved, back in their bunks. The pit, which also housed other things that needed to be hidden, was never discovered, despite many random searches that were carried out. This activity was carried out every few weeks and meant that we were the most ‘well provided for’ barracks for cooking and the warmest in the whole camp, until the autumn of 1944.
Back to cooking, the stokers maintained strict control over the hot plates so that everyone had an opportunity to heat, boil or fry their food either in the tin, dixie or dish, by moving them in progression across the hottest part of the hot plate. Nevertheless there were accidents, when dishes caught fire and tins exploded (many of the contents like creamed rice hit the roof above!), or food was cremated as the hot plate suddenly went red hot in one spot. BRC bacon when frying could spit hot fat everywhere and those near the stove had to dive for cover!
John and I, like most ‘muckers’, tried to add as much variety as possible to our meals. We would save barley soup for breakfast and convert it into porridge by adding sugar, or as a pudding at tea time, by adding dried fruit etc. Biscuits could be crumbled and mixed with various things. Sometimes our meagre almost inedible bread ration would be mixed with fruit, meat or fish items to make more acceptable bulk. Most of the ‘skilly’ (soup items), turnip, swede, or millet (bird seed), we consumed straight away, especially if we were hungry. During the period of receiving a weekly full parcel, most of the skilly and some of the dry rations were given to the Russian amputees and later, to the Italians.
Heating water for tea and coffee was difficult. The Army kriegies from the Italian prison camps brought with them a design of a water heater called a ‘blower’. It was a fan operated device which, by means of a belt driving the fan at high speed, forced air into a firebox. The firebox was filled with anything burnable (pine cones, chips of wood and cardboard) and a dixie of water placed on top would be boiling in a few minutes. ‘Blowers’ were made from Red Cross food tins and plywood, mounted on a bed board taken from a bunk. They were hazardous devices and confined to the wash house. Unfortunately the guards did not approve of these contraptions and they frequently destroyed them. In a short time more were made, and then there were even fewer bed boards to some of the bunks!
The more organised way of providing hot drinks, an essential requirement in cold, draughty and damp huts, was to use the boiler in the wash house for communal brews. It was agreed that the issue of ersatz coffee would be reheated this way, and everybody would give up some of their tea, coffee and cocoa ration for regular hot drinks. The boiler-man would shout out “brew up” six or seven times a day and bodies would appear from bunks and everywhere with mugs and dixies for their ration.
Everyday at 6.30 a.m. the camp was awakened by guards running through the hut shouting “rouse, rouse”, and in quick time we had to dress and form up in rows of ‘fumf’s’ (fives), barrack by barrack in the compound. Whilst the Army in their compounds, who were well disciplined, had their count finished in no-time, the RAF were always late and virtually had to be driven out of their barracks. The guards regularly found stragglers still asleep in their bunks, or they were not all lined up in fives. The German unteroffizier in charge (a relatively young guard who had been wounded on the Russian Front, nicknamed ‘Blondie’ for his flaxen hair), was often at his wit’s end. As a result of these events day after day, Blondie would keep the offending barrack standing for hours in the slush and the snow. On one occasion, a member of another barrack brought out a chair for Blondie to sit on whilst this punishment was in progress, which he took in good part. But when, in another situation, he drew his pistol, it was time to call this game to an end!
Although roll call was always at 6.30 in the morning, curfew was later in the summer months, up to 9.30 p.m., which made life much more pleasant as it shortened the time we were incarcerated in the huts.
Not long after I reached the camp, it was probably towards the end of winter, typhus and diphtheria broke out and the whole camp was quarantined. Typhus was to be expected at any time. It usually affected the Russians but it could break out anywhere. I can recall being bitten all over my body with bed bugs. Our palliasses were never replaced and were pretty filthy sacks of straw. Living in such overcrowded conditions, lice, fleas, and bedbugs abounded. It was one of the most depressing times I can remember.
Quarantine meant that there was no roll call in the compound. No-one was allowed outside the barracks for about a month, and this was enforced by having an armed guard posted outside each barrack entrance. Supplies were brought to the barracks and there was only the inside latrine to serve 200 or more of us, day and night.
When the camp was first built, a sewer system was planned to take the sewage to the river Elbe some miles away. Camp reservoirs were dug to provide the water supply. This plan was soon abandoned, and latrines with concrete septic tanks installed instead. Each barrack had an inside night latrine and to each compound, one or more forty-seater day latrine buildings were added. Inside these there were four rows of boxed seats, each with ten holes, mounted above a large tank. No-one felt alone in a forty-holer!
With more than 20,000 prisoners, the removal of the sewage was a permanent daily task for a small ‘army’ of the Russian kommandos. Through a trap door on the ground outside the latrine a long pipe connected to a hand pump was inserted into the decomposed sewage. With every operation of the pump lever, decomposed sewage was squirted into the hopper of a long wooden barrel which was mounted on an ox-cart. The whole design could have been invented in medieval times and was about as labour intensive as in those days. It generated the most foul stench with every pump movement and was christened ‘the honey cart’.
Many honey carts were in action daily all over the camp. They leaked and left their signature everywhere, in a trail on their way out of the main gate to the local fields, where they fertilized the crops. Some of the inferior crops we might consume in our skilly in a few months’ time!
In my view the condition of the latrines and inadequate method of sewage disposal for over 20,000 prisoners, was beyond belief. The German nation, known for its discipline, thoroughness and cleanliness, had at that time a blot on its character in the way it dealt with prisoners of war in Stalag 1VB - and probably other camps as well.
There was also no provision for toilet paper and we had to resort to all sorts of solutions, Red Cross tin labels and reading books had to be sacrificed. On one occasion after a Red Cross inspection, when we complained about the lack of toilet paper, we did receive some ‘toilet paper’ from the Germans, in the form of propaganda booklets printed in English. One entitled ‘Jews Must Live’ and the other ‘The Who’s Who of Jews’, which listed all the prominent people in the western world and whether they were Jews or not, including Churchill (who was not listed as a Jew).
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